France - Paris!

So, we finally made it to Paris, and what a hectic couple of days it was... We decided to spend 3 or 4 days in the capital, and of course that wasn't nearly enough. We still managed to sneak quite a lot of sightseeing in! By the end though are feet were aching but we were happy...

What a great city. I'd heard that it's pretty big, but it wasn't until we starting walking around that I realised how bloody big... Looking at a map it doesn't seem far from here to there, but once you walk it, you soon decide that getting a subway pass is a good option. We ended up getting a 2 day subway pass and a 2 day museum pass, and made good use of both.

Our first night there we just took the first half-cheap hotel we could find, and then the next day moved to a cheaper hotel that was in a much better location - near Hotel de Ville if anyone knows the area... Nice and central for seeing the main sights.

So, for the next few days, we munched on pastries and baguettes, drank a bottle or two of wine, and ran our feet off getting to...

- The Arch de Triumph (twice, jeez it's a long walk up the staircase)

The Arc at night

Looking down at the roundabout around the Arc - this is at a quiet time...

Looking up (or down?) the stairwell that leads to the top of the Arch.

- The Louvre. Only spent an afternoon in there, could have walked around it for another week or two... It's a brilliant building too. Bloody huge.

The Louvre - pyramid and all

Van Gogh - you can only see one ear here...

- The Rodin Museum. Ally has hanging to see this. I got sick of seeing hands and heads after a while. nice to see The Thinker though.

The Thinker

- Notre Dame. forgot to climb the tower though..

- The Consiergerie. a building near Notre Dame that was used for a number of nice and not-so-nice purposes over the last few hundred years

- Champs de Elysees


- The Eiffel tower. 11 euro to get to the very top, great value!

There she is...

At night

Not sure about the tacky lightshow, but isn't too bad

Again...

Again at night, from the other side of the Seine

Part of the Champs de Mars (i think, viewed from the Eiffel Tower)

Great city, great fun. And if anyone needs a decent hotel, for once a Lonely Planet hotel came through, Hotel Rivoli on Rue de Rivoli.

I could go on about paris, but i won't... maybe next time! (missed out on the Picasso Museum, the Catacombs, and quite a lot more...)

Next stop, Luxembourg City

France! First stop, Dinard and St Malo

So, after finally getting to the airport outside of Glasgow, we soon landed in France, in a town called Dinard on the north coast.

This is a seaside town, right near a much more touristy (and old) town called St Malo.
We had 2 nights in Dinard before moving to St Malo for a night.

Our first day in Dinard we took pretty easy, just walking around the town, trying to fumble our way through a few very messy words of French and eating fries, crepes and mussels!

The next day we took the short ferry (5-10 mins) to St Malo to check it out. This place is unreal. It started off way way back when some monk set up shop and made himself at home on an island just off the coast, and bit by bit a city was built around it, eventually becoming a walled city with a castle and a number of forts on outlying islands. It was pretty much ruined in the second world war, but has been rebuilt apparently pretty much back to how it was (except of course that half of it is now restaurants and hotels...

Here's a pic of the city itself as seen from the ferry.



I've got plenty more happy snaps from the city but too many to put up here...


Once we moved to St Malo, we took a tour bus out to one of the places we've been looking forward to visiting for months. Mont St Michel. Somehow a big rock was created millions of years ago and someone thought it would be a perfect place for a cathedral - and they were right!

Again, over the years, homes were built around it, as well as a wall, and it became an impregnable fortress withstanding all that was thrown at it. The tides are huge here, and at low tide you can walk out to the outlying islands! Low tide stretches out for miles... However that also means big high tides, and in the old days the high tide would completely surround the whole rock. Nowadays there is a causeway that lets the hordes of buses and cars park right next to it - i've never seen so many people in such a small place - walking up Ye Olde Street towards the cathedral at the top of the hill was a nightmare - but well worth it in the end.
We grabbed an audiotour and worked our way through it - i'm always amazed at how people could build such huge places on such crazy places, nearly a thousand years ago - amazing...

Glasgow...

Hmmm... not one of the most interesting places we've been to! Actually it's more like a 'normal' city than a cool old medieval place. Again, just there for a night, but that was long enough.

We had a flight booked the next morning for around 10am, which we thought would be fine - but what we hadn't realised was that there is no public transport to the airport (dodgy little Ryanair airport of course!) in time to catch a 10am flight... well, there's a bus at 4:30 but that had to be booked a day in advance... so we ended up having to book a taxi instead! expensive cheap flight that one, but you get that. It was a nice ride in the taxi anyway, great rolling green hills etc...

So, Glasgow... Well, as i said it's very modern, with big pedestrianised streets, people EVERYwhere, but otherwise not much (that we could see in our very short stay).

One highlight was wandering around the main city park, and hooking up with a tour by the park wardens, who obviously are in love with the park, and told us everything there is to know about it. Who would have thought so much history and so many little bits and pieces in one seemingly-average stretch of grass!

My other little highlight was seeing a heap of familiar jumpers kicking around a familiar (but much missed) football... Nice!



So, that was the end of our quick Scotland tour - on to France!

Stirling

We moved on again, catching a bus on our way towards Glasgow, this time to Stirling, which as usual has a nice big castle and a few important (well, very important) battles under its belt as well.

It isn't a huge town, but has plenty to look at, and a great 'old city' - i love old cities... nice cobblestoned streets, a castle on the hill and a wall around most of it.

We were only here for a night, so not too much to tell, but it was just a nice place to hang out and walk around. There's a huge monument to Nelson not far away as well, would have been nice to take a look at it if we'd had more time.

Here's the castle.

St Andrews - the home of golf!

I thought that was all St Andrews was... but it's actually a really old joint and really nice! It isn't very big - everything is within a kilometre or so from each other - even the famous golf courses!

At one end of town is what's left of a 12th or 13th century cathedral and associated stuff, with a tower you can climb to get great views of the place.



In the centre of town is St Andrews University, where Prince Willy went (or still attends? no idea) and a few other college buildings.

Also along the coast here is the ruined castle of the town. Quite a lot went on here, the French and English invading, taking over the castle, losing it again and taking it again. At one point they started tunnelling through to it (starting from the kitchen of a house over the road!) - at which point the guys in the castle started tunnelling from their side, eventually meeting up with the bad guys and showing them who was boss! not for long though - they did end up losing it, and hanging for it...
Pretty cool though, you can walk through the tunnels, amazing.



The Tunnel.



At the other end of town is the 5 or 6 or 7 courses belonging to the St Andrews Royal and Ancient golf club - otherwise known as the home of golf. Here's a pic of the 18th green.


And the clubhouse...

A wee lass & a giant pack in Edinburgh

Dean's stride had never seemed that big before.... yep, this wee lass is playing catch up - up hill. I had forgotten how hilly Edinburgh was but was soon reminded.

Towered over by large Victorian buildings we soon made our bearings and Dean was at last impressed by some architecture. After dumping our packs we headed to explore. Calton Hill, which overlooks the city, provided a great lookout. It has a monument to Nelson and an observatory, and great views towards the old city and the castle, as well as Arthurs Seat, and the more modern city on the bay.

The next morning Dean did the tour of the Castle (I'd done it last time i was here) and I checked out Holyrood Palace, where the Queen stays when she's in town.

Dean had the obligatory haggis and we tried a few of the local beers.

But... after a couple of days, time to move on - plenty more towns to see. Edinburgh is a great city to visit - all the sights are within walking distance of each other (although all a good walk up a hill!) and everything is just... old...

Below are a couple of views of the city and castle from Calton Hill, and another picture of... somewhere!

Dean & Ally Do Dublin... one last time

€10 one way to Dublin... yes we should have been suspicious as to how long our last Galway to Dublin bus ride was going to take us. Turns out, not much longer, but I was very concerned when our driver kept avoiding all signs for freeways to Dublin!

The Knacks seemed to be taking the night off (or there was a tracksuit sale going on somewhere), other than that, Dublin hadn't changed.

Our mission in our two nights in Dublin - to catch up with Julia and the rest of our Dublin based Slovaks and Czechs - mission accomplished. After being told to leave from the first pub for being too loud, we landed in a nameless (we never took notice of the name) bar and headed for the dancefloor. PeeWee herman tried to infultrate our group but misunderstood Kujo's (tall guy, not Dean) push as a sign of affection, so we just danced around him. Feeling a little weary, we squeezed in one last cheese and garlic chips yum yum yum (with curry for Julia please!).

As the evidence shows, we had an awesome and crazy night with the Dublin crew (and Galway Steve) followed by more sad departures:(

Hopefully not too long before we all catch up again,

Ciao

Going, going...

gone. Had a few drinks with the crew last night, was great to catch up with everyone one last time. Very sad as well though...

Goodbye Galway - and Ireland

Well, we finally leave Galway tomorrow for a few days in Dublin before leaving Ireland for good (well, for now... we'll be back!)

We've loved it here. The pubs, the lads, the craic - it's a brilliant place.

Stay tuned for our next set of adventures. We're heading to Scotland first (Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Glasgow) for a week or so, then straight to Brittany on the north coast of France. Dinard, St. Malo, Caen, Paris, and then onwards to Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany. Then onto Eastern Europe. Making our way through there, then back to Italy for a while, before hopping across to Greece and then Turkey. After that, India, Nepal, maybe back to Thailand and through SE Asia before finally getting back to Oz.

That's the general plan anyway... It'll probably change in the first week! Especially when we realise how broke we are (damn Galway Pub Challenge)... Donations welcome.

Thanks to Brian and Vinnie and the rest of the lads (and lasses) who've made this an awesome stay in Ireland.

Come see us...


Cheers,
Us

End of an (coffee-making) era

After months and months of trying to perfect my cappucinos, I've now just finished up at the O'Briens Sandwich Bar... Here's a photo of me in my cool hat.

The coffee is good...

The Galway Pub Challenge - Pubs part 6

Well, the challenge is over... Unfortunately we've run out of time to finish all the pubs we wanted to go to... there are at least 6 in the city centre left, maybe we'll come back and do them one day.

So, the final few that we did do...

Kaytoo


Murty Rabbitts


Morgans


O Flahertys


The Vic

The Galway Pub Challenge - Pubs part 5

Hole in the Wall.
 

Central. Worst pub in Galway. In fact, one of the worst pubs anywhere. Just a stinky, crappy, old-man pub.
 

The Goalpost.
 

Stage Door. Another gay bar. We liked this one...
 

The Galway Pub Challenge - Pubs part 4

Massimo. Probably our favourite pub. Next to the Blue Note. Huge pub, very cool inside, easy to get drinks, and good music. Just a cool place.
 

The Crane. A bit further down from Massimos. Went there once, for some good trad and singing (can't remember what you call it when someone breaks into a song randomly).
 

Stranos. Gay bar, good music.
 

Bierhaus. I love any pub with a beer menu. We tried a few, and i had a few tried and trusted heavy Belgian beers.
 


The Quays. One of the busiest pubs around, full of tourists and locals. Every time i've been there the live music has been pretty crappy though. Not my favourite place. Always lively though.
 

Richardsons.
 

Garveys.
 

Cuba. Best of the nightclubs that i've been to, but that really isn't very difficult - most of them are pretty bad.
 

Karma. Speaking of which, this is a bad one. Would probably be ok, but just never anyone in there.
 

Murphys.
 

Freeneys.
 

Hughes.