Backpacking

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen....so the song goes, and so it is....very lovely indeed.

Having been unable to find cheap flights to celebrate Xmas in Copenhagen last year, I felt rather obliged to make the most of my 5 day Easter break, so jumped on board a flight to Denmark.... with a few minor hiccups along the way: 1) getting stuck in horrendous Dublin traffic (a national disgrace!) and missing my flight! and 2) being put on stand-by for the flight the following morning and after gleefully accepting an upgrade to business class ("Yes I suppose that would be adequate") and boarding my flight, being informed that "Due to an excess of fog across much of Scandinavia, Copenhagen airport is presently closed, so we will have to sit here and wait for advice from air traffic control in Copenhagen before we are able to take off". Thankfully after a couple of hours, it lifted, and I arrived in Denmark.

Copenhagen is home to approximately 1.7 million people, including the Danish Royal Family, and in 2004 was placed at #5 on a list of the world's most livable cities, along with Sydney! Its charming, centuries old palaces and parks are juxtaposed by its stylish, yet ergonomically designed buildings and a space-age driverless metro. It's akin in many ways to Amsterdam with its gable-house lined canals, cycle-obsessed citizens, and scrumptious pastries - thankfully though, not a mob of Pommie stags to be seen (no offence to ye Pommie lads!). On the other hand, it had that Singaporean police-state aspect to it - it did seem a bit naughty to be seen to be jaywalking, and I would absolutely expect to see someone arrested should they dare spit on the pavement (NOT a bad idea!!)

I started my exploration of Copenhagen at the Radhuspladsen, the city square that is home to the monstrous red-brick Radhus (City Hall), flocks of manky pigeons and a proliferation of "polse" (hot-dog) eating people. The Danes seem to be even more obsessed with munching on hot dogs than the Norwegians and have all sorts of variations on the boring old mutilated mixed animal melange on a bun. If you fancy a hot dog with mustard, then so be it, but if you are more adventurous, you can also have a jalapeno pepper, Danish blue cheese and ketchup combo, or a Crown Prince Frederik Polse (don't ask), or even a Crown Princess Mary - complete with Vegemite!

From the Radhuspladsen I said G'day to Hans Christian Andersen, whose statue sits to the side of the square. Some 200 years after his birth, "Ho-See" remains a enormously popular national icon, and the whole city had gone a tad "Ho-See" mad in preparation for his 200th birthday with shops across the city selling out of his books faster than your local Spar (like a 7-11) can sell a batch of Cheese and Onion flavoured Taytos (for the uninitiated, a truly Irish obsession). Bidding Ho-See farewell, I made for the Danish Design Centre where I devoured my first fair dinkum "wienerbrod" before sampling some of the interactive art on show - a room full of funky, yet functionally designed chairs - when I got bored of sitting on the Pastil chair (a body-contoured chair which you can lounge about on in your swimming pool), I sat for a while on a Tipi chair (rather like sitting on an oversized featherless chicken), before moving onto the Tomato chair (a seat wedged between three tomato like spheres, and finally the Bubble chair - a large fibreglass bubble that floats from the ceiling!!

Anyway, back to the Wienerbrod I was munching on....what is so famously known the world over as the delectable Danish (in all its wonderful varieties), is referred to in Denmark as "Wienerbrod" (i.e. Vienna bread). Why? Well apparently, sometime in the 18th Century, a Danish pastry chef upped and moved to Vienna, where, in between copious coffee outings, and hanging with the Seccessionists, had time to perfect the "Danish" recipe. Ever since, the Danes have referred to the pastry as "wienerbrod". Incidentally, the Austrians still refer to them as "Danishes". Either way - very "Miam-my"!

With the afternoon sun finally rearing its puny little head, I skirted the periphery of the Tivoli amusement park (heavily padlocked for the winter), before roaming up to the quaint Nyhavn ("New harbour") canal, the former merchants' quarter of Copenhagen, and finishing the afternoon on a canal boat tour around the rapidly gentrifying dockland areas, where I got my first glimpse of Amalienborg Palace, the brand-spanking new Opera House, and the backside of the tiny "Little Mermaid" statue....

The following day I headed to the NY Carlsberg Glyptotek, a museum housing an interesting collection of Greek, Etruscan and Egyptian art, before heading up the Rundetarn, a 15th Century round tower, ducking my head into Vor Frue Kirke (where Crown Prince Frederik and Mary got hitched) and ambling down Stroget, a kilometre-long pedestrian shopping strip, replete with high-street fashion stores, eateries and souvenir shops selling Amber, trolls and postcards of the Danish Posh and Becks - aka Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary.

So what's the story with the newlyweds then?? Well, apparently the "commoner" Mary Donaldson, a Tasmanian real estate agent, was hanging out in a Sydney bar during the Olympics, and decided she might try her luck with the dashing young man at the bar - this is where dear Frederik comes in. Of course, not really knowing much about Danish Royals, "Our Mary", didn't have a clue that "Our Frederik" was Denmark's most eligible bachelor at the time. Fast-track to 2005, and she's married to the fella and one of Denmark's most talked about women. A quick scan of the magazine racks in Copenhagen's Central station highlighted just how popular this woman has become.....from the headline screaming out the word's "Skandal" and "Schok" in "Mary's familien" to the pictures of her holding a baby (presumable evidence of her desire for motherhood), it is clear she is quite the Danish Superstar - right up there with Hans Christian Anderson and Aqua ("Barbie Girl").

With a few hours left to kill, I decided to pop over to Sweden for the afternoon - as you do After a quick ride on the train across the 7.8km Oresund bridge, I arrived in Malmo, where I spent a few hours exploring the Gamla Staden (old town) and the city parks which surround Malmo's little castle.

The next morning I headed to Slotsholmen, the present day site of the Danish government, and site of the former Royal Palace, Christiansborg. Feeling uninspired to pay more money to see another load of overly ostentatious reception chambers, I instead went for a walk through the charming Rosenborg Slot (Palace) gardens, and wound my way down to Amalienborg Palace, for the Changing of the Guards before continuing on to get a close-up look at the extremely poxy Little Mermaid Statue, and the hoardes of people clambering it over for that special Kodak moment.

In the afternoon I wandered across to Christianshavn to visit "The Free State of Christiania". Christiania was set up in the 70s as a "semi-utopian" community, which was self-governing, environmentally friendly, and free of the capitalist constraints of the then government. Even today, it remains tax-free and rent-free for its residents, and is a nice change from the fast pace of the rest of Copenhagen. After passing through the gate to "The Free State", the colour and liveliness of the place became apparent....unfortunately, so did the size of the mangy dogs (the mangiest I've seen since visiting Cambodia!), so I promptly departed through the gate, which warned me that "(I was) now entering the European Union" - truly scary stuff hey?

On my final morning in Copenhagen I visited the National Museum, to brush up on my Danish history (yeah, it's still pretty shoddy), before lunching at a quaint little cafe downtown. "Ida Davidson" is apparently "the best place in the world" to sample smorrebrod, Denmark's gourmet specialty. Smorrebrod is essentially an open-faced rye bread concoction, which can be topped with anything from roast beef to fjord prawns, and garnished with whatever you like! I settle for carpaccio beef, topped with a wonderfully bitey mustard, and some salad....boring?? Hell no....absolutely scrumptious....and yeah, at 12Euro, well you'd be jolly well hoping so!!

So now, back to life in Dublin for another month, then onward to England for a while!

Let me know what ye are all up to!

Adios

Belinda xo

'T'as been a disgracefully long time since my last update, so this will be yet another hideously long spiel from B as she attempts to cover a little of the past few months...

So....after a wonderfully long soujourn in Oz and SE-Asia, I arrived back in Ireland mid-March to a city revved up for St Patrick's Day - the centre of Dublin was absolutely mad....never before have I seen so many viking hats, green t-shirts, and wannabe leprechauns in my life! Nor have I ever seen so many ludicrously langered (heavily inebriated) teenagers before 10 in the morning, staggering about the town, engaging in reverse-peristaltis while their good mates tried to prevent them from passing out into/falling asleep in the deposits they left behind.....And goodness gracious me, if you ever need a fix of American marching bands (gotta love a bit of baton-twirling once in a while), St Patrick's Day in Dublin, is the place to be. Nah, Paddy's was great craic, a little on the hectic side, but a whole lot of fun and a great experience.

Who exactly was St Patrick anyway.... I was a tad disappointed to hear that my childhood visions of a holy most-excellently bearded bloke, wielding a wooden staff to ward off the snakes, was a little off the mark. Turned out that St Paddy arrived in Ireland in AD432. He was apparently born in Scotland (though the Welsh, of course, dispute this claim), and arrived in Ireland after being kidnapped by Irish pirates (Arrrr!). He became a slave and was resigned to a life of tending sheep. He then became a Christian, returned to Blighty for a stint, and then hoofed on back to Ireland, after a prophetic vision instructed him to convert everyone in Ireland to Christianity....

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Now skipping forward a few weeks to the Easter long weekend (a good opportunity to avoid the weekendly influx of hen/stag nights from La Terre de Pomme!!)...so my buddy Dean (yet another deserter from the Dublin fold) and I decided to head off to the West. So off it was to Killarney town, the base for exploration of the Iveragh Peninsula (i.e. the Ring of Kerry). Upon arrival in Killarney, we went in search of some tucker....only to find that the only thing we could get anywhere was fish!!! Apparently it's a Good Friday thing.....no beef, chicken, turkey, pork etc.....just fish!!!!! Very strange indeed. And would you believe that all the pubs were closed! Wow......really crazy. After a good feast on very boney fish, we hired some bikes (a slight improvement on the dodgy gearless Chinese bicycles I was cruising round rice paddies on in Laos) and headed for the nearby Killarney National Park. The park is a vast, resplendent, glacially carved out area, with large lakes, monastic sites, the impressive Ross Castle (the last in Munster to fall to Oliver Cromwell's army), ginormous trees covered in lichen, and mad-cyclists hooning around on their ten-speeders. There are also magnificient views of Ireland's highest mountain range - the Macgillycuddy's Reeks - of course we would have climbed up them all, if not for the dire dire weather.

The next day was spent on a bus tour (cringe!!) around the Iveragh Peninsula (aka the Ring of Kerry). Our bus driver, lets call him Seamus (as I can't recall his name), was as mad as a tellytubby overdosed on RedBull, and his driving reflected this. To be fair, the roads around the Ring of Kerry are rather hammered from the frequent flow of tour-buses all day long plying the road, but when you're whizzing around a hair-pin curve at 100miles/hr on a pock-marked, narrow road, one must question the sanity of the driver. The Ring of Kerry was all that one would expect though - beautiful, green, rainy and loaded with sheep and Kerry cows. From the ROK, I bussed up to delightful Dingle peninsula where I cycled out to the most Westerly point in Ireland all around the western part of Dingle - full of yellow flowers, bleeting mad sheep, hair-pin curves, and cottages set in the midst of limestone fenced green fields.

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Another couple weeks passed.....same old same....( work, shopping, eating out, rock-climbing, movies, etc....) before yet another bank holiday weekend in May, where four of us chicks (3 Aussies and Pommie!) headed down to The People's Republic of Cork! Cork is the biggest county in Ireland, and home to lots of pretty green (and sometimes rocky) wide-open spaces, sheep, locals withsome of the most lovely lilting accents in the world (though at times ya need to listen really hard to understand them hey) and tourists who fancy themselves as being exceedingly eloquent after having kissed the Blarney stone! Funnily enough, there doesn't seem to be any cork anywhere in sight! We were in Cork during the accession of 10 countries (namely Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) to the EU, so were lucky to miss the madness going on back in Dublin's fair city (anti-globalisation protests run by groups such as the funnily named/dressed Wombles of Wimbledon). Whilst in Cork, we caught a cab out to see Blarney Castle. The Blarney stone is a chip of the Scottish stone of Scone that was presented to the King of Munster in thanks for his support during a 14th century rebellion. Apparently the hygiene of the stone is questionable (all the locals will tell you this), so my attempt at bending over (held by the ankles and dangling down a little gap) was a little half-hearted. We also meandered round the University College of Cork grounds, drove out to Cobh (pronounced "Cove", the last port of call for the Titanic before it sunk), and cruised around West Cork for the day. According to my guidebook, West Cork was once the "badlands" of Ireland; its ruggedness and isolation rendered it lawless and largely uninhabitible. It's now home to loads of farms, holiday cottages and lovely beaches. It's very pretty and a nice (mostly) chilled out place to spend a few days.

On my second last weekend in Ireland (another bank holiday weekend, you see the bankers work really hard in Ireland so they need loads of holidays), I finally made it across to the splendid Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland, with my long-time dear friend, Katherine, yet another antipodean who has relocated to the Northern Hemisphere. We stopped overnight in Galway, "the fastest growing city in Europe" (apparently!), where we visited The Crane (a good trad pub), and got romanced by the 82 year old Sean, the most famous locksmith in town, and a man who fancies himself as quite the Tangoist, when he's not doing a little Samba on the side. From here we caught a ferry out to Inish more, the largest and most heavily populated of the Aran Islands (a grand total of 700 people live here, and about 50,000 sheep!) and spent the day cycling all around the place. The Aran islands were absolutely delightful, full of green fields, sheer limestone cliff faces tumbling into the rough Atlantic below, ancient forts, monastic sites where early Irish Christians settled to attain spiritual seclusion, old fellas giving tourists rides around the island in wagons towed by ponies, quaint little cottages, and a few quite nice beaches.

And then finally my last weekend in Dublin.....not too shabby, though exhausting! After starting to pack up my gear last week, I realized that I had accumulated a disgraceful amount of gear.....so much so that I had to leave 2 big bag fulls of gear in Dublin, and still pay an excess on my luggage allowance...grrrr. Went to the RHCP/T(h)rills/Pixies concert on the Sat night with everyone else in the country........a little hectic being sandwiched in with 100,000 other people but good fun nonetheless.

For now I've moved on to the wonderfully grand city of Edinburgh. Who knows how long I'll be here. At the moment I'm looking for a new job, not to mention a home. I'm also heading off to Norway in 4 days for a quick holiday. Apparently Norway is more expensive than Ireland - could this possibly be so?!?!?!

To finish up, I'd like to say thanks to all who were part of my Dublin experience - I miss you guys!!! Especially thanks to Dean, Ken, Jo, Julie, Regina, and the rest of the Abbey gang, the Saffas, and of course all you chicks from the South Western Area Health Board! 'T'as been grand sharing the experience with you all...I'll be back soon enough I'm sure.

Anyway, must finish up, the chick at the library is evil-eyeing me, which means I have to get off the free internet service.....Hope this email finds all of you happy and well. Again, sorry for the disgraceful lag between emails.....ah well. Let me know if any of you are going to be up/over this way soon. Would be delighted to put any (? ok so most) of you up for a few nights....when I get a place that is!

Slainte

Love Belinda xox

G'day

Well after a couple of weeks of

"TheweatherhasbeensolovelyIalmostforgotIwasabouttoenteranorthernhemispherewinter", we're having a rainy day in Dublin. I'm actually well acclimatized to the cold and a balmy 8 degrees has no longer become something to write home about (which is of course why I'm doing it! hey?). In spite of all one hears about how shocking the weather is here, I think Sydney gets a hell of a lot more rain than Dublin (when we're not having a drought!). But then El Nino has gone a little nuts these days with his ambitious efforts to spread the good weather love all around......

For this email, I've decided to give you the LONG and SHORT versions (a-la-Leighton - Lord of the Castle and close friend of Paz Thakra - Cantrill). I was recently informed my emails are at times, nauseatingly long, hence the attempted succinctness.

SHORT VERSION
Since my arrival back from Croatia.....I have:

• Spent a weekend in Galway and visited the spectacular Cliffs of Moher and the Burren (lots of rocks speckled across the countryside) in County Clare with a tour guide who liked to perseverate (i.e. he had to say everything twice, say everything twice - "Soon we will stop for lunch. We will stop for lunch. You can get chips for €2. Did you hear you can get chips for €2?!" Jill [old uni friend] was on the verge of going "postal" but after those €2 chippies was able to regain some composure).

• Had some old school friends visit - Aimee, Claire, Suz and Zelda (all ex-Avondaleans) - very delighted to see some old mates, even if they did drag me along to the Arlington to watch the Irish dancing!

• Been enjoying the Rugby (nothing like being abroad to reignite the patriotic passions for sport) and spent many an hour at the pub (the Irish equivalent of the beach - without the sun, salt, sea, sand and seedbags in lairy dacks and speedos, and with a lot more pasty yobbos) with the antipodean delegation supporting the Wally-bies. Still a little disappointed with the loss - it seemed the whole of Ireland was barracking for the Aussies - not a lot of love between the Poms and Irish even now.

• Moved out of my home and back into the hostel (just til I leave) as Claire and Andrew (Saffas) left today to go to the US. I am yet to rid myself of the mandatory "Hey" that Saffas put at the end of every single sentence (I won't even get started on all the "just now" and "now now" business, let alone the "Shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame" and the "Isit").

• Spent a weekend in Edinburgh on a reconnaissance mission (planning to move there next year) with my Aussie mates Anthony and Dean, and a new recruit Alana. It's absolutely gorgeous....(oh and you don't have to stare constantly at the pavement so as to avoid the bubbly globs of saliva that Irish men so like to propel out of their "mouts") we did a Ghouls and Ghosts tour with Spooky Dave, climbed the mountain to Arthur's seat, visited Edinburgh castle and ate some HAGGIS!! miam miam.....

• Finally visited Kilmainham Gaol - originally a gaol for thieving types (i.e. those poor bastards who got shipped out to Australia for stealing a pint of Guinness) - but later used as a prison for political ratbags such as James Connolly, Michael Collins, Padraig Pearse (Easter Rising chaps).

• Survived the knacker (think scary scary Westies to the power of 10) enslaught at the Smithfield ice skating rink - only a few war wounds to prove that I was "skating like I meant it".

That's pretty much it!

As for the next few weeks.......I'm hoping to still make it to the Ring of Kerry but am fast running out of time, I'm off to Paris (yet again) with some fellow antipodeans, and will be leaving Dublin just after Xmas.

As of this week, my itinerary for the next few months post-Xmas is as follows:

- a few days in Munich and surrounds
- Singapore
- a diving course in the Tioman islands (off SE coast of peninsular Malaysia)
- Penang
- KL
- Melbourne for my sister's wedding
- road-trip round Tassie for a week (in search of the famous two-headed Taswegian)
- Sydney for a few weeks
- Laos for a month
- Dublin for a couple months
- Edinburgh

Life's tough hey?

All of the above is liable to change in the next few days/weeks....but will keep you posted!

Will send the long version "just now" (translation - maybe today, maybe next week, or maybe when the Garda National Immigration Bureau start sticking up my picture on telegraph poles around town)...

Ciao

Love Belinda
xoxo

Dobar dan!

Well I've finally made it to Croatia....I say finally because a) I'd wanted to come here for 3 or 4 yrs now, and b) when I went to check-in at Dublin airport, I wasn't sure I would even make it here! At check-in, they did the standard pass-port/ baggage check etc. and then asked if I had a visa for Czech Republic, as I had to fly via Prague. No.....of course i didn't as I was only transitting and my final destination doesn't have visa requirements!!! They said that it could be a problem as many Aussies had been deported from Czech recently because of visa problems.....and then phoned through to some immigration official in Prague to check with him/her. Finally I got the OK and went on to the boarding gate, where they called my name over the loud speaker and went through exactly the same rigmarole....so I was very grateful when I finally got on the plane in Prague for Split, on the Central coast of Dalmatia in Croatia....As far as I understand, there is actually no significant Dalmatian population on the central-south coast of Croatia, the name rather derives from the Illyrian word for brave and strong man...or something like that! Still, you can buy postcards with the mandatory adorable spotty dog from all the suvenijri shops.

I was delighted to finally arrive in Split (about 8 hours after leaving Dublin) and after clearing customs in about 5 seconds (I think Australia is actually the only country that cares about that sorta stuff), I headed into town courtesy of a German tourist bus full of 80 year old retirees.....it was either that or wait for 2 hours til midnight! I had planned to head straight to the hotel, but couldn't find the jolly place (the old town of Split is quite a beautiful maze of alley ways) so had a late night roam about the marble-paved remnants of Diocletian's palace, admiring the ancient alley-ways, columns, arches and campaniles. Under the streetlights, the marble glistens brightly, as though it's just been polished...charming...

After staying in a characterless squat of a hotel, I found a private room to stay in the next day (literally a room in someone's house they offer for travellers to stay in), with a marvellous view of the cathedral, eastern city gate and campanile (the bells of which awoke me each morning at a ridiculous 6am!!!!). Aside from the spectacular view, it was a great location as it was actually within the walls of the former palace of Diocletian (Roman Emperor 245-312AD). The old town is now the central tourist area of Split, full of quaint cafes, chic boutiques and splendid ruins....some are actual built into the remains of the palace, but over the centuries more buildings have been added so the city has an interesting blend of architecture from different eras.

I spent Sunday doing a walk around the Marjan peninsula to the west of Split city. The peninsula is the location of Split city's beachside villages, charming little stone villages and churches, and local sculptor, Mestrovic's wooden life-of Christ reliefs, inside a little castle (the Kastelet). The peninsula is also a favourite place for the Splicani (locals) to ride their bikes, roller-blade or scoot around, and then stop in the little rocky coves for a swim in the crystal blue waters of the Adriatic.

Denise (mum) flew in from Australia on Monday so it was great to finally see her after 4 months of being away from home! I met her at Split airport, and after a long lunch and a mandatory gelato (truly divine stuff!), we did a quick wander about Diocletian's palace, visiting the Peristyle (central courtyard of the old palace), vestibule (where subjects used to wait before meeting Diocletian), cryptoporticus (great gallery where the dude used to go strolling up and down), and Cathedral of St Domnius (Domnius was actually martyred by Diocletian, who used to make a sport of persecuting the Christians of the time). The Cathedral was originally the mausoleum of Diocletian, but after his body disappered from here in the 18th century, it became a place of worship (and more recently, tourism).

On Tuesday wa took a bus out to the ruins of Salona, just to the north west of Split. Salona was once the capital of Dalmatia and the likely birthplace of Diocletian. It was home to more than 60 000 people and n important centre of Christianity for the time. Here you can see stretches of a large aqueduct, a necropolis, basilica, and amphitheatre. From here we took a bus out to the ancient Greek city of Trogir (300c BC) where we wandered through the marble paved streets and visited the Romanesque cathedral, Cipiko Palace (a gothic mansion which is now home to the tourist bureau), the town loggia (with a pretty clock tower and classical columns), Pinakoteka (church of John the Baptist with the mandatory Madonna and child iconic painting), Kamerlengo fortress, Marmont's Gloriette and St Mark's Tower.

On Wednesday we took a boat out to the island of Brac, the third largest in the Adriatic. The island is famous for its marble which was used for the building of the Reichstag in Berlin, the US White House and Diocletian's palace. All over the island you see fields of olive vines, orange trees and marble clumps which have been stacked up high to clear space for agriculture. We took a bus across to the town of Bol, a lovely beach resort famed for it's Zlatni rat (golden cape), a shingle beach jutting out into the ocean on a small sliver of pine covered land. It's meant to rate in the top 10 beaches in the world (according to Lonely PLanet) and it is undeniably beautiful - the water is a transluscent azure - but i dunno about lying around on pebbles!! From there we took the bus back to the port of Supetar, (home to a village of mottled stone houses squatting around the moon shaped harbour), where we wandered about the village before taking the ferry back to Split.

We spent Thursday morning looking at the archaeological museum of Split, with a good mix of Roman, Greek and Illyrian artefacts (urns, jewellery, columns, reliefs, busts etc), and admiring more of the old town (in between shopping) before taking an afternoon ferry across to the island of Hvar, where we are now....

Some things I've learnt about Croatia since I've been here.....when someone greets you with "Bog", they are actually saying hello, not telling you to find the nearest public toilet. The word for pig is "svinjska" (just like swine!) and very useful if you don't eat piggy. Noone ever eats here.....you can go from cafe to cafe to cafe, and people are just drinking....pivo (beer), kava mijelko (like a macchiato and very very potent), or caj (tea), which is why the locals are so damn skinny!! When they do actually eat, it's always very healthfully cooked fish or pizza (delicate base, no oil, plenty of veges).

What else, the young men are much better looking than the lads in Ireland, though i think all the men over 50 have names like Sergio, Damir and Stavros (just the open shirt, hairy chest, bejewelled fingers look - reminiscent of Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast). The best mode of transport is the Vespa.....And everyone is obsessed with soccer!!!! I think a dislike of soccer here would be a ticket to social ostracision....you'd be a complete leper.

Anyway, Hvar town is a lovely Adriatic resort town full of international sailing boats, German tourists (everyone presumes we're German!!) with overly sun-tanned skin and dowdy 1980s swimsuits, waterfront cafes and pizzerias, and stalls selling lavender.......

Will finish this up later....

need to go grab some lunch (pizza and icecream) before heading out on the afternoon ferry to Korcula island...

Ciao!

Belinda

Hola

Since last writing I've done three trips abroad! The first was a weekend in London at the beginning of August, 3 weeks ago I finally made it to Belfast, and then last weekend I zipped over to Paris!

I'd spent a week in London nearly 6 years ago, and had considered it my LEAST favourite city.....I thought perhaps a few years (on both London and my parts) would maybe change my perceptions of the city. My memories were of a ginormous, filthy, bleak metropolis, where it rained constantly, everything was overpriced, people were boxed into the tube like battery chickens and where service with a smile was a foreign concept.

So maybe it's not that bad.....for starters, I had a weekend of brilliant sunshine. I arrived in London on the tail end of one of the hottest fortnights on record. People were flailing about in the 39 celcius heat, turning into lobsters as they laid out to roast in Hyde, St James' and Regent's Parks (Hyde Park looking a little lunar with all the grass having shrivelled up and died), and the tube was like an underground sauna complex. And aside from the grime, crowds (I almost took up claustrophobia) and frowns.....oh and did I mention exorbitant prices (£12 for a B-grade movie in Leicester Square!!!), I did have a grand time.

As I had spent my time in London back in 1997, racing about to see all the main sights, I didn't have a full agenda of sightseeing to do. So I went and checked out the places I had missed last time) such as Lord's Cricket Ground, Abbey Road recording studios, Covent Garden Markets, Milennium Bridge, London Eye and Tate Modern Gallery.

I started off heading up to Lord's cricket ground (I'm not even going to try and explain cricket to the Yanks, and Europeans on his list!) where I took a 2hr tour of the grounds, under the guidance of a South African, who had the charisma of Mr Bean's forlorn teddy! Anyway, it was quite cool to go into the members stands, wander round the grounds, and check out the museum - got to see the Ashes too!!! They gave Bradman a good rap (well deserved), and provided us with a good overview of the history of cricket in England and across the globe, before taking us off to the Real (Royal) Tennis courts and letting us watch professional Real players strut their stuff on the courts.

In case you ever wondered, the reason they say "Love" when the score is zero, well an egg is about the same shape as a zero, the French word for egg is "l'oeuf"(spelling?), and with an anglicized twang on the word, makes it sound rather like "love". And why on earth do they count up 0-15-30-40??? Well again, in French, you would count "l'oeuf, quinze (15) , trente (30), quarante-cinq (45)". The Poms thought the 45 was too difficult to pronounce so decided to use quarante (40) instead - lazy!! Anyway, it was interesting, but it just wasn't cricket!!

After Lords, I wandered up the road to the nearby Abbey Rd recording studios. I'm not hugely up on my Beatles trivia, but I think this is where they cut their first LP - i could be completely wrong so apologies to Beatophiles......There is a whole big graffiti wall there where people from all over the world pay kudos to the Beatles. Of course i did the Beatles walking across the road thing along with all the other tourists.

From their I made a quick dash to Euston station to catch up with Leighton (Cantrill, some of you would know) for a brief lunch before he knicked off to Manchester for the weekend. And then set off again for an afternoon of sightseeing, stopping for a quick look around Covent Garden Market (a stack of high fashion shops, art and craft stalls, restaurants, cafes etc), St Paul's Cathedral (built 1710 by Christopher Wren, wedding place of Charles and Di, I THINK it's the 2nd biggest in the world), and then crossed the Milennium Bridge (recently reopened after reconstruction to stop in shaking about in the wind) over the algae-coated Thames to the Tate Modern gallery. The gallery is housed in what used to be a large power station. It has a grand collection of works by artists such as Gilbert and George (after whom my green tree frogs mascots were named), Dali, Picasso, Warhol, Matisse and Kandinsky. Really teriffic collection and it's free!!!!! A lot of cool stuff in London is free thankfully, which makes up for the ridiculous amounts you have to pay on food, accommodation etc etc.

I then met up with some friends from Oz, Susan (Holloway) and Lynelda at Victoria, and we grabbed some delicious Italian food.

I spent Saturday morning and afternoon doing a quick whiz around town admiring the sights of Buckingham Palace (didn't see old Lizzy or those wretched corgies this time - last time, by pure chance, we saw her twice on consecutive days!!), strolling along the stinky Thames between the Tower of London/Tower Bridge, and Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, had a picnic lunch in the park with Suz, Zelda and her man (2 thumbs up!), had a look at Kensington Palace and Royal Albert Hall, went for a stroll down Oxford St for some serious WINDOW shopping, and sauntered through the enormous Hyde Park and watched the Poms at play on the paddle-boats on the Serpentine (big snake-like lake). Dinner in Leicester Square - couldn't really fork out the money for the theatre which was a bummer, but nice Italian food (again) never hurts!

Back to London on the Sunday and I moved in with some South Africans I met at the hostel. Really great people, though they have very peculiar accents and reckon their rugby/cricket teams are better than ours.....

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago I made it up to Belfast. Once I eventually got there (train broke down and they shunted us on to buses which arrived 2 hours later than expected!!! I headed out for a wander around town.

I wandered down to the impressive City Hall at Donegal Square, then checked out St Anne's Pro-cathedral with its impressive Gertrude Stein mosaics, and ginormous British flags hanging from the ceiling. I was amused to learn that St Anne's patron saints and two little teddy bears called Patrick and Anne, and that the church has a tradition of collecting donations using Black Santas. The tradition started in 1926, when the then Dean, got a wooden barrel and sat out on the cathedral steps collecting donations whilst wearing his black clerical cloak (his long fluffy beard scored him the nicname of Santa.

Aside from that and a little shopping (naturally), I spent my time looking around the Catholic and Protestant parts of town. I'd kinda got a taste for how crazy the Catholic/Protestant deal was, when we drove around the North at the beginning of August. Not only are the Catholic and Protestant areas clearly demarcated by a huge wall (about 20ft or so high, made from corrugated-iron and covered in graffiti, but there are also gates that lock the areas off from each other. I think the need for this "peace wall" is taking Frosts' notion of "good fences mak(ing) good neighbours" to the extreme. The Protestant areas are plastered with Pommie flags, red, white and blue striped curbs, murals with images of William of Orange (the dude that lead to the defeat of the Catholic King in the Battle of the Boyne), The Apprentice Boys (the younguns who shut off the gates of Derry to keep out the Catholics in the 1689 siege), the Scottish Flag etc. I went for a walk through the Protestant area on the Saturday afternoon (apparently not always a good idea) and then back on the Black Taxi Tour the next day. The Catholic areas are a little more subdued, far fewer flags, and the murals have orange and green colours, the word "Saiorse" (Gaelic for Freedom)images of the British Bulldog, and pictures of the phoenix, a symbol of a united Ireland. The black taxi tour I did through teh Catholic and Protestant areas on Sunday was pretty cool - a convoy of about 5 cabs zoomed about 20 of us around town, stopping to look at all the murals, the peace line, memorials to various people who had died in the conflict etc....great commentary too, though the whole bollocks that has gone on up there is really beyond comprehension......people are still getting shot/assaulted, the hatred and criminality is rife.....really crazy stuff. The Bloody Sunday (Jan 1972) inquiry was reopened last year and is now into its 368th day!!

Back to Dublin....a fortnight ago, I headed over to the Chester Beatty Library - it won European Museum of the year in 2002. The museum is housed in the old clock tower of Dublin castle, and is the ginormous art collection of Beatty, a Canadian mining millionaire. It mostly contains Islamic and Far Eastern manuscripts and includes such exhibits as clay tablets from 2700BC Babylon, Japanese wood-block prints, Chinese books covered in Jade cases, and paintings from the Ottoman and Persian empires. It also has 250 Koranic manuscripts. Quite an interesting collection.

I had a quick trip to Paris last weekend with some Dublin-based Aussie friends. Did the usual sightseeing things like Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur and Monmartre etc, and also visited Les Egouts de Paris (Paris' sewer museum - fascinating little place. A tad stinky though!), Catacombs (more than 6 million people buried here from overflowing Parisian cemetaries), Cimetiere due Pere Lachaise (resting place of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Chopin etc), the Latin Quarter (where we dined on Escargots, Raclette [essentially melted cheese poured on top of spuds] and Creme Brulee!), Marais quarter (gay and Jewish centres of Paris, also brilliant shops/cafes - ever tried a chili chocolate!?! Not bad!), Centre Pompidou, Jardin des Tuileries, Hotel des Invalides (Napoleon's resting place) etc.....Very quick trip and insanely busy but very enjoyable. Paris is such an unreal city - great sights, people, food and general ambience. Thinking about coming and living here for a while......improving my French, imbibing the atmosphere long term. Who knows though.....Many places to see, things to do.

I've also managed to meet up with some folks from back home - Aimee Harrison and Emily Butler, who were in town for the weekend after doing a tour round Ireland - and Leighton and Sara Cantrill, who were Ireland for about 5 days the other week.

So for this week it's boring old work for me, and then i'm heading off to Croatia next Saturday for 2 weeks!! Can't wait. My mum is flying over to meet me so it'll be great to catch up with her and spend some time travelling down the Adriatic coast....

Ciao

Belinda

xoxo