Wednesday 14 August - Friday 22 August 2008 The temptation of a cheap flight is hard to resist. So off we flew to Amsterdam to commence the two week bus, train and hostel return journey to Vienna. As we had only returned from our two week camping holiday four days earlier, we needed to push ourselves a little to get motivated for this next journey. Amsterdam, The Netherlands Greeted by another efficient public transport system at the airport, it didn’t take long to get to our Youth Hostel “Stay-OK” in the outer suburbs of the city. This was by far the [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 27 July - Friday 8 August 2008 As most of you already know, the biggest thing to happen on this leg of the journey was our engagement. The majestic Swiss Alps and picturesque lakes of Interlaken were the perfect setting and are our favourite places so far. But more of that later.... We’d hit the road by midday in our red rental Hyundai that was jam packed with camping odds and ends. (Those soccerball patterned ‘Euro Cup’ camp chairs were a steal at five Euros.) The basic plan was to head west to Switzerland, hang out around the Alps for [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 27 July - Friday 8 August 2008 After eight days on the road we crossed over the border and found ourselves in Northern Italy, near Lake Como. A couple of things stood out straight away. Firstly, the traffic was terrible. The ‘main’ roads as marked on our maps were narrow, potholed, unmarked and backed up with all sorts of traffic. In all, we saw three fairly serious accidents during our few days in Italy, two involving an upturned car and truck. Also, the Lake Como area was much more industrialised then the Austrian and Swiss countryside we’d passed through and [View Full Entry]

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Friday 11 - Sunday 27 July 2008 We were both looking forward to Vienna because with no onward travel plans, we knew we’d have time to slow down. Thoughts of leaving our backpacks in the one place (they are soooo heavy) and eating home cooked food were very appealing at this point. After a speedy taxi ride from Athens to the airport, we flew into Bratislava, Slovakia, and caught a bus from there across the Austrian border to Vienna, which is only an hour away. Sean’s bro, Jamie, picked us up from the bus station early Friday morning, took us to [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday 8 - Friday 11 June 2008 We’re over a month behind with the blogs (our trip is just flying) so I’m making the next couple pretty short to try and catch up. So here’s a run down of the things I remember most about our two days in Athens: Heat. It was hot, damn hot. The temp was high thirties, but unlike the Islands, there was no breeze to cool us down. Also, since we only had two days, we went against all advice and roamed around in the middle of the day. Food. I found the yummest and cheapest [View Full Entry]

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Friday 27 June - Tuesday 8 July 2008 We booked our Greek Island hopping through ATB Holidays, a group Sean found on the internet, and picked out the Poseidon Package. It included an overnight ferry from Athens to Crete, 3 nights in Crete, 3 nights in Santorini, 2 nights in Paros and 2 nights in Mykonos. All of our hotel and ferry bookings and shuttles between ports and hotels were taken care of and it was so nice not to have to do any planning for a couple of weeks. In fact, the highlight of Greece was the hot weather and [View Full Entry]

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Monday 23 - Friday 27 June 2008 Megan has been writing all the blogs thus far, and I’m pretty sure she will continue with all of them as well. In fact, even though I’ve taken the interest to write a bit on Paris, it will probably require significant editing from her to get it readable. Right-o, the first thing to mention was the warmth. After coming from the cool, cool temperature of N. Ireland, the 2130 evening heat through the airport was comforting; it started to feel like the summer again. It took under an hour by the train to Paris’s [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 5 - Monday 23 June 2008 We exited the ferry terminal and were greeted enthusiastically by Sean’s nieces, three-but-nearly-four year old Cara and two year old Emer, who informed me that she was wearing new sandals. We had arrived specifically on the 5th, because Sean’s big sis, Catriona, was able to pick us up and also because Catriona and Canice had booked us all a weekend away at Westport in County Mayo. Westport is a holiday town on the west coast of Ireland, about five hours drive from Magherafelt. We stayed in a great three bedroom apartment that overlooked a [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 1 - Thursday 5 June 2008 The main reason for our visit to Edinburgh was to catch up with Marty and Dan, and one of Sean’s school buddies, Johnny. It was still a little too soon for Marty and Dan to be asking for days off from work, so we caught up with them every evening. After nearly five months, it was great to see them. They took us to their local a couple of times (love those chilli con carne burgers), to trivia (we were really, really bad) and an all female comedy night (they were really, really bad). [View Full Entry]

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Monday 26 May - Sunday 2 June 2008 After a month in the US of A, it was absolutely divine to spend a week in England at Alex’s place, where everything felt totally normal (I even had vegemite on toast for breakfast). We had a pretty relaxing week, mainly spending time with Sean’s sister Alex and her family; Andrew, Niamh and Carrig. I think I will definitely appreciate the Australian weather when I get home. In England, if it rained (which it did nearly every day) we just put on our rainjackets and kept going. Alex lives in Surrey, just south [View Full Entry]

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