my lil drinker

Henri at Oktoberfest and at the Guinness Storehouse. We are obviously not big drinkers! These are really the only times we've had a drink.

Peri Peri

My mother has diagnosed our rat (Baylee) with Cancer. A couple of phone calls ago our Japanese fighting fish (Kyzer) was ‘not looking so good.’ I’m beginning to think I left my poor boys in the wrong hands. Ky is over 2 years old so it is to be expected that he may ‘not be looking so good.’ But my wee Bay-Bay is barely 18 months old, I gave strict instructions for Bay-Bay to be taken to the vet (the one where he has a file, he got the sniffles before we left and needed antibiotics from a tiny syringe for a couple of weeks). I hope they are both there when we get home... mother dearest.

We have just spent three nights in Portugal. On arriving in Portugal we had another one of those moments when we’ve realised that neither of us really wanted to come to Portugal, neither of us had a clue about what we were doing to do with our time in Lisbon. So Ri pulled out the trusty lonely planet and found a castle, a museum, a gallery and a couple of recommended restaurants. We ended up eating a Nood (an Asian fusion restaurant) twice because they made the YUMMIEST vegetarian ramen noodles. We had a brilliant time in Lisbon! The castle was interesting and fun to walk around and the museum was a bit different. The most surprising bit for me was the modern art gallery, after the Guggenheim in NYC I thought that I hated modern art galleries. Turns out I only like the good modern art galleries with well thought out/ clever themes and pieces of art! Which were both lacking at the Guggenheim. Who knew that modern art wasn’t just for toss pots? I’d say it surprised us both.

On the most part the people here in Portugal have been really lovely to us, the old ladies seem to yell at us a bit, but from what we can tell they seem to be yelling advice at us, so even they appear to mean well. Taxi drivers here is Lisbon have been awesome. We took a taxi home from the museum and it looked like the driver was doing the dance we knew so well from Italy (where the metre runs while he locates the hotel in a map after trying the gps and a couple of other methods that fail) but after the dance the Portuguese taxi driver reset the metre telling us that he’s never charge us for that sort of thing immediately ranking him as *hero* in Ri’s books.

We can’t seem to be able to remember any Portuguese, we have tried to memorise thank you so many times but it just will NOT stick. It doesn’t help that there is a male and a female thank you. Sorry Portugal.

Our last day in Dublin was a good one! We went to the Guinness Storehouse at St James’s gate Brewery, and it was a surprisingly good day out. I don’t like beer very much, but Guinness is alright. We learned all about how you make beer, then went to the (free) tasting room, then learnt about how to cooper a barrel, then learnt how to pour (free) Guinness (while Ri was pouring his the guy who had provided the instructions on how to pour a Guinness pointed to Ri and said “that is how you’ll see the professionals doing it up stairs”.... argh he just has to do everything right doesn’t he!), then we looked at some ads for Guinness, then went up for a free Guinness at the Gravity bars with a view of Dublin.



We only have one week left in Europe before we are off to Thailand. I have love, love, loved every minute of this leg of our journey. I don’t think I would change a thing.

kiss me! i'm irish...

the steps ri kisses the blarney stone

me feeling a little concussed

henri fell when he went in for a kiss of the stone...

We went to Blarney today. I climbed the impossible stairs to end up with an Irish man head butting my head into the Blarney stone. So while Ri is now sitting next to me being extremely eloquent in all his speech, I just have a bump on my head. Ri says the Irish man told me of his plan with my head and the stone (I couldn't extend my neck to kiss the stone) but I didn't hear the plan so I have a photo of me looking very surprized for having my head bumped into a rock.

One more day in Ireland before our flight to Portugal!

The Luck of the Irish

Photo: Freezing in Prague.

I have a cold. It's only a 48 hour thing (I hope), with a shnuffly nose, sore throat and a sometimes absent voice. Ri is fine. Happily reading Lonely Planets 'Europe on a shoe-string' while I suffer in silence. **SOB**.
So Prague was our Eastern European Representative and we loved it. We mostly walked around the beautiful city in the cold. We even managed to stay out til dark, Prague is so amazing at night! I'm trying to upload some photos right now but am not having much luck with the internet.
I really enjoyed the 5 hour train trip from Vienna to Prague, we had a little cabin of six seats to ourselves. I hadn't been so keen on the French or Italian trains. Ahhhhh there is a frustrated tale of trying to catch an Italian train. But then there is a frustrated tale to do with trying to use any type of Italian transport.
Ri has decided to state that he strongly dislikes all European Taxi Drivers (excluding UK and Southern Irish Taxi Drivers - I think he really likes them).
I don't entirely blame them for continuously ripping us off. If I were a European I'd be jealous of Australians too. That's probably just the cold weather making me cranky at Europe.
It was so cold in Prague! I don't think I've been so cold with so many clothes on!
OK my brain is a bit fuzzy tonight! I might head to bed and complete my post on Prague tomorrow! I even picked a blurry photo of Prague!