McMillan visits us, and we do a bike trip down to Waterford (M)

October has been a busy month for Abby and I, and it's far from finished yet. We started the month with a visit from my Uni friend Stephen McMillan. He arrived up late on a Tuesday night and was staying in Ireland for a few days as his first stop in a month-long trip through Europe.

Now, Steve spent most of the first day here sleeping, but Thursday he had a look around Galway and once I'd finished work we even managed to get into town for a few drinks. I took the Friday off and we rented a car to drive down the Irish South coast, down to Dingle. Abby didn't come with us as she had to work on Saturday, and she's been to Dingle before anyway.


Looking out from the Dingle Penninsula towards the Mcgillicuddy Reeks

We took the ferry across the Shannon and arrived up to Dingle in the early evening. After finding beds in a local B&B we proceeded back into town for a damn good nosh-up at a local pub, and a few drinks. In the morning we did a drive-by of Killarny National Park and then drove straight thru to Blarney. In case you didn't pick it, the town of Blarney is where Blarney Castle is, and Blarney Castle is where the Blarney Stone is.

The Blarney Stone. Legend has it that all who kiss the Blarney Stone are given the gift of the gab, or eloquent speech. Steve was a bit disappointed as he thought it might impart something a bit more impressive than just communication skills, he wanted invincibility, or the ability to fly or something. But anyway, we lined up with all the other tourists and made our slow way through a line that started at the door to the castle and wound it's way up about six stories of passages and spiral staircases. After about an hour, the line got to the battlements and we both had the priviledge of being held over the edge of the castle by an old man to kiss the fabled stone.


Steve kissing the Blarney stone

From Blarney we headed back to Galway and were home in time to watch that fateful game of rugby, the quarter-final between NZ and France. We all had a few drinks and were ready to go into town to celebrate the NZ win. We didn't.

On Sunday, as we still had a hire car, Abby, Steve and I headed off on a roadtrip through Connemara, up to Westport. We stopped in Westport for lunch and then headed round Clew Bay for a look at a castle that we never actually found. We found another castle though (they're not hard to find in Ireland) so that wasn't too bad.


Trying to get into a castle up past Westport


Steve and I at the castle above (more of a tower than a castle really)

Monday came around soon enough and then Steve was off to Poland. His plan was to head from there back to Paris where we'd catch him up in about two weeks time. In the mean-time, Abby and I had to get through a week of work and then that weekend we were headed down to Waterford to see my relation John.

John Dwan lives in Waterford. To be honest, we're not totally sure we're related, but he looks alot like my mother's side of the family (and shares the same last name) and he's travelled all the way over to NZ to visit us so I thought I should at least return the favour. So, we headed down to Waterford for the weekend.

In retrospect, it would've been better had we hired a car for the weekend, but we took the TDM instead. A combination of bumpy Irish roads, not exactly the quickest route selection and a bit of traffic made for a fairly (ok, Abby would say very) tortourous trip. We left Galway around 5 pm and got into Waterford just after ten, a five hour trip instead of the three we thought it was. But, anyway, John and his wife Susan were glad to see us when we finally arrived and after a few glasses of wine, a bit to eat and a fair decent nights sleep we were feeling grand again.


Abby heading off to work, Irish drivers aren't the best y'see.

On Saturday we had a look around Waterford, walked around the old town walls, viewed the city museum and Abby even persuaded me to buy some socks. It's an interesting old place, and the museum was well worth going to. Waterford, being on the coast between Ireland and England, has been invaded by Vikings and Normans and English and has the history to show for it. It also seems to have some sort of connection with NewFoundland, but I couldn't really work that one out from that particular museum display.


The old city walls in Waterford

Saturday night we were out for dinner with John and Susan and then on Sunday we went for a Sunday drive around the coast. It's good to catch up with relations, but also good to spend some time talking to someone that was in Ireland before the Celtic Tiger, as it was a very different Ireland a few years back. However, the weekend rolled on rather quickly and soon it was time to get all our riding gear back on and head back up to Galway.


A favorite Irish swimming spot, on the coast out from Waterford.


Myself, Susan, John and Abby

Luckily, the trip back upcountry was nowhere near as taxing and even taking our time we were home in only four hours. Although it threatened to rain a couple of times, it never quite got there and we made it back to Galway about an hour after dark. Luckily we now had a week to relax at work before our next trip away, Paris...


Abby and the bike, on the way back up to Galway.

Edinburgh (M)

On the 22nd of September Abby and I headed over to Scotland for four days. More specifically, we headed over to Edinburgh to watch the world cup match between Scotland and New Zealand. We landed in Edinburgh in the late evening on Saturday and quickly found our way to our accommodation, a reasonably small backpackers in Haymarket. Being fairly tired we went straight off to bed where we were lulled to sleep by the sounds of two of our room mates' melodious snoring.

On Sunday we were to watch the match, but before we did that we walked into the city centre to have a quick look around. The oldest part of Edinburgh is based around the basalt rock that Edinburgh Castle perches on and the long, narrow ridge that runs east from it. A road travels in a straight line down this ridge, the famed "Royal Mile". We walked around the back of the castle and then up to the start of the Royal Mile, we stood in the castle parade ground for a while and decided that the queue was swelled with tourists in for the weekend and we'd leave looking in the castle itself for later.


Our first day in Edinburgh, that's the castle behind Abby.

A note about the Edinburgh Castle parade ground; it's nowhere near as flat or as large as it appears on the TV during the Edinburgh Tattoo. They still had most of the scaffolding from this year's Tattoo erected when we visited. It is cantilevered out over the edges of the ground to leave enough room in the middle for parading, but there's still much less than a football field of space, there might be three tennis courts if you're lucky. And the parade ground itself has a decent slope on it, and quite the crown through the middle as well.


A tartan weave. we used to have one of these back home for some reason.


The Royal Mile, the main street of the old part of town.

We then headed down the Royal Mile. We called into a Tartan shop and museum, and walked past alot of historic buildings, souvenir shops and tourist "experiences" to end up at the National Museum. We thought this would be a good place to spend some time, especially as it was free. It ended up being a hell of a bargain for the price and the two hours we had there wasn't near long enough to have a good look through. The museum has an extensive display on the Scottish history, which was nicely complemented by many of the other sights we saw over the next three days.


The Victorian section of the National Museum.


The view from the roof of the Museum. That's the Castle in the background again.

As we got into the afternoon it was time to make our way towards Murrayfield for the rugby game. We decided to take the bus to our hostel, pick up a few things and then walk from there. That wasn't a great choice as the traffic going to the game clogged the road, the supporters going to the game filled the bus and most of the people on the sidewalks ended up moving quicker than us. There was alot of kiwis around though, which was good. It was interesting to hear kiwi accents again, and a bit strange to be honest.


From the hostel we joined the walking masses and arrived up to the stadium. I ran into a mate from Uni that I didn't know was even in Edinburgh. Apparently Phil was living in Haymarket and we agreed to meet later but it didn't end up happening. Then, we tried to track down some friends of Abby's that were to meet us in the stadium somewhere. That took a while, but we managed to rendezvous with Bob and Amanda just before we had to get to our seats.


That's the All Blacks and the Scots down on the field. Buggered if I know which way we're playing in this shot.


and this is where we perched to watch the game.

West side, section 9, row QQ, seats 18 and 19. Not the best seats in Murrayfield unfortunately and dubious shirt colour choices made the All Blacks and Scotland awful hard to distinguish, but it was still pretty awesome to be at an All Blacks game. The All Blacks won, as expected, and about 80 minutes later we were making our way out of the Stadium with 68,000 other fans. We found Bob and Amanda easily after the game (they had seats on the other side of the stadium from us) as we'd agreed on an exact corner to meet up at. All four of us then walked back towards town.

The throng of people walking back into town totally blocked the main road, and both lanes of traffic were held up for ages. As we were walking along we decided to head that way as well and find somewhere for dinner. Well, we realised that was probably the rough plan of everyone else walking along and that the cunning thing to do would be to head into the first place we saw as there was a good chance that everyone would have missed it. That's what we did, ending up in an Indian restaurant, and there was a couple of tables free when we arrived. Dinner was good and when we left Bob and Amanda at the bus station, Abby and I were too full to fit in more than a couple of beers at a pub on the Royal Mile before heading back to our hostel. Being well fed and a little pissed did wonders to help us sleep through the nightly serenade in our room.

On Monday we expanded on our tour of the city, we went back to the National Museum, we joined a walking tour of the old city and we paid to do a tour of Mary King's Close. Mary King's Close is a street, a street that was buried when the City Chambers were built above it. Well, the streets weren't really buried as they still exist under the Chambers, narrow little cobbled paths with old houses and businesses coming off them. For a fee you can be guided around the old streets and get a good feel for medieval life in Edinburgh. Not that you need to go underground to do this, as there is plenty of history out on the mainstreet as well.


A building in the old style of Edinburgh. This particular one is also a museum.

A good example of this is Edinburgh Castle of course, and on Tuesday we looked around inside the castle before we flew home. Edinburgh Castle is, well, about what you'd expect from a castle after seeing quite a few in the past year. Impressive views over the city, large, medieval halls and rooms, armouries museums and cannons, a 14th century church and even a dog cemetery. Also kept in Edinburgh Castle is the Honours of Scotland, or the Scottish Crown Jewels. Most interesting of these is the Stone of Scone I reckon, the stone upon which royalty of Scotland have been crowned since before they remember why. It's been stolen from Scotland by the English, stolen back by the Scots, taken back by the English and just lately (1995) given back to the Scots again. Quite a story for what looks much like any other big rock, but we found that it's pretty common in Edinburgh for almost anything in the city to have a long and interesting history.


Dog cemetery in Edinburgh Castle. It's for Officer's Dogs, that's the reason it's in the Castle.


Mons Meg, a huge siege cannon.


View down to the city from the castle walls. You can see the scaffolding from the Tattoo around the parade ground.


Another view from the Castle walls, this time across to the New part of town.