Allo readers. What's the craic? It's me again, and this time I'm on time! I would like to make a point. After spending a week driving along the south coast of the beautiful country of Ireland, I am quite convinced that I have discovered a conspiracy behind the “droughts” we were forced to endure when growing up in Gunnedah…. Ireland has been secretly stealing all the rain from the rest of the planet. Thieving bastards! It has done nothing but lash down for a whole week, with nary a crack o’ te sun in the days. But, avid readers, that didn’t stop it from being a righteous adventure. We decided to leave around midday on Monday 31st of August and make for Waterford. Wherever the hell that was. Armed with a Peugeot 307 lent to us ... read more

SO! Then we arrived in Cagliari, and had to kill some time while Enrico finished his day at the beach. We chucked our luggage in the local bus terminal’s luggage storage for a bit of cash, then ate some self-prepared lunch and decided to go for a wander. We found ANOTHER tourist info place, got a map, and then legged it. Cagliari as far as we can tell from our small adventure is a very pretty place. Unfortunately for some reason while we were walking around it started to get hot. Very hot. Not only that, Sardegna has shade poverty, and that means that fishies get over sweating like a paedophile in a pre-school very quickly. After walking along a castle wall for a good ten minutes, I got sick of trying to find a way ... read more

Those of you who know me well know that I suffer from a constant need for organisation. Spontaneity is not my strong point and doing nothing is somewhat akin to hell for me. And so the past couple of weeks have been impossibly challenging, and completely rewarding. We've spent the past few days hanging out at my aunt and uncle's farm in Mazury and pretty much enjoying the good life. Once Nemo finished writing his last blog, we took a trip to the lake and while my uncle and Nemo paddled off in a row boat to indulge in a spot of fishing, I went for a most glorious swim in the largest lake in Mazury. Fresh water, shallow and warm and with nothing more dangerous than a rogue killer seagull to threaten me I took ... read more

You're right. This blog has nothing to do with any of those things, as cool as they are. Aleks has decided that she is sick of writing the blogs about the times that nothing big and exciting is happening. We’ve reached a compromise (which essentially means I’ve acquiesced) and I’ll write the interlude blogs so Aleks can have a shot at the big time... things like Mazury and Croatia and all that really uninteresting piffle. It’s a big call for such a new-blood blog writer, but I reckon she’ll do a great job ;) Since arriving home from Krakow the this-and-that of everyday has been a fairly relaxed affair. But a laid-back existence in a foreign country can still be flat out. We spent a couple of days just settling back in from our southern escapades, ... read more

So there we were, avid readers, off to Zakopane, the southern Mountain town where both Kasia and Kazik’s parents live. This bus trip nearly had Aleks in nappies. She has been harping on about Zakopane since the day I met her. So for my giggling clapping co-pilot, Zakopane was like the Land of Oz: a place that she visited ten years ago, and still held memories of little log cabins and woodsmoke. She was in for a shock. More on that later. The bus trip itself was comfortable and uneventful, with the latter part of the trip consisting of Aleks grumbling at me to stop reading my book and look out the window. At the pouring rain. I politely fought the notion for a while, but my attention was eventually wrenched from Robert Jordan’s incessant ramblings ... read more