Wow, it’s a little hard to believe that we have left the blog here sit for 10 months. Somewhere along the way, posting just kind of dropped off as a priority. So apologies for that – maybe we’ll do a little better in 2012. As this is the first time I’m blogging about some of these events, I guess it’ll be a fairly long post.
2011 for us was an interesting year. We played host to quite a few guests, mostly in the summer months, and returned home for the first time in a couple years for Diane’s brother’s wedding. There was a fair amount of uncertainty for us though as the future of my employer hung in the balance after some rather shocking revelations. More on that later. Here’s a month by month breakdown of the events of 2011 for us.
January
We kicked off January by attending our friend Jay’s birthday party which was took the form of ‘pub golf’. In this pub crawl format, you are put on a team and given a score card that instructs your team to drink a particular set of drinks at each venue. Your team is scored for the number of sips it takes to down the chosen beverages. So for example a ‘hole’ might have 2 pints of beer to drink with a par of 10 sips. Needless to say, the competitive nature of people made for some interesting strategies. Diane and I joined the party halfway through for the ‘back nine’ and people were already quite drunk from the first part. Much fun was had by all.
January’s highlight trip though was the ski trip to St Anton which was the only thing I really blogged about for 2011. So for details you can go read that trip report.
February
There was a bit of holiday hangover after skiing in Austria. The one trip I did get away for was a weekend trip to Nottingham to play a poker tournament there. The weekend included not just the tournament, but also a trip to see the Nottingham Panthers play hockey and witness the epic Hummus prop bet in which a friend of ours attempted to eat two liters of hummus in an hour (he failed).
March
Our first two-time visitor aside from our parents was Jess, who arrived in town in time for St Paddy’s day this year. Like the previous year we decided to go to watch the Hurling and Gaelic football. The next day, we went out to watch the Irish women’s rugby team face off against England for the women’s six nations championship. Ireland wasn’t victorious, but it was a pretty fun night out.
Another poker tournament weekend also happened in March, this time in Manchester. As a happy coincidence, Epica was playing a show while I was there so I picked up a ticket to see one of my favourite bands.
April
On April 15, the online poker world was collectively shaken by the announcement that the US DOJ seized the domains of the top 3 US facing online poker sites. With some hefty criminal charges levied at the owners of these sites, the day has been labeled ‘Black Friday’. The aftershocks of this day have yet to be totally determined, but suffice to say it made things pretty interesting work-wise for the rest of the year.
A week later, Diane and I headed to London to catch the Serenity / Delain show there. It was the first time we were there on our own: previous trips there had been with our parents on each side. So we spent a leisurely weekend there on our own seeing a few sights (St Paul’s Cathedral, and the Science museum).
May
Diane went back to Canada a couple weeks earlier than I did to help with the preparations for her brother’s wedding. In that between time, I made another trip to a poker tournament in Cork, Ireland in which one of my colleagues made a very deep run. He ended up finishing 2nd which was a pretty awesome result. I also got offered a ticket to see the Kings of Leon when they played at Slane castle. The ticket was a VIP one which meant we got to stay away from the gigantic pack of people. It was a fun concert to go to.
June
I joined Diane in Edmonton for a three week long trip. While there, we caught up with friends and family which made the three week period pretty packed of activity. Diane’s brother Eric got married in a lovely outdoor ceremony. We also paid a visit to my grandparents in Rimbey which was a nice trip out of Edmonton for a day.
Jacqueline and Rick were our next visitors just a week after we returned so a week of hanging out with them and showing them the sights was in order.
At the end of June a second blow to the company after black friday was dealt when the Alderney gambling control commission pulled the company’s license. This blow would mean the company lost its only revenue source and would result in a several months of uncertainty about how long I would retain a job. While this issue has yet to be resolved even today, things are looking quite a bit better now so the uncertainty that plagued the rest of the year is almost gone. It definitely made its mark though on the rest of year for us.
The other happening in June was I eeked out a victory in an internet based hockey pool. You can see my name atop this year’s NNPT here although that link will probably only be good until the playoffs start up again next year. Unfortunately the title is all I get for beating out 126 other registrants in this pool, but it is still pretty cool to win something like this.
July
June was a pretty hectic month, which meant that July was going to be relaxed just as a way of cooling down from the constant busy-ness. Still, we had yet more visitors: Mike and Nolan stopped by on their tour of Europe after a conference in Spain. They were only in town for a few days though as they moved on to London. But while they were here we took them to Glendalough. I also joined them at the Guinness storehouse before heading on to hang out with one of the competitors in the computer poker competition and his prof for dinner.
August
We went out one night in August to cheer on Ireland against Croatia in a ‘friendly’ football match. The game ended in a 0-0 draw, and was a reminder to me of how dull that particular sport is to watch for me. Of the sports that people enjoy over here I much prefer rugby – it just feels so much more exciting.
September
There was a big poker tournament in Dublin this time and a whole bunch of our group went to play. My boss ended up with a deep run finishing 2nd overall for a nice payday. Another friend of ours also made the final table and finished 4th, so it was a pretty exciting to watch from the rail.
Our friend Kepi was our next visitor. On one weekend we took him up to Derry and to see the giant’s causeway which was a nice trip.
October
Soon after Kepi departed, Rebecca and Scott were our next visitors. Their visit coincided with a couple of leaving parties and stag parties that I was invited to, but we still managed to squeeze in a trip out west to Galway and Kylemore Abbey one weekend.
My line manager also got married in October. The festivities were held at Clontarf castle on the North end of Dublin. A muchly enjoyable evening.
November
Two events in November conspired to draw me back to North America within a week of each other: the first was the world series of poker main event, in which Sam Holden had made the final table. We met Sam during some of the poker tournaments we played in England and Ireland. A large group was headed over to Las Vegas to support him, and I thought it would be fun to hang out but had a little trouble justifying the trip on its own. The second event was my friends Curtis and Simone were getting married just a week later. After some deliberation I decided to book the flights: a few days in Las Vegas followed by a few more in Edmonton.
Las Vegas is a crazy town. While I enjoy playing poker, it really is a ridiculous place. Still, being there for the main event final table was a pretty cool experience. It’s a shame Sam was the first eliminated from the final table – it would have been amazing for him to go deeper yet. Still, the trip wasn’t without its story value. The night I arrived I got there just in time for the big group going out for dinner at a brazilian bbq restaurant called “Texas to Brazil”. The place serves all you can eat beef/lamb/pork/chicken in various cuts served directly to your table on gigantic skewers. After eating way too much at dinner and entirely jetlagged we returned to our hotel where we ended up playing a poker tournament there which I eventually won a few hours later. The rest of the Vegas trip was quite fun. We went and saw Blue Man Group one night, and also had probably the best Sushi I’ve ever had in a place called Sen of Japan.
I then flew on to Edmonton for a few days of seeing some family and a few friends. Curtis’ wedding was quite fun, especially the time I spent catching up with my University buddies.
December
It’s been a pretty quiet December. There’s been a couple of small Christmas gatherings and an evening where I went to see Leinster play against Bath in rugby, but other than that it has been a time to relax.
That about does it for my review of 2011. As always, I’ll leave you with some of my favourite photos from the year (many of them not yet uploaded until now!). I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and all the best for 2012!
Last year, Diane and I got our first taste of the week-long skiing holiday, and it wasn’t a secret that we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. So we were excited about returning to the Austrian mountains for another go. Extensive ski terrain, weiss beer, mulled wine, apres ski, schnitzel, and four course gourmet meals awaited us! We departed Dublin early in the morning on January 15th on Austrian airlines. Like last year, there was free food and drinks on our three hour flight to Innsbruck airport. We were greeted by our ski rep there, who introduced us to our driver: a profusely apologetic gentleman who arrived late in a too-small vehicle to fit the five of us who were going to St Anton. He was very friendly, and we squished our group into the little car for the one-hour transfer to the resort.
We arrived at the resort with plenty of time to sort out picking up our lift tickets and ski rentals. We could hit the hill first thing the next morning! So after sorting all that out, our group of 5 (Jay, Bryce, Jeremy, and Diane and I) hit the pub to kick off our trip! A few weiss beer later we stumbled back up to our hotel for our first dinner of the trip. The three others were staying in a hotel in the town center, but it had filled up before we booked so we ended up in a hotel that was a 15 minute walk up a steep hill. The hotel was lovely, just not the most convenient place to get to every evening after hanging in town. Fortunately, the hotel had a deal with one of the rental shops where we could store our gear, so a few walks up and down the hill was actually just good exercise rather than painful at the end of a long day of skiing.
The first full day there was a gorgeous sunny day — which was just a tad too warm even for skiing. The temperature in town was something like 7-8 degrees, with the temperature higher up the mountain still above zero. One of the immediately apparent things that differed from our trip to Mayrhofen was that the bottom of the actual skiing terrain was the town. That meant that there wasn’t a giant gondola queue both first thing in the morning and last thing on the way down, and it made for a more pleasant experience. Speaking of queues … we didn’t wait in one longer than about 5minutes for the whole week, and there were no queues to speak of at most of the lifts. It was a remarkably smooth operation with an incredible 85 gondolas and lifts – many being high speed quads or better!
Our week there coincided with Interski, which is a conference of ski instructors that only happens every four years. So our first day there we quite enjoyed seeing the various teams walking or skiing in matching bright coloured jackets of their respective countries. Of particular note was the Finnish blue jackets that were *everywhere*. Contingents from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Romania, Norway, Japan, Korea, and Montenegro were just some of the flashy teams we saw. Canada had a team there, we understand, but we didn’t actually see any of them on the parts of the hill we were on during the week. Our second night there marked the opening ceremonies so we headed down to see a bunch of cool synchronized skiing demonstrations and were treated to a lengthy fireworks display.
The second day of skiing took us up, in particular, Schindler’s Spitze which reaches 2660m elevation. This peak is accessible using one of the few triple chairs on the mountain, and featured a trippy moment when you go over a local maximum in the mountain and the left side right underneath your chair cuts away to a several hundred meter drop. The view from that peak was incredible (as you can see in the picture above), and the skiing was pretty good too (although a bit icy). We met for lunch with everyone at the top of the Galzigbahn, which is the first main gondola you can take from town, and had our first schnitzel of the trip (but not the last!) After our day on the slopes, we skiied down to Mooserwirtz – one of several on-hill apres ski places pumping loud German oktoberfest-favourite songs both in and outside. We found some spots to sit down on the crowded benches and were promptly our choice of beer (lager or weiss), warm beverages (mulled wine or jagertee), or even ready to go jagerbombs (small jagermeister glass bottles uncapped and sitting in a glass with red bull). The waiters carried something like 30 drinks on large trays through the crowded atmosphere and somehow still managed to not spill or break anything. I was impressed! Diane and I fled apres ski early to make sure we stowed our gear in the storage area before they locked up for the night, and climbed back up our hill to have some dinner. The rest of the guys kept going pretty late into the night!
The next morning, Diane and I were up early in relation to the other guys, so we headed up the mountain on our own — this time taking two large gondolas and then a third 6-man viewpoint gondola all the way to the top of Valluga. This is the highest mountain in the resort at 2811m, and offers an incredible 360 degree panoramic view of the Austrian alps! It was pretty breathtaking. After viewing there, we started a long ski down all the way back to town. We hopped on Rendelbahn, which is the other main gondola from St Anton going to a peak opposite the main skiing area — and met the other guys there for a late lunch. It was an enjoyable long skiout from that peak back down to town.
That night we ended up at Arl Rock: a multi-sport facility offering bowling, rock climbing (both indoor and out), squash, indoor tennis, and ping pong. We spent some time bowling a bit. Bowling in Austria is a bit different from what we’re used to: there are 9 pins arranged in a diamond configuration. It made knocking them all down in one go quite a bit tougher than 10-pin bowling in my experience. The bartender there was a girl from Canada who met her heli-skiing boyfriend/fiance in the Yukon and moved over with him … so it was kind of cool to meet a random Canadian there. We were slightly jealous of her chance to live and ski in the Austrian alps!
The next day we decided to catch a bus to the ski region that was only accessible via lifts from the neighbouring towns of Zurs and Lech. The sunny weather came to an end that morning and was replaced fog and clouds. On the one hand it was a pity to see the beautiful sunny weather end, but the slopes badly needed some new snow so it was good to get some again! Anyways, we hopped on a bus and ended up in Lech. Our first couple runs of the day weren’t very enjoyable as we couldn’t see where we were going … so Diane and I, having been separated from the rest of the group, stopped for a quick bite to eat at one of the mid-mountain hotel/chalets. Fortunately, while the snow continued, the fog cleared enough to offer some visibility and we got some excellent skiing back in that area. In fact, I would go as far as saying it was some of the best powder I’ve ever skiied on an on-piste run! Deep fresh powder, and for some reason, there was a high speed octa-chair way in the back corner of the resort. Yeesh.
Our skiout from Lech after meeting up with Jeremy and Jay for lunch (and yet another different gondola ride) was unfortunately through fog, which made the skiout pretty tough. But we made it down to the bus station safely and returned to St Anton happy with a pretty successful day trip in the books.
Thursday was deemed a non-ski day. I had some significant bruises on my legs that I wanted to give some time to heal, so we spent the day wandering around town a bit and doing some shopping before going back up the three gondolas to the top of Valluga with the SLR camera to get some more pictures of the panoramic scenery.
Our final day there I was determined to get some more skiing in, but we started a bit late and did some of our favourite runs of the week on the main hill before turning our equipment in to the rental shop. We then took a bus back up to moosers for another go at apres ski. The temperature had dropped quite a bit, so we ended up sneaking inside and finding ourselves a table there next to some Irish skiers from Cork. Much merriment ensued – including some weird shots that involved a layer of whipped cream above some sort of warm liqueur.
The flight out the next morning was entirely too early (an 8am flight, with a one hour drive prior to that …), but it got us home in good time. It was a magnificent trip, and quite fun. More pictures will be on flickr when I catchup in my backlog. I’ve got several events to catchup with here though, so it might be a little while before they’re up!
Morgan
This blog hasn’t been getting the love it was getting for previous trips, but we’re still going to try and keep it updated every so often through the next year. I’ll use our annual tradition of having a year in review post to catch you up on the rest of the happenings in the year. Previous years in review include: 2007, 2008, and 2009.
Our plan in 2010 was to try and do a bunch of trips. Since we returned home twice in 2009, we decided that we’d skip doing so this year. Instead, our plan was to try and do a bunch of trips in Europe to see some of the continent we found ourselves on.
After getting back from Barcelona over Christmas though, we spent a couple weeks relaxing at home and getting to know 2010. Near the end of the month, a group of us went up to Belfast to witness the Giants ice hockey team play against the Nottingham panthers in the British Elite League. Yes, us hockey-starved Canadians had to find the nearest place where they played just to get a fix. It was a fun group – a good ten of us at least headed up for the trip.
In February, we went to Austria for a full week of skiing in Mayrhofen. A large group of 8 of us enjoyed some amazing skiing, some good food and the Austrian atmosphere. The trip coincided with a good portion of the winter olympics in Vancouver, so many nights were spent out at bars watching some of the events — and of course we needed to stay up late to watch several of the team Canada hockey games! It was an awfully fun trip.
For St Patrick’s day this year, we decided to skip the parade and instead watch some Hurling and Gaelic Football. On St. Patrick’s day, the all Ireland finals are played out in both sports so we decided to go and see what these sports to have to offer. Hurling is a crazy game … and it was a pretty good spectator sport. Players run up and down the field balancing the ball on their hurling sticks before swatting the ball large portions of the field in an attempt to split the uprights at the other end. Gaelic football, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as enjoyable to watch IMO. Seemed like a weird cross between football (soccer) and hurling.
For the May bank holiday weekend, Diane and I hopped in the car for an Irish road trip down to the Ring of Kerry. We had some absolutely gorgeous weather, and took full advantage by not just doing the main Ring of Kerry loop, but also climbing up the Skelligs. These rocky outcroppings several miles off the coast of South-West Ireland were the home of monks centuries ago. Now, they are a tourist attraction with a fairly limited number of visitors per year. We were lucky to get a spot – the high season wasn’t quite there yet where people have to book weeks or months in advance … and we really couldn’t ask for better weather than what we got!
In June, my folks returned to Europe to see us and our Austrian relatives. Since they had seen a lot of Dublin already, we decided to meet up in Prague to do some sight-seeing there. We spent almost a week in +30ºC weather walking around almost exclusively the old town. There was a lot to see just there! The food was good, cheap, and the beer was cheaper than the water! A weekend later, we headed to London with my folks to spend a weekend there before they headed back to Canada. We spent the main day out at Hampton Court: a historic palace associated with King Henry VIII. The next day we spent just walking around central London seeing some of the main landmarks before Diane and I had to head down to Gatwick to return to Dublin. We cut it a bit close: we ended up having to run for it after checking into our flight!
A weekend later, a few of us returned to Bundoran for another go at surfing in the ocean. This being our 3rd and 4th days in the water, we were already beginning to notice an improvement. Our teacher even went so far as to teach us how to turn. I’m actually pretty surprised how much I enjoyed it. Our trip coincided with the Sea Sessions music festival which gave us some live music to go listen to in the evenings.
July kept us busy as well. We headed up to the “Woolshed Sports Baaa” which was throwing a Canada Day party with Canadian beer in the fridge. There was a few of us PocketKings Canadians in attendance which made it a lot more fun than it might’ve been on our own. A week later, the office summer party was staged to an unfortunate day of rain. Still, the day was quite fun, and despite the rain much fun was had by all. We were also visited in July by our friend Jess whom we showed some of the sights including a trip up to Howth. Our friend Bryce had a milestone birthday as well in July and we partook in a really fun photo scavenger hunt.
Late in August, Diane’s mom arrived for a visit that started in Dublin and continued on with her and Diane taking the car on a ferry over to England. I didn’t take part of the road trip as I had to work, but that trip was bookended by a trip to Newgrange (which I hadn’t done yet) and another trip to London to see her off. The highlight of this trip to London was the Natural History museum: an impressive building all on its own, with a large number of displays in its not-insignificant size.
Almost immediately after returning to Dublin we were back at the airport to fly to Geneva to visit with Diane’s friend Celine. We spent a week touring the vineyards and attractions surrounding Geneva lake. This was the kind of trip I had wanted to get blog posts up for, but I kinda ran out of time so I guess this detail will have to do. We stayed with Celine in her apartment in Lausanne: a drive of an hour or so around the lake from Geneva. On a couple days where we were on our own, we took the ferry along the lake to some of the charming towns along the lake, We visited the Château de Chillon: an old castle neighbouring the Swiss alps. Our host took us to sample several of the areas wines … the whole valley was covered in vineyards with ready-to-harvest grapes! We also enjoyed the local fondue, and went to a restaurant in the woods for some seasonal game. Delicious! To top off the trip, we went to Geneva to see CERN. The tour of this large science facility was well worth doing!
Just a few days after returning from Switzerland, we headed back to the airport for a trip with Aaron to see his brother’s band play in Scotland. We caught Brasstronaut’s Glasgow show on October 15, and then took the train up to Aviemore to see them play there on the 16th. The two shows were played in very different venues — which was pretty cool actually. The first was a club that reminded me a lot of the Starlight room back in Edmonton. A relatively small venue, but great for bands that wouldn’t necessarily be able to fill a large venue … and good atmosphere for it too. Aviemore is a small ski resort town much like Jasper. The town’s main road is lined with mountain equipment stores, and the population of it can’t be very high. The venue was a small pub, and was a great intimate atmosphere. Before leaving Scotland, we had a few hours to spend before flying back to Dublin so we sought out the Science museum in Glasgow which was quite good.
Whew. That was a lot of travelling! We returned home and rested up a bit. We played host to another friend, Maria, and also met up with our friend David in early November. Later that month, we headed over to Newcastle to visit a former coworker who had moved back home. Newcastle had just got a big dump of snow – which turned out to be a lot of fun: we had a fun snowball fight the first night between the pub and the nightclub. On the Saturday we spent some time walking around the city before heading out for a lovely dinner, some more drinks, and a few of us ended up at one of the local casinos to play some poker. On that particular evening, I ran about as good as you can at a cash game and cashed out a profit of nearly 400 pounds! The next day, after sleeping in a bunch, we headed out to see the Newcastle football team play a match against Chelsea. It was my first Premier league football match — and I’ll have to admit that even though I’m not a big fan of the sport it was a pretty fun game to watch.
The big news in December was two separate dumps of snow: the first coinciding with our trip to Newcastle, and the second one leading right up to Christmas. Both times, the city ground to a halt with the lack of snow tires and proper process to clear the snow in place. The airport was backed up, and even the LUAS was closed a couple days. Luckily, we hadn’t planned on going anywhere over Christmas in an attempt to save some holiday days for another ski trip. So we spent a very quiet holiday time at home. The company threw its annual Christmas party earlier on in the month. As usual, they pulled out all the stops on an evening that lasted until 7 in the morning for some of us. The food was excellent, and it was open bar all night long. Yeesh!
It has been a very good year — lots of good things happening, and all kinds of fun trips to go on. Hopefully we can fill next year with a bunch more fun trips.
Like previous years in review, I’ll leave you with some of my favourite photos from the year. Happy new year everyone!
So … it has been quite awhile since we last posted here. Life has been insanely busy in the last couple months, and sadly this blog has been forgotten about.
Let’s try to catch you up on what we’ve been up to, shall we? After our Prague trip, we spent a weekend in London with my mom and dad. This might come as a surprise, but despite living just a one-hour plane trip from London for almost two years, we hadn’t yet spent any time there that wasn’t spent in the airport. So this was our first trip there to actually see anything there. We spent most of Saturday visiting the Hampton Court palace. It was a nice place to visit with a mix of architecture, art, history, and gardens.
The other day in London we mostly spent walking around central london. We walked around St. James Park, saw Buckingham Palace from the outside, saw the London eye, walked around in China town for awhile. It was a pretty nice weekend — not too fast paced but we still saw a bunch. On the way home, we almost missed our flight by slightly underestimating the time it would take to train it to Gatwick airport. Luckily, we didn’t need to check any bags, and a bit of stressful running through the airport found us at our gate before anyone had boarded yet.
The weekend after London we went up to Bundoran for surfing classes. That weekend, there was a big music festival on called “Sea Sessions”. So our weekend involved going to surfing lessons in the morning, and then heading to the festival to listen to some live music and enjoy some tasty beverages. The festival itself was kind of fun, although I didn’t really know any of the bands. Probably the highlight was the battle of the bands. There was some pretty talented bands there and I enjoyed most of their sets. It was also the second time we’d been up to Bundoran for surfing, and our 3rd and 4th lessons went pretty well. By partway through the last one, we were starting to figure out turning. Maybe with a few more lessons we’ll be pro surfers!
On Canada Day, a pub in town called the Woolshed threw a party that we decided to attend. They served molson canadian, moosehead, and sleemans at the bar (in bottles and cans), played the men’s and women’s gold medal hockey games from the most recent olympics on the televisions, and had a Canadian DJ playing tunes from Canadian bands like Great Big Sea, The Tragically Hip, Our Lady Peace, etc etc. It was pretty fun.
One of our friends, Jess, arrived in Dublin for a few days. On the weekend, we went up to Howth to walk along the cliffs and see the market up there. We had a nice lunch there and watched the seals being fed in the harbour. It was a nice little visit.
The summer really flew by in a hurry!
Morgan
Yeesh, June was a busy month! I’m just now finally catching up with what we all did. Hopefully I can get through the several trips we went on before the next batch! My folks had arrived in Europe late in May and had spent some time with our Austrian relatives. Our plan was to meet them in Prague for a week and then head back to Dublin. So on our 2nd anniversary, Diane and I flew to Prague.
We arrived in the afternoon and made the trip from the airport into town pretty easily. There’s a convenient bus from the airport into a metro stop, which we hopped on and found our hotel. Upon walking in we were greeted by my parents and my cousin and her husband who were sorting out our rooms. Apparently the hotel had some water problems, and we were moved to another hotel in the same chain but right in the old town. This turned out to be pretty handy, as we didn’t even have to make use of the transit services at all that whole week. We just walked everywhere.
Having found our new hotel, we checked in and then headed out to wander the streets a bit. The streets of Prague are quite pretty. The streets and sidewalks are all cobblestone, and the sidewalks in particular are all arranged in nice patterns of black and white stones. After wandering a ways, we found a place to eat called the two hedgehogs (after translation, of course). Dinner was simple, and tasty.
The next morning we got up early (well, for us) and after a quick breakfast at the hotel, headed out towards the Jewish district of the city. This is apparently quite a draw for tourists, so we figured getting there earlier would be best. The tourist areas for this were several buildings spread throughout the Jewish district. So we dutifully took each building in order. The most impressive one of the bunch was the Spanish Synagogue — in which every inch was beautifully decorated. I wish pictures had been allowed inside …
After exploring these buildings we went in pursuit of lunch, and after getting out of the heat for a bit, hit the streets again. My mom was looking for some bead shops, and one in particular was near by so we went in search of it. After finding it, our group split up for a bit of exploring and shopping on our own. So Diane and I split off — I had seen a Crumpler store (a company that makes nice bags and backpacks) which we went off to and I bought a new camera bag. Sweet! After that, we found a lovely little park with an incredible rose garden, and a little farther along a mall that sold some cheap and delicious ice cream. We met back up with the rest of our group in front of the National musuem which overlooks Wenceslas square.
From there we headed back towards our hotel to drop off our purchases and get out of the heat for a bit more — it was 30 degrees almost every day there! We then went for dinner at a pub around the corner from our hotel. Not the best choice for food, but it wasn’t too bad either.
The next day, the plan was to hit up Prague castle. This wasn’t something my dad was interested in doing again, so he took my cousin and her husband off shopping and we walked our way up to the castle to explore the many exhibits open there. It was a blisteringly hot day, but we got going and there sure was a lot to see at the castle. Probably the highlight of it was St Vitus’ cathedral, which sits in the middle of a large courtyard in Prague Castle. The cathedral itself is impressive enough from the outside, but inside it was quite amazing. It sported several large stained glass windows with incredible detail, and every nook and cranny of the church seemed to be filled with yet another thing to look at. It was a good spot for pictures…
We took our time looking through all the exhibitions and then headed back down towards Charles’ Bridge: a long pedestrian bridge over the Vltava river. This was our meeting spot with the rest of our crew. On the way, we walked through quite a large group of people surrounding a bike race that had been setup in the area. So in +30 degree heat, these people were pedalling their bikes up and down hills for what is almost certainly a grueling amount of time. Ugh. The rest of our party were waiting for us at the bridge and we walked around the area for a bit doing some recon for a place to eat a little later. Diane had done a bit of research on wikitravel and we settled in a place called Malostranska Pivnice which turned out to be a great choice. The food was delish!
The next day, our destination was Petřínská rozhledna (Petřín Lookout Tower). The tower sits on top of a large hill overlooking prague, so the top of the tower offered a really nice view of Prague. To get there, we took a funicular that serviced that area. On their previous trip to Prague, my parents had climbed the hill and had ruled that out as a possibility for this trip. So after taking the funicular we wandered some of the gardens at the top of the hill and eventually found our way to the tower. Since the rest of the party had already done the tower on their previous visit, just Diane and I climbed the many stairs to the top and enjoyed the view from the top.
The heat had started to get to us there, so we decided it was time to head back down the hill and find a place in the shade to have some lunch. We found a place on the main road not far from where the funicular stop was. After a much needed break we wandered around a bit more before going back to our hotel to rest some more (we really weren’t used to the heat, and the whole week of heat was enough to make us slow right down). On the way though, we grabbed some ice cream from the same place a few days earlier. Mmm.
This being the last day in Prague, I wanted to try and find a particularly good restaurant to eat at. After doing some looking on wikitravel I found one, but when we got there it was all booked up. Oops. So we returned back to the hotel and asked them for a recommendation. They kindly made a reservation at a place really close by for a late dinner — which was fine given our late lunch. So we wandered over there and enjoyed a wonderful meal.
Our final day in Prague was a travel day, so we didn’t do much other than wander a little bit before taking transit to the airport and heading back to Dublin with my mom. It was a pretty fun week, and I think since we didn’t see much more than the old town in Prague that we’ll have to return!
On our May long weekend (May 8-10th), Diane and I decided that it had been too long since our last trip, and since it was a long weekend it was an opportune moment to hop in the car and check out an area of the Irish countryside we hadn’t yet gotten to. One of the main touristy areas we hadn’t gotten to yet was the Ring of Kerry, in South-West Ireland.
So on Saturday morning, we hopped in our car and started down in the direction of Killarney. It’s a pretty long drive! It probably took us well in excess of 4 hours to get there, and since we slept in and packed that morning we didn’t actually get on the road until almost noon. The roads in Ireland are pretty high variance: there are now quite a few fancy new motorways available, but once you get off of those the road quality can quickly degrade into roads that you really can’t drive very fast on. Most of the way out though, the roads were pretty good, so that was good.
We stopped to check in at our B&B – a little house a few minutes drive outside of Killarney. Our host kindly informed us that Killarney was particularly busy that weekend due to a motor rally happening nearby. Forewarned, we headed into town and took a quick pre-dinner walk into Killarney National park before heading off to find some food. Not sure where to eat, we consulted our handy Ireland lonely planet guide and it recommended a restaurant called Bricín which we were fortunate to get a table at since it was booked up later that evening. The food was absolutely delicious! A great way to start off our trip.
We returned to our B&B early since we wanted to get an early start on the next day. The day was a bit rainy and windy at the start, but after being on the road for a little bit the sun came out and the day was absolutely gorgeous. We started the day by stopping off at Muckross house which is part of Killarney national park. The house has some really nice gardens including an extensive arboretum which was quite pretty. Lots of mossy trees and flowering trees!
Our next stop along the ring of Kerry was the Torc waterfall, which conveniently enough is just a few minutes walk from the road. The waterfall is just part of a larger hike which we might need to go back and do at a later time. But we had a lot to see that day, so we didn’t really have time to spend a couple hours hiking. So on we went, next taking a quick stop at “the ladies view” which is a nice viewpoint from the road over the hills and lakes. The place gets its name because of the “pleasure expressed by Queen Victoria’s ladies in waiting on their visit in 1861 in that spot”. It is indeed a very pretty view.
Not too far from there, we stopped at Molls’ gap and the Avoca cafe stationed there for a small lunch. From there, it was a fairly short drive to Kenmare which the guidebook said had a stone circle to see, so we did! We also made stops at the Staigue Stone fort (an old ring fort overlooking some stunning scenery) and at the viewpoint at Coomakeesta pass which offers an absolutely incredible view from the road. The road is up high with green rolling hills dropping below us and spreading out dramatically right out to eh rugged coastline. For us, this was probably the highlight of the very scenic ring of kerry drive.
Our stop for the night was a town called Cahersiveen, which is a lovely little town. We got there pretty early so instead of going to dinner right away we wandered around the town a bit, finding not only the giant Daniel O’ Connell memorial church but also an old abbey that had long since fallen into disrepair. So much so that there was a whole bunch of vines growing in and through the bricks. Pretty neat … Dinner that night was at the seafood restaurant QC’s. Another really good meal!
On the Sunday we decided to call and see if there was any space left on a boat headed to the Skelligs: two craggy rocky islands shooting out from the ocean off the coast of Ireland. Apparently, getting on one of the boats in the summer is pretty tough, but they were just getting going for the season so we got a spot. Nice! So on Monday morning we found ourselves on a boat at 10am heading on a 50 minute boat ride to Skellig Michael. The water was calm and lovely, and we were soon climbing the hundreds of steps up to the top.
The skellig’s stairs were numerous and it took quite awhile to climb them. The view from the top was sure worth it though! Near the top there is some beehive style huts set up – apparently there was a small group of people who used to live there a long time ago. I can’t imagine it though.
After a couple of hours climbing around, we got back on the boat. The boat operator took us by the other skellig which no one is allowed to land on — it is reserved as a bird sanctuary … and my oh my there were a lot of birds!!! We didn’t just see the birds though – there were also some spotted seals sunning themselves on the rocks! The waves were pretty choppy on the way back, so we were given yellow raincoats to prevent us from getting soaked.
Having made it back to port safely, we were now facing a multi-hour drive back to Dublin, so we started high tailing it back. We stopped in Limerick on the way for dinner at a pub recommended from our handy tour guide… and the food was pretty awesome for pub food.
Not much else to say about our trip. We got back to Dublin pretty late and basically fell into bed after a good long weekend trip! We’re going to have to do another one of these trips in the near future — there’s so much to see down there.
Morgan
A couple weeks ago, we joined a group of friends heading to Mayrhofen, Austria to go on a weeklong ski trip. The week was incredibly fun. We benefited from some awesome weather which certainly helped make our trip a success.
Our flight left Dublin on Saturday afternoon. The group of us included Diane and I, Aaron and Christine, Diarmuid and Bea, Jeremy, and Bryce. Half the group had the earlier flight, with Aaron and Christine being on the later flight with us. Our first surprise on the trip: our 2.5 hour flight to Innsbruck with Austrian Airlines included a meal! I don’t think I had ever had a free meal on a sub 5 hour flight before. So it was a pretty pleasant flight over (although Aaron had an incident with a glass of red wine during the meal).
We arrived at Innsbruck airport, and met our tour operators who directed us to some buses taking us the hour or so drive to Mayrhofen. The procedure was swift and well organized which meant that we were soon at our hotel all settled in and being served our first multi-course meal of the week. Having purchased the package that we did, the flights, accommodation, breakfast, and dinner were all included leaving just lift tickets, rentals, and lunches as the necessary costs of the trip. So despite arriving at the hotel relatively late for dinner, we were promptly served a two-course “snack”.
The next morning, we got up relatively early to get in the queue for ski rentals for the week. Our hotel had a ski rental shop next door so that was nice and convenient. Having got our gear, we joined the giant queue for the main gondola up to the Penken mountain. The queue formed a multi-level spiral which you had to shuffle along slowly. Not a very comfortable way to start the day, particularly in a pair of ski boots, but hey … we’re here to ski right? The Penkenbahn gondola is ridiculous. Between the start and end points, you gain 1200 meters of elevation, and between those two points, there are just two structural towers supporting the cables that carry the gondola cars up that far. The amazement didn’t really leave me throughout, despite several rides in that gondola on the way up and down over the week. It was … well … ridiculous.
The sky was cloud-free and the sun shone down on us all day. It was a gorgeous first day for skiing. Apart from an hour or so stopping for lunch, we hit the slopes pretty hard – exploring various parts of the mountain. The area is pretty vast, but there were also a lot of people in the common areas, causing there to be some pretty massive queues at the numerous chairs around the hill. So in the afternoon, we ventured a little farther away which helped with the queues.
One thing that was pretty amazing about this hill. In Canada, the best chair lifts I’ve been on were the high speed quad chairs. For me, high speed quad was what they were — but at this hill, there was a couple of quad chairs, but they mostly had 6 or 8-man high speed chairs. Woah! Not only that, a lot of the chairs had conveyer belts which helped get everyone to the line where the chair would pick people up. At first I thought it was weird, but the conveyer belts really helped ease the process of getting on the chair which meant less stoppages for people who failed to get on the chair properly. So all in all a pretty solid improvement.
One of the downsides to skiing on Penken is there isn’t a skiout from the mountain to the Mayrhofen townsite. There are two skiouts to neighbouring towns, but this didn’t seem like a palatable choice so at the end of the day we shuffled back into a giant queue for the gondola on the way back down. Of the things that went on that week, the lineup for the gondola on the way down was the most miserable. You don’t really have much to do except deal with a bazillion other people in the line all shuffling along. At the end of a lengthy day of skiing, this wasn’t all that fun. But if that’s the worst part of the trip, that’s a pretty good trip, I think!
Having made it back to our hotel, we returned back to the gondola area where we entered the “Ice Bar”. The bar didn’t really have anything to do with ice besides being next to the gondola, but it was a pretty hopping place. We tried our first mulled wine (or Glüwein) on the trip there while listening to catchy german songs — many of which we had heard at Oktoberfest, and other singable well known songs. Partway through our visit, a guy dressed in a polar bear costume jumped up on one of the stands and started dancing. A few minutes later a girl jumped up on another one and started dancing as well. This was apparently one of the features of this particular establishment since on ensuing nights we would see various people dancing above the crowd of people in the bar.
Having polished off our Glüwein, we returned back to our hotel where we enjoyed its rooftop pool (an event that would be a nightly occurrence all week). The hot tub there would’ve been awesome if it was actually hot … but the pool was pretty nice and warm, and having a rooftop pool with the mountains all around was a pretty awesome experience!
A fairly late dinner followed the pool. The food at our hotel was pretty good in general. There was a few misses, but there was some pretty darn good food — and the soup every night was fantastic.
The next day we got started a little later without the need to beat the lineup at the rental store. The queue at the Penken gondola was still ridiculous, but after making it up that, we got started skiing. I’ve always found that the second day skiing was really rough. My knees take a beating when skiing, and after one full day of skiing my muscles really have a hard time getting going. But we were there to ski, so I pushed pretty hard to keep going. It wasn’t easy though!
That night, the Crystal Ski tour operator put on a pub crawl touring some of the bars in Mayrhofen. So we started at the “Movie Bar” and proceeded to visit half a dozen or so bars. Each was a bit more hopping than the last, and after a shot of (terrible) Schnaps at the first 3 bars and a few rounds of beer … well lets just say we were pretty buzzed. Before leaving from the airport in Dublin, a set of funny Irish hats were purchased, and they made their appearance on the pub crawl. They were pretty popular, and got a fair amount of attention! Some of our party even went so far as to start doing the leprechaun heel click. At one of the bars, we even got the security guard to do a heel click!
The next morning we were in no great shape to get up early. Diane and I were the only ones to make it to breakfast, and it wasn’t until after noon before we made it to the gondola. On this particular day, we decided to go check out a neighbouring mountain called Ahorn accessible by another ridiculous gondola. This particular one was much newer and only had two cars: each holding between 120 and 160 people! Ahorn is a pretty friendly mountain for beginner skiers with a beautiful long-ish gradual slope heading down to an octachair. There’s a bit more advanced skiing from there, but not a huge amount of it and its basically all serviced by a single double chair.
It’s a good mountain though. One of the cool features of it is the White Lounge at the top which is a big igloo with a bar inside. On that particular day, it was absolutely gorgeous out and we spend a fair amount of time at the top lounging on beach chairs/bean bags enjoying the sunshine with a beer. We did a little bit of skiing, but there was a lot of time spent relaxing in the sunshine too. The other cool feature of Ahorn is that there is a ski run right back into town. It was a bit icy in spots, but it made for an excellent way to get back to the town without waiting in a lineup for the gondola.
That was our first three full days in Mayrhofen, Austria. Hopefully I’ll get around to posting about our last three days soon.
Morgan
For the past couple years, we’ve made a bit of a habit of summarizing the year’s events — in a lot of ways just to remind ourselves how much we’d been up to in the previous year. Diane’s already got her ’09 post up. For reference, here’s mine from 2007 and 2008, and Diane’s from 2007 and 2008.
2009 wasn’t set up to be quite as crazy a year as 2008 was — after all, we had set up shop in Ireland already and didn’t have a life-changing schedule involving getting married and moving to another country! It wasn’t without its share of adventures, however. We had visits from several people in 2009, including both my family and Diane’s family, as well as several friends. These visits necessitated trips to various corners of Ireland, and served as good excuses to explore the island we’re living on.
January was a pretty slow month as we went through a fairly lengthy post-holiday case of procrastination. One of the only noteworthy events was we got our Irish learner’s licenses, which was one part of a saga which we needed to go through in order to legally drive our car. The other major part of that saga was a trip home to renew our Canadian driver’s licenses in February. Unluckily for us, delays caused by a week of snow in Dublin made us take 3 days and unplanned sleeps in Dublin and London before finally getting home.. That meant that we unfortunately missed the ski trip out with our friends that we had planned. Doh!
March and April flew by. The company was ramping up for one of the biggest releases we’ve ever made, and tensions were high for what turned out to be an amazingly smooth transition. So I guess I was pretty preoccupied with work. The big event of March though was St Patrick’s day — which is a national holiday here. We headed into town to watch the parade and joined several people after that for pints which lasted well into the evening. In April we made one foray to the Dublin Zoo, and that’s all I can remember!
In May, we finally got out and headed to Budapest to visit my friend Mike. He was planning on applying to work at the company later that year so getting there before he left was high on our list of things to do. Budapest was an excellent time, and we were quite happy to enjoy the time with friends and the wonderful food (I think I really want some goulash now …).
My parents arrived for a long visit in June, so that was a crazy busy month. We took them out on weekend trips out West to see the Cliffs of Moher, and up North to see the Giant’s Causeway, and Diane took them all around the various day trips outside of Dublin that we had seen while I worked during the weekdays. My dad headed home earlier than my mom who stayed on for a couple more weeks — allowing for a short trip out to see the Hill of Tara and Trim Castle as well as a weekend trip to Brighton to visit some friends of my Mom’s there. It was a pretty packed month and a half, and by the end of it we needed a vacation from all the tourism!
In the latter half of July, my friend Mike was in town for his interview, we had an epic company summer party, and we caught one of three Irish tour dates for U2′s U2360 tour.
At the start of August, our friend Bryce came for a visit of about two weeks. That caused us to organize another couple road trips on the weekends – the first out to Galway and the Aran islands, and the second a trip that Christine organized up to Bundoran to go … surfing! I had never been surfing before, and I never expected that Ireland was the place I’d get my first try. But hey, you never know what life’s gonna throw at you!
In September, we headed back to Canada for our JR and Shelly’s wedding. It was held in Jasper, which to us Edmontonians is a pretty special place to us. The weekend went beautifully, and we were very glad to have made it home for that trip. Apart from that, we used the trip home to catch up with as many family and friends that we could conceivably squeeze into a week and a half.
Just a week after Diane and I returned back to Dublin, Diane’s mom and sister arrived in Europe. Diane went over to meet them and they saw some of Britain before coming over to Dublin. The first weekend they were here, we grabbed Carolyn and headed off to Munich with Mike for a whirlwind trip to Oktoberfest. We were there for all of 12 hours, and returned to Dublin just 24 hours after we had left. It was a blast! I’m not too sure that I’m doing that again though. The second weekend of the visit, we took the car back up north again and saw the Giant’s Causeway and the Glens of Antrim.
In November, we went to Oslo, Norway for a weekend which was a pretty fun trip. We followed that trip up with a busy December in which we went to the company Christmas party and then followed it up with a week-long trip to Barcelona! We rang in the new year at a small party with a couple of friends which was a lot of fun — and the big feature of the evening was the inch or so of snow that proceed to fall over the course of the evening.
It was a pretty packed year, full of more traveling than I think I realized. We spent several weekends driving around Ireland, and made trips to Brighton, Budapest, Munich, Oslo, and Barcelona. Oh yeah, two trips home to Canada as well! We sure flew a lot!
To sum up this post, here are some of my favourite photos from this year:
Our 5th day in Barcelona was Christmas day, and since not a lot was going to be open, we decided to sleep in a bit. After a bit of breakfast at the hotel, we wandered out in to the … sunshine! Yup, the clouds finally broke for us and we had a chance to wander around in the sunshine for once. Our plan for the day was to head over to Montjüic, which is a large hill overlooking the city and is the site of several of the venues from the 1992 summer olympics.
The first part of that plan was trying to find the funicular station to take us up, but we missed that which ended up being a good thing since the walk up wasn’t really that taxing, and if we had taken the funicular up we probably would’ve missed some of the views we did get. So as we climbed up, the city fell below us and we got a pretty good look at the city itself — primarily white and beige coloured buildings stretching out before us. Our wandering took us to one end of the closed-for-the-holidays cable car that takes people across the harbour for what I’m sure would be very nice views.
After wandering around a bit more, we took a gondola up to the very top of the mountain where there is a fortress called “Castell de Montjuïc”. This fortress offered some great views of the surrounding countryside, and conveniently for us had a restaurant in the fortress courtyard that was actually open for Christmas day. So we stopped for some food before continuing our exploration and picture taking from the top of the fortress.
Instead of taking the gondola back down, we decided to walk down through some of the olympic venues. This turned out to get us a little lost since there wasn’t a simple route back to the main road so we wandered in between the Stadi Olímpic and the Palau Sant Jordi before finally finding our way out to in front of the Palau Nacional which overlooks a large stairway heading back down into the city. There was quite a few people out on that beautiful day to enjoy the weather.
We headed back to our hotel via metro to have a nap and figure out where a good place to go for dinner was. Once again consulting wikitravel, we eventually ended up at Los Caracoles, which translates to “The Snails” — which also happens to be the restaurant’s signature dish. The restaurant’s exterior features a window where chickens are being roasted on spits, and when you walk into the restaurant, you first walk through the bar to the front desk where you ask for your table. From there you walk through the kitchen to the dining area. Our table was right next to the kitchen so we could see the cooks working away and the delicious dishes being whisked into the extensive dining area behind us. The inside of the restaurant was extensively decorated and felt quite comfortable. To add to the snail theme, not only were there some decorative snails everywhere, but the bread that came with our dinner was curled up to look like a snail! The food was excellent, and it turned out to be a great place to have our Christmas day dinner.
Our last day in Barcelona is up next …
Morgan
The forecast for our 4th day didn’t look any better with respect to the ever falling precipitation. So we decided to head out of town for the second friend recommendation: The Salvador Dali museum in a small town called Figueres. The train ride is about two hours out of Barcelona, but we got on a nice comfy train so it was actually a nice relaxing trip.
It was cloudy, but not raining when we arrived in Figueres. Our first order of business upon arriving was to find something to eat, and we found that in the form of a Kebab from a nearby stand. One of the travel materials I read somewhere said that the donair meat found in Barcelona is quite a bit different from what we’d be used to from North America, and we found that that was indeed the case. It was definitely tasty.
While we enjoyed our kebabs, we walked towards the Dali museum through the streets of Figueres. On the way, we found ourselves walking through their version of an open air market — not nearly as large as the one in Barcelona of course, but still bustling with activity.
The Dali museum is … interesting. Before we went, I wasn’t all that familiar with his work, aside from the odd warped clock image. After going through the museum, my main impression was that the artwork in his collection was incredibly varied. Dali has quite a few more normal sorts of artwork: portraits and scenery and that sort of thing, but then there’s also a lot of pieces where the only way to describe them is: WTF?
The museum itself used to be a theatre that Dali himself converted into a gallery for his work, so you get a pretty consistent experience throughout the thing. One of the coolest moments is early on in the museum — in a large hall where the big globe of the museum is attached, on one end there is a painting called “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea”. The painting up close is a nude woman looking out a window onto the sea. But if you make the picture smaller (or in the museum pay 20 cents to use a device to make the picture smaller) the picture becomes a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. That was a pretty cool little trick.
Its a little hard to describe the sights in that museum, but I would suggest that if you have a chance you go see it. It was definitely an interesting experience.
With our admission, we also got admission to the Dali Jewel collection, which is co-located in the same building. The items on display in this collection are … odd. Dali wasn’t shy about his use of valuable raw materials, and some of the items on display are neat: like the jeweled eye shape where the center is a clock, some of the items are punny: like the pearls making pearly white teeth in ruby lips, and some are down right disturbing: like the gold heart with a cut away showing red jewels and a motor to make the red part “beat”.
After our tour of the Dali museum, we wandered around the town a little bit since it was still early on and we thought we might as well explore a bit. On our walk, we found an awesome playground that had a lot of really fun playground equipment. So we played on some of the equipment, including a zipline!
On our way back to the train station, we got a little bit lost, but that wasn’t really a problem: there was plenty of trains heading back to Barcelona. Eventually we found ourselves back at the market we had walked through earlier — now vacant. The next train back was right away, so we scurried back to the train station and arrived just in time for the train back.
When we got back to our hotel, we were too tired to go far looking for food so we ended up across the street from our hotel at a restaurant called Organic. This vegetarian restaurant had a pretty extensive menu and actually was pretty good!
Next up: Christmas day – the one day of nice weather on our trip!


























































































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