Posted by kat on May 12, 2009
As we turned inland from the French Riviera the landscape changed to old farm houses and fields of grapevines and olive trees – our first taste of Provence. We stopped briefly in Aix-en-Provence which I found very charming. The whole town seemed to be roofed with sycamore/plane trees – very pretty. Lynley and I enjoyed strolling through the market there and found some nice locally made soaps to buy. We had our first introduction here to the ‘Mistral’ which is a very strong dry wind that characterises winter and spring in Provence.
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Posted by matt on May 10, 2009
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:
More to come in the following days as we find some more time to edit and caption the rest.
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Posted by kat on May 10, 2009
We got back last night from a fabulous week away in France and Spain. We visited some gorgeous places, oohing at the stunning vistas and ahhing over the charming buildings and places. I’m feeling very relaxed and content after a week of good food and wine, warm sun and no work!
Part One – Côte d’Azur
Our holiday started on Saturday with a 6am flight to Nice (thanks to Kieron for the ridiculously early airport drop!) which placed us on the Côte d’Azur by lunchtime. We met up with Lynley who arrived by train from Avignon and together we spent the afternoon exploring. The center of Nice is impressive to walk around with cool fountains, big open spaces and the palm tree-lined Promenade des Anglais. We spent the late afternoon basking in the sun on the beach. The beaches in Nice are all rocks rather than sand and the water in early summer is still very cold for swimming. Despite that it was still great to relax on the beach for a while. We ate dinner in a restaurant called ‘Le Maori’ which featured a ‘Maori burger’ with egg in it and also an ‘All Black’ dessert. Hilarious.
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Posted by kat on April 14, 2009
Happy Easter everyone! We had a fabulous easter weekend, enjoying the company of Susanna and Daniel and showing them around some of Irelands sights. It was great to see old friends again and fun to get out of Dublin and enjoy the sunny weather.
Susanna and Daniel arrived early on Good Friday after a long train + ferry trip from London. Matt whipped up another batch of hot cross buns for breakfast (very impressive) and then mid morning we went out to walk around the city center stopping at all the main sights around the place. I was very grateful for the sunny afternoon, Dublin is always more charming on a sunny day!
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Posted by matt on April 5, 2009
4 short days until Easter starts. We’re staying in Ireland with Daniel and Susanna coming over from London for the weekend. We’re looking forward to catching up and spending some time showing them around our adopted home city.
To get into the spirit of things I whipped up a batch of hot cross buns this afternoon.
They looked pretty good and tasted nice too.
Well Matt. You have been very well trained indeed. Don’t forget to whip up a batch of these next time you stay here. They look very impressive and I bet they tasted it too.
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Posted by kat on March 30, 2009
It’s been a tough Monday getting back into the swing of things after our weekend away. Truthfully I’d much prefer to have spent my Monday relaxing in a piazza in Florence, sipping wine and eating antipasto.
We flew into Pisa airport late on Friday and on Saturday we spent the day in Pisa. In the morning we went looking for some geo-caches, before most of the town had woken up. We wandered through the old town and eventually ended up where all tourists in Pisa end up – at the Leaning Tower. Yes it does lean, quite a lot actually. We laughed at all the funny contortions of tourists as they took cheesy photos pretending to hold up / kick down the tower, and then we took some cheesy pics of our own 😛
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Posted by matt on February 24, 2009
This post originally appeared on Matt’s Musings (Matt’s computer focussed blog).
I was very pleased to wake up this morning to the news that National has delayed the introduction of S92A via an order-in-council. It’s a nice short-term victory, but I’ll save the champagne until the law is fundamentally rewritten.
The most pleasing aspect of the decision is simply that it was made at all. Within two weeks, a small band of protesters were able to harness the power of the Internet to direct international attention and place enough pressure on a Government, whose Prime Minister admitted to not having read the bill prior, that he then took the time to understand the issues and personally announce the delay in implementation of the law. We owe much thanks to the Creative Freedom Foundation for all the effort they put into co-ordinating the protest and ensuring that a single coherent message was presented. Just a little bit of my cynicism and belief that politicians never listen to public opinion outside of election campaigns was chipped away today.
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Posted by matt on February 18, 2009
This post originally appeared on Matt’s Musings (Matt’s computer focussed blog).
If you’re reading this post via the website rather than a feed/planet then you will notice that the site has gone completely black in support of the Creative Freedom Foundation’s campaign against S92A of the NZ Copyright Amendment Act which is due to come into effect on 28th February 2009. I’ve also joined the wave of people blacking out their “avatar” on Facebook/Jabber/MSN, etc.
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Posted by matt on January 11, 2009
Already over a week since we were Scotland and I’m only just getting around to writing about our second day there! The new year is certainly off to a roaring start.
On Day 2 (Dec 28) we started out from Inverness on a very cold, frosty and foggy morning and attempted to see some more of Loch Ness, given that it was pitch dark and foggy by the time we arrived in the area the day before. We did manage to get a glimpse of the northern tip, but the fog didn’t really seem to be in a hurry to move and show us much more than that so we pressed onwards towards Aberdeen in search of some castles for Kat. Unfortunately when we arrived at the main castle on our list we found it completely covered in scaffolding and looking like a plain white box. Not to be deterred we pressed on and found a few other castles to look at and then stayed for the night in a converted castle just outside of Aberdeen.
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Posted by kat on December 27, 2008
Our Scotland jaunt started last night when arrived at Prestwick Airport after only a short delay from our Ryan Air flight. We picked up our hire car and made it into Glasgow for the night without incident. Our hotel room for the night (Ibis) was serviceable (and a carbon-copy of the room layout of the Ibis hotel in Bratislava!) if not particularly cozy and we were glad to get on the road in the morning.
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