Ireland

Perhaps we missed out on the true Irish experience, but I gotta say... not my favorite place so far. Dublin had some nice sights like their City Hall, Christ Church, Trinity College and the Temple Bar neighborhood. We had a great time at the Guinness Brewery and found the city green spaces nice, but all in all the city was dirty and their public transport was a hassle (at least as far as getting to our hotel). How was our hotel you ask? Well, imagine a luxurious old hotel, quaint rooms, clean facilities and polite staff all neatly packaged into a nightclub!!! We read the reviews, people said it was loud because it had a bar downstairs but never, NEVER, did we imagine that it could be that loud. Oh well, live and learn right?











But, the highlight of our time in Ireland had to be Kissing the Blarney Stone in Blarney, just outside the city of Cork. Finally, I have the gift of gab :) The train took about 3 hours from Dublin and was and was a nice
escape from the city. We saw roughly 17,000 cows and 20,000 sheep, give or take. The Irish countryside is beautiful, too bad we couldn't spend more time there.













Well, that's all for now. We're in Madrid at the moment and have booked a day trip to Toledo tomorrow and will probably head south to some beaches and more sun after that, I'll have lots more to share about Spain soon.

Adios,
M (and M)

England pics

Me and Matty on Tower Bridge :)



Me using one of the many public toilettes in London, they even have phones in them ;)


Picadilly Circus


£30 ($47) crystal encrusted water at Harrods!


Riding the Tube :)





From The Eye, me and Matt and Parliament Square/Westminster Bridge.

Well, dinner's on! Ta...

England

We arrived in England on Wednesday afternoon and spent a few days in London before coming up to the little village of Narborough to visit our friends Tania and Paul for the weekend.

While we were in the city, we took in all the sights. The London Eye, Big Ben and Parliament Square, Westminster Abbey, Millenium Bridge, Hyde Park, Tower Bridge, British Museum, Nation Gallery, rode the Tube (several times!), boat tour of the Thames, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's... One of the nicest things we did was stuble upon a local market and piece together a great lunch for under 10 pounds.



Our weekend has consisted of a nice long walk through the fields of the country, a wedding reception for the owner of Tania and Paul's local pub and a big greasy English breakfast! It's been really nice to see the big city as well as get a feel for how the locals live in the smaller towns. What a beautiful country!

Tomorrow we're off to Ireland for a few days, I hope they've got enough Guiness for Matt!

Square peg... round hole?

I'm beginning to feel like a two year-old trying to figure out how to fit that darn green plastic square into the round hole of my Fisher Price toy!!

I am a chronic over-packer. If there was a support group for people like me, I'd be there. I can barely go away for a weekend without lugging with me everything that I might possibly need to be prepared for the potential of a cataclysmic event. I can justify packing anything - seriously anything! What's missing from these pictures are my big rubber boots that I'm slowly convincing myself I will wear every day. A few other things missing from these pictures are all the little odds and ends that seem like they won't take up much room - until you try to fit them all in!

The idea of cramming 6 weeks worth of clothes and toiletries into one bag is startling to say the least. Looks like I've got some work to do!!

The "square peg"... most of things I want to bring. 

(This picture is missing a lot of stuff!)

The "round hole"...

The Countdown Begins...

In a little over two weeks we'll be on plane bound for the hustle and bustle of London and we couldn't be more excited to experience all that Europe has to offer. The lead up to our departure has included buying new travel bags (and gadgets that we probably wont' use), deciding what we'll "need" while living out of a suitcase for a month and a half, reading travel books and blogs like Rick Steves' and anxiously watching the price of the British Pound and the Euro float up and down!


We had intended for this trip to be a rather unplanned, spur of the moment experience. However, as we check the prices for arranging last minute transportation and lodging we're finding that a little pre-planning and forethought might not be a bad thing! That being said, we'd love your advice and travel tips. Any secrets for what to pack/what not to pack and where to go/where not to go? 


We'll try to be updating here regularly so feel free to drop by and check out where we are and what we're up to. Many pictures and stories to follow!! 


        "There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” 
                                                                                         ~Robert Louis Stevenson