Wow, I almost missed it. Thank you blog sidebar-counter!

It’s really hard to believe that we’ve been in Dublin for a year already. The time is just flying by us, and it’s hard to keep up. The company has been a great place to work thus far, with all kinds of perks. We’ve been to some pretty incredible company-thrown parties, as well as some pretty awesome private parties. We’ve hung out with Howard Lederer, and Chris Ferguson. And we’ve made a lot of friends who’ve kept the fun agenda busy! We’ve seen some concert acts including a huge show by U2 just recently.

Regretably, we haven’t actually done that much in the way of travelling. Something that will have to be rectified soon. That said, we’ve been to Salzburg, Linz, and Vienna in Austria, Budapest in Hungary, Brighton in England, as well as numerous Irish towns, castles, and coasts.

It’s been immensely rewarding thus far, and there’s still a lot of room to do tons more. So here’s to one year in Dublin, and hopefully the next year will be as fun as the last!

Morgan

We’ve got a lot of catchup to do! It’s already the latter half of July, but there hasn’t been any blog posts to tell you all about the adventures we had while my parents were in town for most of June and the beginning of July. So, in an attempt to catch up, I’ll be spending some time writing posts about some of the things we did!

Here’s a summary so you know what to expect:

1. The Arrival: Malahide Castle
2. West Coast Road Trip: The Burren, and the Cliffs of Moher
3. Northern Ireland Trip: Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, Giants Causeway
4. Little Road Trip: Trim Castle and the Hill of Tara
5. Off to England: A weekend in Brighton

That’s what I’ll be writing about, and hopefully catching up with uploading pictures (as of this moment, I’m finally almost through the west coast trip photos, so I’ve got a lot to catch up on still!). If Diane gets a chance, she can fill you in on the other stuff she took my parents to see while I was at work. There’s a fairly long list there too!

So … on to the posts!

Morgan

I was hangin’ out in the Airfield break room last week and one of the gals asked whether anyone was going to “Bloom” on the weekend. And I was all, “What’s that?” Well, it turned out there was a garden expo in Dublin’s Phoenix Park during the bank holiday weekend.

Sure enough I ended up getting myself a ticket for Thursday, which as Met Eireann promised, was sunny and warm. Really warm, actually. It’s fairly humid in this neck of the woods, and when the clouds shirk their duty of shielding the emerald isle it can heat up a little. I was pretty pooped by the end of the day in fact, not having had the usual run of several months up to what I would classify as a nice July day at home.

Anyway, they had a shuttle bus running to the park from Heuston station, so I took public transit… I also took Morgan’s beautiful camera & lenses of course! I spent the better part of the day running around the fair getting blurry shots of pretty plants and landscape designs.

Part of the expo featured spaces where entrants could create landscapes to advertise their designs. There were a few that I found particularly nifty, such as Anthony Ryan’s “Metamorphosis” garden with its sheltered space and pretty water feature, and this water garden with stepping stones – I just wanted to climb into that hammock!

Two fellows giving a talk about the vegetable garden display they’d set up had a story to tell passersby. It seems the deer that reside in the park had broken in and had a snack, but they only preferred two varieties of lettuce/kale and left the rest. Whew!

I took some time to wander through the artisan food and craft sections. Yays! I actually went around several times.

There was gorgeous pottery – blue and green – they totally nailed the glaze, and cleverly stuck with it over a whole line of different pieces. I discovered some ladies from the weavers’ guild who were spinning raw wool and weaving dyed yarn – I’m always so impressed by human inventions. Especially the old ones – I can’t get over the clever devices people can make!

The food tent was also highly rewarding. I found a lady who makes her own cheeses from sheep, cow, and goat milk. Mmm! Actually, I had previously discovered her downtown in January or so, and I was very glad to find her again. There was an apple juice operation in one corner – I brought a bottle home for Morgan and he agrees the Jonagold apple juice is tasty and not over-sweet. Thumbs up! I also stocked up on summer honey from Andrew McGuinness of Meadowsweet Apiaries. I cracked open a jar when I got home and it’s very nice indeed. Very pale and extremely sweet – I’d say it’s got lots of clover besides a bunch of other things I can’t place. I’m very fond of finding honey from small/local producers. I do miss Patty Milligan’s “Lola Canola” summer honey from Bon Accord, Alberta, but I think of her (I met her when she had about 40-or-so hives) whenever I try a new honey. In fact there are beekeepers who tend ~5 hives on the Airfield property, but I haven’t tracked them down yet. I hear they were selling their wares on sheep shearing day at Airfield, which was the Sunday that weekend, but instead of documenting the “Woolapolooza”, I enjoyed some most excellent hiking around Sally Gap, so I’m still waiting to see how über-local honey might taste.

And just like that, it turns into a food post! That’s okay, there’s really nothing finer! I’d better tack this up on the blog before I get distracted and go eat a pot of honey. But yeah, Bloom was good – would you believe they threw it all together in two days? Me neither! All in all, a very fine day out.

On the Sunday of our trip to Budapest, we did indeed ride on a boat, upstream along the beautiful Danube. It was a glorious day, and everyone and his dog was out in canoes, kayaks, and motorboats. We saw people tubing and paragliding. And the town where we went was called Szentendre, after St. Andrew. It’s just north of Budapest. There we found tasty barbecued meats at a Serbian restaurant, which boasted an excellent guitarist. One thing that’s really struck me around Budapest is the amount of live music in restaurants and on the street. Much of it is of fair quality too. A ton of artists, actors, writers, and musicians reportedly live in Szentendre. And more and more tourists are showing up. I believe it’s because of the hot chocholate (forró csokoládé in Hungarian) at a little café down the street, south from the dock, across from a family of knife-makers. Here ended my search for “real” hot chocolate, that is, melted drinking chocolate in a cup to which you then add milk and whipped cream as you wish. I would gladly row 10 miles up the river for it. (Okay, 10 km in something streamlined maybe.) I think there’s also a marzipan museum and a confectionery museum, as well as a wine museum there. We took the train back into town after being waylaid at the station and serenaded by a little old fellow and his perhaps-once-tuneful violin.

Mmm, Szentendre drinking chocolate!

The next day we trundled across the bridge to the Gellért Baths to soak our cares away in the mineral-rich waters. A great way to spend a Monday if you ask me. At the lockers, there’s a cute little key attendant who locks up for you and then lets you back in when you’re done. (It’s appropriate to tip a few hundred forint.) It was nice – quite clean, not too salty, not super hot. That said, many people I know would be looking for a lot warmer pools than I found there. They also had extra things like facials and massages, and I think maybe I should have gone for one – I’ve been missing massage since class ended!

Magically healed in the fountains of life and youth and so on, we decided to do a little more walking. We climbed up to see some statues on the hill beside the Gellért, including the liberty monument, which looks to me like a lady trying to paraglide with a leaf, and St. Gellért, who, according to legend, was pushed off the hill in a barrel and died. There was also a very cool, cavernous little church, carved and dug into the side of the hill.

That evening, it was time for possibly the biggest helpings of food yet at a nearby restaurant appropriately named Fatál. Yes, it’s Hungarian for wooden plate (on which some of the menu is served), but I prefer to take it literally and without the accent. Morgan and I indulged in roast duck and wiener schnitzel of significant area. (The schnitzel was totally hanging off the edge of its fatál.) With various flavours of beer of course. And not a vegetable in sight, unless you count potatoes. Please don’t tell our moms.

After supper the guys, apparently not completely owned by the hugeness of the food, went to check out a local casino. I went home to pass out. They came back with stories of poker hands and people that tried their darndest to usher them into strip joints. Rumour has it that if you accept the invitation of such an establishment, the bill will be much more than you bargained for…

On the morning of our final day, we checked Gerbeaud off our list. It is a fancy-pants café-confectionery with tasty cakes including Morgan’s Gerbeaud torte and my alma torte. You can tell how respectable it is by the way they bring thimbles of complimentary water to your table without your having to ask. I must say though, that their version of forró csokoládé is entirely trumped by Szentendre.

Back to the Oktogon (octagonal intersection and subway stop below) and Andrássy út we went, to see the House of Terror. The building that now houses a museum was formerly chosen as headquarters for both Nazi and Communist terror organizations, and many people were tortured and interrogated inside it. It’s very well set up to tell the stories of Hungary’s double occupation (and very short-lived rebellion) through pretty much endless amounts of media. There must be several days’ worth of video alone, as well as printed material and some of the technology and other artifacts of the day. There were beautiful statues and tributes but also reconstructed prison cells, some of which I really would not have enjoyed. It can be a profound experience if you allow it, and we left reminded of sobering stories made up of many lives.

We took our last ride on the underground and strolled our last Hungarian streets, ate our last honey-cakes and said our last thank you’s to our generous hosts. We used our last few hundred forint to buy a bottle of water for the plane and we were off home again. There or thereabouts ended a lovely extended weekend away. I would highly recommend Budapest and wouldn’t mind going again myself, though we have the rest of Europe to get through. I hear Croatia is quite lovely.

Mixed and ready to drink!

Gerbeaud's Alma Torte

Diane

We’ve had a few people complain to us that the blog design we started with, while pretty, was a little hard to read. So I finally got a chance to respond, and install a new theme. I’m a big fan of this design already, so I hope you like it too! While I was at it, I’ve been updating plugins and making minor tweaks to the sidebar. Gone now is the welcome page — you’re here to read the blog, so that’s the first thing you get! The right bar now has the welcome message in a shorter form.

I added the photos widget on the right as a quick way to see if there are any photos you haven’t seen, and the link above them takes you to the gallery. The gallery is also fits in with the design in a less awkward fashion.

Comments are, of course, welcome. Let us know what you like and don’t like about the new theme!

Morgan

Lots of stuff to do, but I will post blog entries covering the remainder of our trip in the next few days. I also hope to getting around to posting pictures from the wedding and from our trip, but that might have to wait until after we’re in Ireland. There’s an awful lot of stuff to do before we leave next Saturday!

Morgan

It is, in my opinion, a perfectly good time to panic. As teh bridezilla in this particular partnership, I believe it is my prerogative, non? There would, however, be more pure terror in my heart if Morgan wasn’t such a sweetie with such a nice family, or if so many of our friends hadn’t stepped up to help us out and support us. So I just wanted to say, in case I don’t see people in the mad dash to catch good weather and precious photographer time, thanks for helping! Thanks for all those little reply cards, emails, faceplant messages, etc. and a special thank you to all those who were able to fill the spots we needed filled. Whether you volunteered or were volunteered or voluntold, I’m so happy and relieved to have your assistance. So, from Morgan and myself, thank you, thank you, thank you!

Diane

I’ve been working on the site for a little while. The beauty of using a content management package like wordpress is you can put together a pretty impressive looking site in pretty short order. I’ve installed a plugin that lets us upload photos and present them in a pretty slick way. If you head to the Pictures page, you can check out a selection of our engagement photos. I’ll try and upload some more photos in the next little while as well.

Once the DNS has updated, you should be able to access the website using www.minoragenda.com. This should happen later on tonight I hope. I also added a little countdown timer to the sidebar in anticipation of the big day!

Do you like the design? Please leave us some comments if you see something wonky or that doesn’t look good. We tweaked a publicly available theme with one of my photos to get this and changed the colour scheme so there are probably some weird fragments we haven’t spotted yet. Also, we’d appreciate any suggestions you’d have for content we can add to the site. Photos are obvious, and we plan on keeping people informed about the wedding plans, but if you have any other ideas we’d love to hear them!

Also, if you’ve got a blog that I didn’t put down in the blogroll on the right, it wasn’t a concious error. Please help me correct it!

Morgan

Welcome to the fancy new addition to Morgan’s workload :) I mean, our website for us as we begin our life together, to which I will regularly contribute… every once in a while.

Isn’t it pretty? We stole the template from the trove of Wordpress goodness, of course, but the background is a scene that Morgan took with his little Powershot (which has since fallen to me) while en route to Vancouver for Jazmine and Ryan’s wedding oh so long ago.

The title is an anagram of our first names. We were having trouble generating a clever name for our page, so we found a number of anagramifying engines that returned things like amino garden, a daring omen, neon diagram, etc. If we ever have a band, we can call it mandarin ego. Maybe if we get rock band?

Anywho, Morgan dreams that someday the site will be a thriving forum for pictures, links, and blog entries that will help us keep in touch with our family and friends. And who knows? I may even see the day I make another post!

But first, the playing with colours and fonts!

Diane