Matt & Kat

For the last three weeks we’ve been back in New Zealand (and briefly Brisbane) catching up with friends and family. It’s been a very busy, but fun time and it is certainly nice to catch up with everyone in person again. The trip has led to some interesting (and no doubt reassuring for some family members) observations.

When I left New Zealand, just over a year ago, I thought that I would be quite happy to live overseas for the next 5-10 years and apart from missing family I wouldn’t really miss New Zealand all that much. That seemed to be pretty true during the last year in Dublin. I was never consciously homesick or wishing to be back in New Zealand. Skype, VoIP and the Internet do a pretty good job of letting us stay in touch with family and friends, so while I was looking forward to visiting New Zealand I wasn’t expecting my thoughts and opinions about ‘home’ to be significantly changed.

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We had a great time in Rome over our long weekend there. We took heaps of photos and have put a selection of them in the gallery so you can see for yourselves what we got up to: photos here

There is so much I could write about Rome – it’s a fantastic city to visit with beautiful fountains and piazzas and of course the incredible history of the city – the center of the ancient Roman Empire! A short list of what we did when in Rome…

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We’re home from Austria!

Our last few days on holiday were good. We went snowboarding on Friday and the weather turned out great for us. We had some blue sky and plenty of new snow from the days beforehand. I haven’t done much snowboarding before so spent most of my day on the beginner slopes and a good deal of it sitting on my rear in the snow! Matt was a patient but no-nonsense teacher for me during the morning and also enjoyed a few good runs down the upper slopes on the snowboard too.

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As I write this, I’m looking out the window at fir trees and villas dusted with white. It is snowing outside and forecast to continue snowing for the rest of today and tomorrow. We are in Bad Gastein, Austria.

Matt arrived home on Saturday after a long day of travel from San Francisco. After a quick repacking of the suitcases and a short rest we were off again to catch another flight to start on our vacation. We flew into Bratislava, Slovakia and stayed overnight there before carrying on by train into Austria.

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My first week in San Francisco passed relatively quickly in a fairly regular routine of wake-up, catch shuttle, work, catch shuttle, sleep, repeat. I did manage to walk around some of downtown San Francisco on a couple of evenings, but it gets dark around 5:30ish here at the moment, so there isn’t alot to see by the later evening.

My impression of San Francisco is fairly neutral, there is nothing that I really dislike about the place but it certainly doesn’t grab me or make me feel like I would like to stay here for an extended period of time.

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Photos

I had a great long weekend in Whistler catching up with Christopher (or Brownie as he’s now called, I was reprimanded several times for using his full name!), meeting his friends and remembering how to snowboard. My flights from Dublin to San Francisco and then on to Vancouver were uneventful, and the Delta airport hotel that Chris had arranged for me to stay in overnight before catching the 5am Greyhound up to whistler the next morning was one of the best rooms I’ve ever stayed in.

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As Kat alluded to at the end of a recent post I’m travelling again to visit “head office” in Mountain View for two weeks.

This coming weekend is American Thanksgiving and due to various flight timing quirks the best option for me to be in San Fransisco by Monday morning (ready to work and not too jet lagged) was to fly before the holiday weekend. Hanging out by myself in San Fransisco for the holiday weekend didn’t sound like much fun, but it is the perfect opportunity to pop up to Vancouver/Whistler and catch up with Christopher before he departs back to New Zealand sometime next year (assuming he doesn’t come up with another scheme to stay in Canada for longer…). So I’m currently sitting in San Fransisco airport waiting for my connecting flight up to Vancouver. Ironically I’ve already flown across Canada this morning on the way to San Fransisco from Dublin, but unfortunately more direct flights between Dublin and Vancouver are not really possible to do.

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Phew! It’s the weekend at last. After getting back from Paris at midnight on Tuesday we were straight back into work on Wednesday and playing catch-up for the time we were away. Now that it’s Saturday – the chores all done and cosy inside looking out at the drizzly grey Dublin day – I have time to sit back and think over our trip to Paris and finish writing about it. So, here we are….

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We’ve just returned from our 4 day holiday in Paris. Our trip was wonderful – it’s only a shame we couldn’t stay longer! We managed to miss the French transport strikes which started just after we left.

Paris is both beautiful and romantic – a perfect place to visit on our anniversary. I found Paris to be a city steeped in history, cultured and refined but also bustling and alive! During our 4 days we visited plenty of the city and enjoyed all of it 🙂

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Nous allons à Paris pour un long week-end. Il devrait être amusant! Nous allons prendre beaucoup de photos pour vous montrer une fois que nous y revenir.

Goodbye

Comment from Mark Brown on 2007-11-09

Very impressed – we will look forward to enjoying your photos in due course!

Comment from Mum- Wendy on 2007-11-10

Very clever Matt. I didn’t do french at school so wouldn’t have a clue what this says, am impressed that you do. Hope you are having a fab time.

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