Matt & Kat

Hello from the Emerald Isle! It’s St Patrick’s Day today, a national holiday and a day off for us. As I look out the window I can see lots of blue sky and sunshine, a good start to the day. We’ll be off soon to see the St Patrick’s Day parade and to join in the celebrations. St Patrick’s Day is historically the Feast Day celebrating the Patron Saint of Ireland – St Patrick.

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I’ve been watching the construction of what I suspected was a new bridge over the river as I walk to work each day for the last 6 months and this week they’ve finally put up signs confirming that it is actually a bridge that they’re building. Unfortunately it’s not going to be finished until 2010, so I’m not sure whether we’ll still be around to enjoy it’s benefits. It turns out that there is a big master plan for the development of this whole area, which used to be pretty scummy warehouses and docks.

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Andrew (my younger brother) has been visiting us in Ireland this week, so I took 3 days off work to show him around a bit of the countryside. I’d already seen the south of Ireland when Mum and Dad visited back in June last year, so I decided that this time we’d drive across to Galway, see the Cliffs of Moher and then head up the west coast to Sligo and on to Belfast.

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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!

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This post originally appeared on Matt’s Musings (Matt’s computer focussed blog). 2007 was a busy year, here is where I managed to live/stay/visit: Auckland – January and February Dublin – February, photos Hamilton – March Miri – April, photos Sarikei – April, photos Kuching – April, photos Kota Kinabalu – April, photos Singapore – April, photos Dubai – April London – April, photos Dublin – May onwards, photos Galway – June Cork – June, photos New York – July, photos Cambridge – July, photos Belfast – August, photos Luxembourg – September, photos Paris – November, photos Whistler – November, photos San Francisco – November/December, photos Bratislava – December, photos Bad Gastein – December, photos Salzburg – December, photos Vienna – December, photos 18 cities, 5 towns/villages and a total of approximately 101,216km travelled in the air!

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2008 is here, I found it strange to receive new year messages and see photos of the fireworks in Sydney and Auckland before New Years Eve day had even really started for us! We saw in the New Year with a group of friends in suburban Dublin as the city itself doesn’t do anything at all for New Years Eve which I think is a bit disappointing. Apparently they save their fireworks budget for St Patricks Day in a couple of months.

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Hi all, I hope you have all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to 2008! We’ve both been off work since Christmas day and relaxing at home. After our various travels in November and December it’s been nice to just have some time at home. We’ve been sleeping in lots, playing board games and working on hobbies. We went out to dinner tonight to ‘Kudos’ – the restaurant at the Clarion hotel near our apartment.

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I’m dreaming of a kiwi Christmas – a warm and sunny Christmas followed by long lazy days at the beach, bbq dinners and sunlight till late. It has been quite cold here this last week. Friday was the first day I’ve seen the canals icing over. It was -4C in the morning on Friday – brrrr! All this cold and the short hours of daylight have got me nostalgic for a good Kiwi summer.

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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.

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