Well I have been having a lot of fun here in Lisbon, it’s a fantastic city and really worth a visit if you are in the area. Tuesday we spent most of the day walking around town and up to the Castle of São Jorge(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_S%C3%A3o_Jorge). From there we wandered down through the Alfama(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfama) and then went and bought our madrid tickets from the train station. That night we wound up back in Bairro Alto and had a few drinks, wound up stumbling back to the hostel at about 3am fairly drunk. Wednesday we got up, shook off the hangovers and headed out to Sintra.
Well I am in lisbon, the weather is absolutely glorious and I have just bought myself a pair of shorts ( Jeans were killing me ). Was amazingly hungover yesterday morning due to a combination of wine, beer and mojitos so the flight was kind of rough. It was a public holiday yesterday so most of the town was pretty quiet, we walked to biarro alto hoping to take a funicular up to the area but the only one we found was broken doh. Had a great dinner up in town of random tapas style food and some wine and then wandered back to the hotel.
Okay so I figured I might pull my finger out and actually update this on the latest happenings and goings on. I have just had my contract extended by another 3 months (I think that will be the last one I take) and just spent a week skiing in france and a weekend hanging out in Paris with Lou and Dave while they were over for holidays. Our landlord has been a complete bastard so we decided to all move out (spurred on by the fact that Thomas was moving back to Germany anyway). It’s a pain because we all really like the place but all good things must come to an end.
Well I finally made it to Amsterdam, it took 2 delayed flights and a cancelled flight but I made it. I guess I should explain that a bit better. I left work on Thursday with my bag on my back and got the tube out to Heathrow Terminal 4 just as planned except that my flight had been delayed by 2 hours (8:30 -> 10:30) by fog at Schipol airport. Pain in the arse but hey what can you do. So I bought a book and started reading (this was about 6pm). So it gets to 10:15 and I am still sitting there reading my book, managed to read a large amount of it and the flights board still shows my flight as being delayed rather than giving a boarding gate to go to.
Well I am getting pissloads of text messages asking me what is going on with the bombs going off in London but I can’t reply (you suck vodafone). Anyway all is well with me here, nobody is really sure what the hell is going on yet, but it is definitely not good. – Matt Edit: Good source of information over at Wikinews(http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Explosions%2C_%27serious_incidents%27_occuring_across_London) For reference, I work across from st james train station and live in clapham. All the bombs seem to have been north london. Apparently a device was found at stockwell which is pretty close to clapham. I will be walking home from work tonight but everything is largely normal around this end of town.
Day 1 Thursday: London -> Ballina After about an hour delay at Gatwick airport we (Killian and myself) finally got onto the plane and headed off. Not long after we took off the pilot started talking about the flight to Shannon and the direction we would be flying which didn’t inspire us with massive confidence in his piloting skills considering we were meant to be flying into Knock. Knock is fairly wierd for an international airport, it is literally a big shed with a big runway next to it. I would say it bears more relation to Port Maquarie airport than Sydney airport.
Okay well I have uploaded the photos from my trip to Ireland. I am in the process of writing up what I actually did which should appear soon. In the meantime have a look at the Pictures Here – Matt
Just realised it’s been 2 months since I put anything up here which is completely slack of me. Sorry. Life has been trundling along pretty well lately, I have been having lots of fun and doing the odd bit of touristy thing. This weekend was a little crazy. Kate, Thomas (flatmates) and myself decided it would be good to have a big party as my birthday was pretty close so last night saw us hosting a pretty serious boozeup here which was great fun. I think everybody had a good night, I sure did. In my hungover state this morning I decided to tag along on a trip to the beach at Broadstairs(http://en.
Well it took longer than I said it would but the photos are up. The new London photos start Here and the Dorset photos are in a new album Here. I haven’t put any descriptions in for the Dorchester photo’s yet. Might try to do that from work tomorrow if I can be bothered. I had a pretty relaxed weekend. Ben came up from Rochester to visit some friends Friday night and then came over for a feed and a movie and crashed Saturday night here. Most of sunday was consumed with watching Battlestar Galactica (Thanks for the DVD’s Dave and Dave).
I have had a few very busy days in the last week. I hired a car thursday night and myself and Ben Holland drove down South to Dorchester to spend the Easter weekend with his family. The drive was pretty uneventful and boring as it was dark. The weekend weather was fantastic. Walking around with just a T-shirt and jeans is a nice change and the countryside down in Dorset is absolutely beautiful.It was really fantastic to catch up with Bens family again as I hadn’t seen some of them for quite some time. Ben and his brother Daniel took me around to see all the local touristy things like Maiden Castle(http://en.