Matt & Kat

Wow, over a month since we last let you know what we were up to! We’re getting slack, sorry! Anyway, it’s 12:42am and we’ve just walked in the door after a brief weekend trip (36hrs) to Luxembourg, which seems like a very nice city. A good blend of old and new Europe. We’ve got heaps of photos, and hopefully a few interesting anecdotes, but I have to work tommorrow, so they’ll have to wait for another day.

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For the last few days we have enjoyed the company of Craig, Tom and Brendon (Cathy). The guys have been traveling around the UK and made a 4 day trip over to Ireland to see us (and the rest of Ireland too). It was fun to show them around Dublin and spend some time hanging out with other kiwis. ‘Hotel Brown’ just managed to accommodate everyone, although Cathy had to sleep on the couch.

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On Sunday I found myself basking in a sunny afternoon, watching a game of croquet being played on the lawn by men in top hats and tails. As you might guess, we were not in Dublin anymore. We were in Cambridge, England for the wedding of Sam and Zoe Jansen (Sam is a friend of Matt’s from Waikato Uni). It was a fun weekend, really great to be able to attend the wedding and to catch up with some Kiwis over here.

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I arrived home safely from New York on Friday morning, my flight was slightly delayed due to a traffic jam on the runway at Newark Airport but the pilot seemed to make up the delay fairly quickly once we were in the air. I flew back to Dublin on Continental which was far ahead of Aer Lingus in terms of the flight experience, however both of them still fall well below the standard set by Air New Zealand!

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I’ve been in New York just over 24hrs now. First impressions are favourable. I’m here for a training course which is being held in the Empire State Building. We’re only on the 7th floor unfortunately, so no free views for me. The building has far far far too many lifts, it took just over 10 minutes this morning to get to the right lift, and then the right floor, and that doesn’t include the time it took to get through the metal detector, x-ray machine, etc, etc.

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I don’t have anything interesting to say about life in Dublin at the moment. Life is plodding along, work is good, our apartment is proving adequate and survived the first round of visitors with only one casualty (the toilet cistern!), although we won’t blame that on them, seeing as the other toilet cistern broke identically one week later! Next weekend (29th July) we’re heading over to Cambridge, UK for the wedding of one of my friends which should be a lot of fun and a good chance to catch up with some NZers that I haven’t seen for a while.

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Thought I would blog a few of the things I like and dislike about our new home city. I like: Taking the train south to the beach on the weekends. Ireland is small – about 1/3 the size of NZ which means its also only a short drive or train trip to go basically anywhere in the country! Perfect for weekend trips 🙂 Cool old architecture and public spaces – Victorian brick buildings, Georgian squares, quaint little cottages, cobblestone streets… Shopping.

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The best photos from the weekends road trip are now ready for your viewing. I’ve broken them into four separate galleries for ease of use. Day 1 – Dublin to Doolin via Galway Day 2 – Doolin to Kenmare via Dingle Day 3 – Kenmare to Kinsale via The Ring of Kerry Day 4 – Kinsale to Dublin Don’t forget to check out Mark & Gill’s photos too for a different perspective on the trip.

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We had a great time the last 7 days as my parents (Mark & Gill) were staying with us for a short stop-over on their world-trip. I took Monday and Tuesday off work, so we hired a car and did a pretty quick road trip around Southern Ireland. Mum & Dad have all the details in their write up of the trip, so I’ll direct you to there for now. We took heaps of photos, the scenery was very beautiful.

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I’ve been hearing rumours that there have been complaints in some quarters regarding the lack of updates to this blog over the past weeks. Please rest assured that it’s not due to any lack of desire on our part, but rather due to the fact that we’ve been somewhat out of touch after we moved out of the Google apartment and had to wait for Internet to be connected at our new abode.

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