I had a semi-cunning plan. Surprise Trace by taking her to Paris for our anniversary. Well the surprise was a good idea in theory until I mentioned something about taking anniversary photos in Paris about a month before the weekend. At least we had a few minutes of side-aching laughter at my Homer-like ineptitude. Doh. In the end we had a really really good weekend. After a bit of sleep in on Saturday morning we wandered off to the Louvre, which is simply massive. We struck a nice balance of seeing interesting stuff, but not over-doing it. On leaving the Louvre [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Jeremy was back from a stint working in Angola, and was heading to Ireland to catch up with his brother Nick, and sister Cynthia. This seemed like a good opportunity to catch up with Jeremy after not seeing him for a year, and also to see a bit of Ireland. We had four days there, but got quite sidetracked initially by the Guinness. First it was a 12 hour session at his brother's local in Loughrea. Then after heading down to Limerick to meet a second new niece, we had a remarkably big Sunday night with John, Jeremy's brother-in-law. The [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Well summer, if indeed you could call it a summer, is over. The leaves are falling, as is the thermometer. We were lucky to have quite a few friends and family visit us here at Lady E’s after our Europe trip, so I thought I would pop a few pics up of our recent Scottish escapades. The day before Trace left Slovenia to fly back to Scotland, she found out that the visa she had been writing an application for was changing - in six day’s time! The new and improved “innovator’s visa” required a £200,000 investment from the applicant, [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Budapest was the last stop on our trip, and we were keen just to relax a bit. This approach does not make for a hugely entertaining blog, so this will be short and sweet. We stayed at an awesome little hostel called "Enter Privates". Really - it was called Enter Privates. I think the "privates" part referred to the private rooms, but what possessed the owner to preface this with "enter", I will never know. The owner of the place, Gabor, was a young Budapest local who, despite the misdirected attempt at naming the hostel, was a top bloke. Over [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Have you heard of Ljubljana? Can you point it out on a map? Can you spell it? It was a no, no, and no for me prior to our trip, but after heading there I can tell you that Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia, is smack bang in the middle of the country, and is spelt with two awkwardly placed "j"s. Ljubljana is a city of 270,000 people, but it seems much smaller. The heart of the place is a beautiful old town, nestled around a small river. The river has been channelled through stone embankments, so many of [View Full Entry]

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Mat: After Krakow Trace took over planning, and we therefore headed towards horses. The Spanish Riding School in Vienna is a Mecca for horsey girls the world over. The elegance, skill, and silly hats of the riders is apparently the ultimate in horsey perfection. The Spanish Riding School has its roots in the military horsemanship of the post-medieval ages when knights attempted to retain their battlefield pre-eminence by shedding their heavy armour and learning to manoeuvre quickly and with great complexity on a firearms-dominated battlefield. The training of the horses at the school als [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Dave, Trace and I hopped on a sleeper train on Friday the 13th and trundled our way south and east towards Krakow in Poland. Our cabin was pretty lush, a three bed sleeper. After a couple of "goodbye Germany" beers we headed to our bunks and woke up heading in the opposite direction. Not sure how this worked, but we did arrive in Krakow. Krakow was spared from bombing in WWII, so its beautiful Old Town has survived. Its central Grand Square has been the hub of the city ever since its Old Town developed the present grid of streets [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Dave my little brother (well no so little, medium maybe, and quite hairy) was travelling to Germany at the start of June to play music at a festival in Braunschweig. Braunschweig is about two hours west of Berlin, so Trace and I organised to meet him in Berlin, and then go for a wander through Poland, Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary. Good times. For today's instalment however, it is all about Berlin. Berlin is cool. We arrived to a sun-drenched city that was topping 30 degrees. Considering we had been excited by a 20 degree day in Scotland before we left, [View Full Entry]

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I love my wife. She was happy for me to escape the Scottish winter and meet up with Jeremy for a last minute deal on a liveaboard trip in the southern Red Sea. Islands in the middle of nowhere, big drop-offs, coral-encrusted walls, drift diving, sharks, and two deepish wrecks - bring it on. Jeremy had just come off an offshore job in Qatar and after a transportation nightmare managed to find his way to the remote town of Marsa Alam in southern Egypt from which we were boarding our liveaboard the "M/Y Sea Serpent". For me it was easy, the [View Full Entry]

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Mat: Cousin Lara, Trace and I flew into Prague on a starry skied Thursday evening, and emerged from the underground into a very crisp but beautiful city. The sub zero temperature was fantastic though because there were mulled wine street stalls dotted about the place and the temperature added to the magic of the place. We stayed in a hostel that was formally a grand apartment, with a huge room to ourselves, and a shared kitchen and bathroom. After the incredibly polite and friendly owner of the place had sorted us out and given us a map of Prague we headed [View Full Entry]

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