Bath

Pat and I got an early flight from Dublin to Bournemouth and then got the train over to Southampton. Caroline and David were due to arrive at lunchtime, so we headed up into town to grab some lunch. Forty-five minutes later we were still waiting for food and Caroline and David were due to arrive in ten! When the food finally did arrive we scoffed it down and then ran down to the bus stop to meet them. Luckily we all arrived at the same time, which was good. It was fantastic to see both Caroline and David again as well!! We came back to my house and then headed out for a drink. For dinner Pat and I took them to a nice restaurant near home called Dock Gate 4 - probably my favourite restaurant in Southampton.

The next day we went out for breakfast and then drove over to Salisbury to check out the town. We walked around the city centre (which is pretty nice) and then went into the Cathedral and did a tour. The guy was informative, but took ages, so in the end we left the tour and Salisbury and headed over to Bath to check it out. I had been over there last time I was in the UK in 2003 and liked the town, but thought the Roman Baths (probably the major tourist attraction there) was a disappointed.

We walked around the city again for a bit and then headed into the baths. Unfortunately my view point has not changed. Perhaps I was spoilt by seeing Pompeii and Rome just before seeing the baths last time. In any case it was nice to be with Pat, Caroline and Dave, so that was enough!

We headed back to Southampton and headed out for a curry for dinner! It was great being with everyone again.



Caroline in Salisbury.


The Cathedral.


Me in Salisbury.


The baths and Bath.


David getting ready for a swim!


The baths and the Cathedral.

Dublin (and Surrounds)

Pat, one of the blokes I caught up with in Brussels a few weeks ago, was off to Dublin to catch up with Sandra, another friend from Canberra who was now living in Dublin. Having a free weekend, I decided to head over and meet up with the two of them and check out Dublin (again).

I met up with Pat on Grafton Road, where we had a drink and waited for Tamsin (my landlord) to come in and meet us. Sandra was in the process of moving into a new place, so she could not make it into the city centre. We had a nice drink and then some food before Pat headed off to Sandra's while I stayed at Tamsin's (there was not enough room for me at Sandra's).

The next day Pat, Sandra and I headed down to a place called Glenalough, about one hour south of Dublin. This was a lovely area and it was a reasonably nice day (not much rain), so we went out for a walk along the lakes and rivers - it was all very beautiful. The pictures do not really do it justice.

On our way back we decided to go to Johnnie Fox's pub, which was apparently famous for its seafood. Not really knowing the way Sandra stopped and asked for directions - which were not really much help. The exchange kind of went like this:

Sandra: Do you know the way to Johnnies Fox's pub?
Man giving directions: Sure. Do you know the right turn just after the old bridge?
Sandra: Yes
Man giving directions: Don't go that way, keep going straight. Do you know where the Commonwealth Centre is?
Sandra: Yes
Man giving directions: Well you don't want to take the right just after that, keep going straight. Until you get to a modern looking car park, don't take the left turn after that, keep going straight.

This kept going for about 10 minutes. Basically he told us all the ways not to go. Luckily we got clearer directions down the road and made it to the pub where we had a lovely late lunch/early dinner.

We then met up with Sandra's sister and some of her friends at a tiny pub in the city centre, which was nice. Ireland has banned all smoking inside pubs, so it is nice to go out to pubs and not come home smelling like smoke!

The next day the three of us headed out to Newgrange, which was still just as interesting (or at least I thought so). We did not have time to see both Knowth and Newgrange, so we just headed over to Newgrange. We then headed back towards Dublin and met up with Tamsin at Howth, a coastal village just to the north of the city. We had a nice dinner in a pub, before heading out for a walk and then back home. Pat and I had an early flight back to Bournemouth tomorrow where we were going to meet up with Caroline and David!



Glendalough


More of Glendalough


Some more of Glendalough


Pat and I!


Even more of Glendalogh


Yet more of Glendalough


Almost the last one of Glendalough


One of the few photos with Sandra in it


Pat

Little Australia

A mate of mine from Uralla, Brad, was over for a visit, and he had organised for a group of Uralla people over here to meet up for a drink. So yesterday I caught the train from work to London to meet up with everyone. I had booked a hotel room for the night because it was going to be a big one!

We all met up at a pub in Earls Court where Kate was living (another Uralla person) and had a drink before heading off to the Walkabout in Shepherd's Bush.

Once we were there we all proceeded to drink far too much and listen to some really bad music (two words - Bon and Jovi). Towards the end of the night my cousin, Paul, and his girlfriend turned up. I had not seen him for ages either, so it was nice catching up with all these people.

We left around 2am and walked back to Earls Court (I was staying around the corner in Kensington). Man did I have a hangover this morning!


Brad and Kate


Paul and his girlfriend


All of us!

Brussels

A friend of mine, Melissa, from Canberra recently moved to Brussels to start work with the Australian Embassy there and thought it might be nice to have a mini reunion of all the Canberra people currently living in Europe. So for the past few weeks Melissa has be busy organising for us all to go to Brussels to catch up.

Pat, another Canberra bloke, also few into Heathrow yesterday for a holiday here in Europe, so I met him at the airport before we both boarded our flight to Brussels.

To say Pat looked exhausted when I met up with him would be a bit of an understatement. He had been travelling for over thirty hours and was in need of a good sleep. Luckily our flight to Brussels was on time.

Melissa met us at the airport and we went straight to our hotel where Pat had a nap and Melissa and I walked around. She had just arranged a place to live, but could not move in for a couple of days, so we walked passed that and generally just explored an area of the city that I have not seen before.

We headed back to meet Clem and Saskia who were staying in the same hotel and Cathy, who also lived in Brussels. We let Pat sleep a little longer while Cathy took us to this lovely patisserie near where she lived. The waiter made us order in French, which was interesting, but we all managed to get what we wanted, so it was all okay!

We headed back, got Pat up, had a few drinks and then headed out for some dinner. We then went to a couple of bars before heading to one place called Havana. It was bloody busy inside, and the bouncers just kept letting more and more people in to the point where it was impossible to dance or even move. So we went to leave, but the bouncers stopped us at the door. Apparently the custom in Brussels is to tip the bouncers as you leave a place (well for blokes anyway). So we gave them a couple of euros and got out of there. We then went to a few more bars, before getting back to the hotel around 4am.

The next day Pat, Melissa and I went into the Grote Markt (the centre square) for some food. They had a food market on, so we grabbed some interesting (read not all that nice) food, and sat down and watched the action.

It was then time for me to head out to the airport to fly back. Pat and Melissa were off to Switzerland to do some hiking, while I had to go back to work (I know what I would have rather done!).

New York, Day Five

Today was our last day in New York and it also coincided with the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. We thought there would be so many people that getting to the World Trade Centre site would have been next to impossible, so we watched some of the coverage on television before checking out.

We caught the subway and then walked over to the United Nations site to have a look around. We were actually quite lucky because this was the last week the UN would be open to visitors before the World Summit was due to begin. So we had a coffee in the cafeteria and wrote postcards before booking ourselves onto the tour. Unfortunately we had to wait a bit for the tour which meant this was the only thing we could do for the day before rushing back to the apartment to pick up our bags and then catching the train back to Newark airport.

The tour was pretty cool. Seeing these places of history on television in real life was amazing, and hearing the history and rivalry behind a lot of the daily workings from our guide (who spoke seven languages!) was interesting. I pretty much took over the end of tour question time asking a heap of questions, but then no one else seemed to have any (yes I did give them a chance!).

We then had a quick look in the shop and then headed back to Penn Station for our trip to the airport. We made the train with a few minutes to spare and luckily got to the airport in time. Unfortunately the airport was absolute chaos. First off you had to check in and then line up again to hand over luggage. It was a pretty silly system and took pretty much the entire two hours we had before the plane was due to depart.

After grabbing a quick bite to eat we boarded the plane and returned to sunny old England! For anyone interested New York should be a must see destination! I will definitely be returning.



The Secretariat Building.



General Assembly Building.



View of the City.



The Security Council.



A Statue from Hiroshima (notice the bomb scares on the back).



The General Assembly.



Funky Art!



More Funky Art!

New York, Day Four

Peter kept harping on about how good New York Pizzas were. So once we left the hotel we headed over to some authentic pizza place to try them out (Peter had been there before). It was a dodgy looking place, but seemed to be fairly busy (that could be the Lonely Planet effect though). We went in and saw that the pizzas were so oily and greasy I knew that I would not be able to stomach one. Peter scoffed down two slices (the amount of oil coming out of those slices was amazing), while I sat there and looked on in disgust. To make matters worse he ordered a root beer to go with it (another vile drink).

After he finished we went to get something to eat for me. I thought a sandwich would be in order so we headed over towards Grand Central to see what we could find. Could not really find much (it was a saturday), so I ended up heading downstairs at the station where they had a food court. I ended up getting a ham sandwich (you can see the results below) that must have contained about three pigs. In the end most of the ham had to come off because it was just too salty, and once I did that the sandwich was quite nice!

We then headed back over to the library cause they apparently had a copy of the declaration of independence, but we could not find it anywhere, so we looked at a exhibition of old maps instead. From here we grabbed a juice from Jamba Juice (now I reckon that could be a good pickup joint there, the ratio of women to men was about 5:1!) and sat in a park for a while, before just walking around enjoying the less crowded city.

Next on the agenda was the Metropolitan Museum of Art (or the Met) which was uptown. It is a pretty impressive museum, which would normally take hours and hours to go through, but because it was summer they also opened the roof as a bar, so we looked around the museum for about three hours by which time I had museum fatigue, and headed up onto the roof for a drink and views of the setting sun over the city (highly recommended if you are there at the right time of year).

We caught the subway back to the apartment to work out what we were going to do for dinner. By this time we were both exhausted, so we just wanted something simple that involved no effort. In the end we chose a burger place reasonably close which had an amazing 50 something different types of burgers to choose from (you could even order online for home delivery!). It was a pretty cool place and a good finish to the day!



Would you like some sandwich with your ham?



Rockefeller Centre.



Inside the Met.



View from the roof!

New York, Day Three

The plan for today was to explore Lower Manhattan and then catch the free ferry across to Staten Island. So we caught the subway to Lower Manhattan and basically just walked around.

In this area are all the government buildings, along with Wall Street and the site of the World Trade Centres. We got to see all of them, and the amount of security was absolutely amazing. We were at the World Trade Centre site and we somehow got caught up in a procession being led by Giuliani, Pataki (the New York State Governor) and Bloomberg (Mayor of New York). We were eventually told that it was for family only (being so close to the anniversary of the attack), so we moved out of the way and watched everyone pass.

We also walked by the Woolworth Building, which was pretty cool. There was a sign out the front saying to walk in and look at the lobby, but it must have been out of date because the women on security quickly shooed us away!

We stopped to check out the Stock Exchange and the big gold bull before heading to a deli to grab some lunch. We then headed to the Staten Island ferry terminal for the trip to Staten Island. If you are visiting New York, you really should do this. The trip is free, but you get some pretty good views of Manhattan and Liberty Island (where the Statue is). Once we got to the island we just walked back into the ferry terminal for the return trip.

We then walked for a little longer, got some good views of the Brooklyn Bridge, before catching a subway back up to the Empire State Building. While it is a New York icon, it is a very ugly building. The Chrysler building (finished just before it) is much nicer, but not as famous.

We caught the elevator to the top and basically stayed up there for sunset. It was pretty amazing and I think I got some pretty good photos. Again, if you are ever in New York, schedule your Empire State visit for dusk so you can see the sunset and all the lights in the city!

From here we headed out for a bite to eat before heading back to the hotel.



Little Italy.



Street Scene.



The Court House.



City Hall.



The Woolworth Building.



World Trade Centre Site.



More of the World Trade Centre Site.



Wall Street!



The big bull!



Statue that was originally on the World Trade Centre site.



Brooklyn Bridge.



Lower Manhattan.



Statue of Liberty.



More of Lower Manhattan.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.



From the top of the Empire State Building.