What we’ve been up to

Almost two months since our last update, we’re getting lazy! In our defense it has been a busy few months.

After getting back from a long weekend in the UK and spending a week recovering from the flu (normal not Swine) I was off to San Francisco for the last 2 weeks of August. This was my annual trip to Google HQ in Mountain View to catch up with my colleagues there and meet some of the new people that I’ve started working with over the last year. As usual it was a very productive couple of weeks, being in the same timezone has that effect. I was there for two full weekends in between the work, so for the first weekend I drove southwards along the Pacific Coast Highway, unfortunately it was a very smokey/hazy day, so my photos didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. The second weekend I spent in San Francisco itself, admiring the cable cars, and enjoying a cruise across the bay to Suasalito. Click the links in the previous sentences for the photos.

After one day back in Dublin to catch up with Kat, I was off to Barcelona again for 3 days with the rest of my team from Dublin and Zurich. We had a wonderful time sitting on the beach drinking Mojitos and shooting each other with small plastic pellets while playing airsoft. Excellent team building. It seemed like half the team had SLR cameras so I did my bit to provide my share of Barcelona Photos too.

I love travelling and seeing new places, but after pretty much three full weeks away from home it was nice to spend the rest of September in Dublin enjoying a surprisingly nice end of summer weather wise.

We’re over this side of the world to make the most of travel though, so last week we were off again to Portugal to catch the last of the summer sun with 6 friends. We rented a villa in Monte Gordo, right down the bottom of the country on the Algarve, next to the border with Spain. We had an excellent week playing in the Villa’s pool, floating in the sea and visiting small Portuguese villages. The highlight for me (other than the sun) was visiting Sevilla in Spain for the day. Of everywhere we’ve been in Europe so far, Spain is pretty much at the top of my list thanks to the attractions of Barcelona and Seville. And of course we took plenty of Photos on this trip too.

We both got back to Dublin on Saturday night sporting fairly reasonable tans, although while we were away Dublin seems to have slipped firmly into Autumn and the temperature has dropped more than a few degrees.

Not to worry though, in 12 days we’re flying out bound for NZ where we’ll be staying until the end of the year, catching up with family and friends, and most importantly celebrating Andrew and Sarah’s wedding in early November!

Hopefully we’ll see many of you before too long!