Matt & Kat

Since well before we arrived in Europe, Turkey has been near the top of our “must visit” list. It’s a very interesting country in terms of landscapes, history, food and culture – oh and history, did I mention history? There’s a lot of it there! Turkey is also a huge place and we were faced with difficult decisions choosing which parts of the country to see! In the end we opted for quite a well worn tourist track from Istanbul down the western coast via Gallipoli, Ephesus and Pamukkale before finishing with a relaxing week in a small resort town called Kalkan.

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Last weekend was a bank holiday here in Dublin, so we took an extra day off and had a 4 day weekend in Norway. Scandinavia has been on our todo list for a while and given that we haven’t managed to visit any new countries yet this year it seemed like a good time to see a new place.

We had an enjoyable weekend in Oslo, although when they say that Norway is one of the more expensive euro countries to travel to they’re not joking! The city was a bit smaller and quieter than I was expecting for a national capital but very tidy and it seems very well equipped with public transport and all the other amenities that make life as a tourist pleasant. One quirk was an over abundance of street mimes, you couldn’t walk 100m in the central city without one of them standing there… weird.

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We’ve been in Mountain View for 2 weeks now and I’m enjoying many things about life here, especially the warm sunny days and the wealth of fresh food available at the weekend market and the local Whole Foods store. I’d forgotten what fresh veges should be like after so long shopping from Dublin supermarkets. Everything seems to grow bigger and brighter and tastier here as well as lasting much longer (coz its local and fresh!).

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Happy Easter everyone. I hope your long weekend was well-stocked with chocolate goodies, plenty of relax time and some quiet moments to reflect on the reason behind the holiday.

Matt and I spent this Easter visiting Donegal, in the north-west of Ireland. It was great to get out of the city, see some beautiful natural landscapes and breath in the fresh country air. We stayed at Coxtown Manor near Donegal town, a charming place nestled in the country amid spring daffodils and frolicking lambs. It felt very much like spring in Donegal except for the bone-chilling wind and the tell-tale frosting that remains on the tops of the hills. Like the rest of Ireland, the warmer weather has yet to hit Donegal. Nevertheless, we had a great time driving around the area and were impressed with the landscapes – white sand beaches, mountains and valleys, lakes and cliffs.

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We finally had time to sit down and sort through the 600 or so photos we generated over the past week. For your viewing pleasure we’ve cut them down to the following highlights:

• Zurich and surrounds (Winterthur, Rapperswil) – ignore the first 10 winter photos, they’re from an earlier Zurich trip!
• The Rhine Falls – one of our day trips out of Zurich, it deserved a gallery all of its own.
• U2 360degree tour in Dublin – We saw U2 in Croke Park, Dublin on Monday night, Awesome concert.
• Car on Fire – A Mercedes parked behind our house “burst” into flames at 4:30am on Wed morning, providing some uneeded excitement!

We’re off to the UK this (long) weekend, so expect to see some photos of Stonehenge and the Banksy exhibit from Bristol Museum next week.

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Last week in Zurich was nice and relaxing. I enjoyed sleeping in and spending afternoons visiting different places in the city. I visited a Museum of Design one day and the Zurich zoo on another. I wandered around the old city and browsed the shops a lot.

Zurich seemed very orderly and very expensive. The people there were generally quite reserved. Nobody smiled on the tram and most people are quite unwilling to speak English. Despite this the city is nice to explore because everything is so clean and organised with great tram, train and boat services. The city really runs like clockwork.

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We’re in Zurich this week, I’m here for work and Kat managed to get a week off work to relax and join me which certainly makes my traveling for work much more enjoyable.

We arrived yesterday (Saturday) in the late afternoon and found our hotel/apartment with no problems. After settling in I took Kat on a quick tour of the central city / lake area which I’d sort of explored on a previous visit last year. Our first impression, at around 6pm on a Saturday was how quiet and sparsely populated many of the streets in the center of town were, all the shops were closed and there weren’t really that many people around even at the lake front. We had dinner at a nice “Gratin” restaurant near the central train station, delicious food.

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Ever since we booked our cruise holiday in January I’ve been eagerly awaiting May 29th, excited to flee the grey cold weather of Dublin and cruise the Caribbean in style with our fabulous friends Kieron, Lucy, Joey and Robbie.

There was so much packed into our holiday last week that I don’t know where to begin in describing it. Lets just say it was 9 days of fabulousness! Memories of our tropical sunny holiday will keep me warm through the Irish ‘summer’ 😛

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Thursday morning saw us make an early start from Avignon as we tried to fit in a quick trip to Carcassonne to see the walled city that one of our favourite board games is named after before catching our train to Barcelona from Montpellier in the early afternoon, a total of roughly 400km of driving. Thanks to the French motorway system and the generous 130km/h speed limit we managed this in just under 4 hours which gave us just enough time for a quick visit and a few photos in Carcassonne itself!

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We came home with over 600 photos between our two cameras and spent a good few hours today sifting through them and writing some captions.

The first installment can be found via the link below:

• Photos from Nice, Monaco and the Cote d’Azur

More to come in the following days as we find some more time to edit and caption the rest.

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