Backpashing Europe

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

Tres apologetique for the laxness with the email updates of late Aside from the trip from a fortnight ago, there hasn't been all that much going on aside from work.

The job is going quite well and i'm enjoying the challenges of managing a small caseload of kiddies, and hanging out drinking coffee with the girls and guys at work. Ok, so I don't want to make it sound too cruisy, because it certainly is not. However, the amount of time the Irish spend on 'breaks' proportionate to the amount of time they spend actually working is insane! No wonder the economy is sliding back down after the Celtic boom of more recent years. My working day runs from 9 to 5, with an official 15min coffee break and 1hr15mins for lunch!! crazy.....they are also very flexible with the hours. You can rock up at 10 if you like, and finish a little later, or dock some time off lunch break and have an even shorter day! Still, I'm flat out all day seeing clients, doing admin etc. I'm certain the stress levels in this country are about half that of Oz.

Things are generally chilled out here...plodding even...You see the plodding effect when you hit the shops or a restaurant. If you want to go clothes shopping, you will spend 10mins waiting to be served, even if there is only one person in queue in front of you! And this is after you've already queued for 10 mins to get into the change room!

I'm still living at the youth hostel in town, but may be moving out with some South Africans (Saffas) I met at the hostel next week. It's a little less central than where I am now but a good deal cheaper. For the most part, the hostel is a lot of fun as you're always meeting new people and there's always something to do. Though it can get expensive and tiring as you end up going out at least 5 nights a week and getting an average of 6hrs sleep a night. And until last week I had to share a room with a girl with foot odour problem. My goodness, you'd think the poor lass' mother would have told her. I'd walk in at night, and walk back out again it was so bad. She actually manages to clear the whole tv room with her smelly feet. Seriously gross stuff. I've moved rooms now thank goodness!

A couple of weekends ago, I went with a group of a half dozen Aussies to see the peculiar Gaelic sport of hurling - not of the technicolour yawning kind either!! Hurling was an early version and blend of hockey and lacrosse. You have 2 fifteen-a side teams, and the sport is played on a rectangular field. The objective of the tame is to try and hit a baseball sized ball with the 'caman' (hurley stick), over the crossbar (goalposts) or into the net below. Players can whack the ball along the ground, hit it it through the air or balance it on the broad mit of the stick. They also seem to be quite fond of giving each other a good belt. It's a fast and furious game, and we had a great time. We actually got tix for the quarter finals so the level of play was pretty awesome even though it's kinda hard to follow what's going on all the time cause it's sooooooo fast.

I spent last weekend driving round Northern Ireland with two Aussies I met at the hostel. We had planned to catch a train up to Belfast for the weekend and spend the whole time there but at the last minute decided the flexibility of having a car would be much better so wound up hiring a VW Golf for the weekend and not actually making it to Belfast, aside from the skirting around the edge of the city we did on our way to the North coast.

On the way to the north, we stopped to have a look at Newgrange, home to one of the most significant Stone Age sites in Europe. Unfortunately the place was crawling with package tourists, and us travellers were told we couldn't possible do the 'tour' for another 3-4 hours!! Grrr, disappointed, we kept driving north til we spotted the ruins of a castle tower in someone's paddock beside the motorway. So of course we snuck in to have a look, first running and jumping on the huge rolled up hay bales scattered across the field, and then climbing the tower for a nice view over the countryside, and of course the rest of the property in case the farmer came a-running with his pitchfork!

We had the impression that the border crossing would involve some sort of police check, and there'd be some scary looking military dudes with their AK-47s, so we strategically poised the camera to film any shenanigans that would arise. Sadly, we didn't even realize when he had crossed the border as there's not even a sign to let you know!! The only way of really knowing is by looking at the roadsigns which are no longer printed bilingually in Gaelic and English.

As you get a few k's into N Ireland, it becomes a little more obvious you're in another country due to the vast number of flags and painted road-curbs proclaiming individual's loyalties to the Union (Brits) or the Republic. You drive through one town, to see it plastered with the Union Jack, flag of England, and red, white and blue stripes on the curbs. And then the next town has the Orange, green and white of the Irish Republic flag. Other towns have a good mixture, but typically the territories are clearly demarcated.

Upon hitting the north coast we hiked along the cliffs of Fair Head, from where you can see across to bonny Scotland. Along the cliffs here which in some points drop straight into the sea, are cahrming wildflower meadows, and paddocks of sheep, cows and the odd bull. After the long walk out to the headland we decided it would be easier to cut through the fields, and had fun rounding up the sheep in the paddock, and running away from the bulls when they got a little grumpy (don't think they like purple coats so much!). We then drove around to Ballycastle, at the mouth of the glens of Glenshesk and Geltaisie, and stopped for a while at Ballintoy harbour, where a lot of artists hang out to paint the "dark rock-strewn strand" which contrasts peculiarly with the pale-stone breakwater. We finished off the evening with a hearty meal of fish 'n' "chippies" (as they insist on calling them regardless of age/sex/status). We wound up camping somewhere along the coast for free because we checked in too late to register, and drove off in the wee hours of the morning so we could make the most of our day

We hit Carrick-a-rede (meaning "rock in the road") the next morning where you get to walk across an 80ft above-the-sea rope plank bridge. The bridge connects the mainland with a small island which used to be home to a salmon fishery. The views from here were really lovely, and the bridge, potentially scary when the wind picks up a bit. On the day we were there, however, the water was glassy enough for water skiing so the fear factor was a little absent. Still, nice place.

Next we made our pilgrimage to the Giant's Causeway, where the three of us blew £20 on a top-notch breakfast at a posh hotel (hey we got free parking out of it!). The causeway is pretty impressive and definitely worth the efforts to get up there if you're ever over in Ireland. If you haven't seen pics before in national geographic or on the discovery channel, it's has quite a lunar feel to it, and as W Thackeray said, 'When the world was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit over - a remnant of chaos.'. It is thought that the causeway was formed over time through volcanic eruptions, and the subsequent cooling of the lava into basalt hexagonal stepping stones which cascade down into the ocean. There are estimated to be some 40,000 of these stone columns stackd in together. According to ancient Gaelic legends, the causeway was obviously built by the giants, under the guidance of Finn McCool (they named a Maccas burger after him!!), the warrior and commander of the king of Ireland's armies. "Finn could pick thorns out of his heels while running and was capable of amazing feats of strength. Once, during a fight with a Scottish giant, he scooped up a huge clod of earth and flung it at his fleeing rival. The clod fell into the sea and turned into the Isle of Man".

After the causeway we cruised along the scenic coast to the surfing beaches of Portstewart and Portrush - a little too cold for a dip though. Nice place to sleep for a bit though as the sun was shining briliiantly that afternoon. Must have hit 24! The locals were going nuts, sweating like pigs and wiping their brows etc..... Then we continued along to the beaches and cliffs at Benone beach, from where you have spectacular views out to the Inishowen peninsula of county Donegal (part of the republic), and where you can drive your car for 12km along the beach! Good fun though we almost took the car swimming at one point - male drivers, i dunno!!

From there we stopped at the 18th century estate of Downhill, where we visited the Mussenden Temple (sitting directly at the edge of a cliff overlooking a beach - stunning views), and ruins of the Downhill palace. Really really nice joint they used to have there and incredible scenery.

We stopped in Derry (or if you're a Pom, Londonderry) for the night. The drive into town was kinda fun. As we hit the town periphery, we saw the usual flag propaganda, but to add to that, the military were doing a police check, oversized guns and all. They were clearing out some cars looking for dodgy people and weapons etc..... Anthony (one of my Aussie mates) took the Steve Irwin approach by putting on his most ocker Queensland accent and "G'day"-ing them. Worked a treat as they just waved us on through.

Apparently things are pretty calm now in Derry, although all the guidebooks warn firmly about parking your car in the wrong place, perchance some Brit-mad local notices your licence plates and decides to do in your windows with a golfstick. No probs though - car was in good nick when we went to drive off the next day.

We spent the morning walking about the 17th century old walls and touring the "Bloody Sunday" sites. Derry is the only remaining completely walled off city in Ireland and has provided the barricade to numerous sieges over the years between the Irish and the Brits. More than thirty years after the Bloody Sunday massacre (30 Jan 1972), the guys responsible for the deaths of the 17 victims (most of them very young with no previous major political associations) have not been brought to justice. Tony Blair reopened the inquiry into the massacre a few years ago, so it is hoped that the families of the victims will be delivered some sort of justice, but why exactly it still hasn't happened is unfathomable. There are several interesting murals painted on the walls around town exemplifying the brutalities and injustices of the massacre, and flags flying all over town proclaiming allegiances. Not far from the massacre site, there are even Palestinian flags flying high above the buildings, indicative of their empathy for the Palestinian cause. In other parts of town, the allegiance to the British empire is obvious with red white and blue stripes on the street curbs, flags flying etc.

After the main sightseeing, we decided to do some shopping (as you do) and found that you could buy BB guns (i think that's their name, anyway the rubber bullet ones?) in several shops around town. we went in and checked some of the places out;. apparently it is considered perfectly normal to sell them to 7 year olds wearing dog collars and with blue mohawks on the tops of their heads. We even got some footage of em running about town shooting at each other with these bullets. Crazy crazy stuff going on in this world! noone else seemed to bat and eyelid though!

Ok, so i never finished this off last week.....update.....

Spent all this last week at the hostel. Same old same, hanging out with the foreign legion etc. Have decided to move into the Saffas as they have promised to cook me braii every night (a Saffa BBQ) Was also spurred on by a break-in to my room at the hostel the other night. Some jerk jumped in through the skylight and did a little damage to the room. As far as i know, nothing of mine was touched but he stole one of the girls' video cameras. Ill probably discover 2mths down the track that something or other is gone..... All my friends are getting motivated and moving out too so the social side of things isn't the same anymore.

I flew into London this evening for the weekend. Have planned for tomorrow to check out Wimbledon and Lords, have lunch with leighton cantrill (friend from Sydney), visit the Tate gallery in the arvo, and meet up with Suz and Zelda for dinner. Hoping to see some more friends on Sat but need to do some organizing between now and then.

Anyway, hope you're all in good shape, enjoying life (wherever you are) and keeping out of trouble - especially you pink ladies at the San!! hehe

Ciao

Love Belinda

P.S. I finally have an address for mailing. Any belated birthday presents can be sent here

Flat 72, 35 Mountjoy Square
Dublin 1
Ireland.

Hello from Sunny Dublin (and yeah that is borderline oxymoronic -but true).

Out of the 5 days I've been in town, about 3 have been moderately sunny so it was a pleasant welcome to this rainy city. Though the presence of the sunshine doesn't exactly equate to warmth. Summer began here just over a week ago and the locals are lapping it up. When I arrived on Wednesday, the thermometer must have hit about 20. So everyone seems to be cruising round in shorts and t-shirts like it's 40 degrees! Meanwhile, Belinda is shivering away in a jumper and jeans. Having come from a month in Asia, the weather was a bit of a shock - especially when you have in mind that it is SUMMER!

Dublin is really a very attractive city, and contrary to popular notions that it is packed with drunken yobbos, I haven't found it all that bad - so far. But then I've been going to bed pretty early. Well as early as humanly possible considering it is still light outside at 10.30 at night!!! And then the sun peeks its way out at around 4am. It's very disconcerting. I have no concept of what the time is here - aside from what my tummy tells me. Considering how expensive the food is here, my tummy tries not to tell me too much at all at the moment, but hey you gotta eat! If you use the McEconomic scale, Dublin is on par with the whole of Switzerland and London. One large Big Mac meal will set you back EUR5.90!!! Basically that's the same for everything here. Same price as in Aussie dollars but it's Euro. So a cup of coffee is EUR2.50, and a sandwich is at least €3 etc. The only cheap thing I've found so far is internet access at 60c an hour if you go early enough!

Something peculiar to Dublin is the overly peroxided ladies that hang about on the street corners of the inner city suburbs selling fruit from prams! I would never have thought to set up shop from the back of a pram, but it's not such a bad idea. Considering the number of young ladies with babies
here, I guess it makes sense. Whereas the chicky babes at home with small babies would tend to be in their early 30s, there are many girls who can't be more than early 20s carting their bubs around in prams. Must be the long cold winters!

So what have I been up to......not a lot. Aside from orienting myself (I have a shocking sense of direction as some of you will know - I get lost walking back to my hotel in the middle of the night in pretty much every place I go to), and finding all the good places to eat and shop (got a new
handbag, now need some new shoes), I've been searching for a place to live. At the moment I'm staying with Jill, a friend from uni in town, but will need to find something permanent before I start work, hopefully next week if everything goes to plans. I still have some paperwork to do that
I wasn't told about before I left home so it may be 2 weeks before I start working to teach these Irish folk how to speak properly!!!

I've heard people go on and on about the Irish accent and had expected to have far more difficulties but so far haven 't had too many problems. But then, I'm in the centre of town. I suspect that when I start working, I'll have an interesting time. Where I'll be working is meant to have a pretty thick accent...so we'll see how it goes.

I spent yesterday in Kilkenny, purported to be the most beautiful medieval town in Ireland. It is definately a lovely place to spend a day, and I enjoyed visiting the Kilkenny Castle (nice but "same same" as all the other jolly ones I've been to!), St Canice's Cathedral and tower, Domincan Black
Abbey, Rothe House etc etc.....but best of all, found a delightful creperie, which has divine bruschetta and the ONLY Spanish Hot Chocolate in Ireland!!! Apparently the locals aren't big fans but it really is divine. I'm definitely going back to Kilkenny just to eat at this place! Any of you folks who make it over here.....we'll do lunch here. Really top stuff.

My last few days in Thailand were really great - though a tad on the lazy side. I met up with the American-Israeli guys I met snorkelling on Ko Phi Phi and spent the time with them - eating, shopping, eating (hey last chance for good banana smoothies), and more shopping - oh and running away from persistent tuk-tuk drivers and food vendors ("I'll get fat" seems to work). Phuket wasn't such a bad place either. I'd never seen myself going there because of its rep as a glitzy getaway for honeymooners and fat German tourists (not to forget those grotesque middle-aged men salivating over 14 yr old local girls). All of that is there...but being the off-season and with people staying at home because of SARs/terrorism, it was a little on the quiet side. Instead of having the beach chocker-block with portly
half-naked people sunning themselves on deckchairs, you had a beach of half-empty deckchairs - and not so many half-naked people. Plenty of beach vendors were still in force however trying to sell sarongs, ice-creams, drinks, fruit etc etc. Burying your face in whatever book you are reading when you see them coming seems to work though - even if you are very obvious about it!!

Not much planned for the next few days. I need to do the house-hunting thing, and might even squeeze in a bit of sightseeing too - considering i'm in a rather groovy city and all that....When going out for dinner the other night, I walked kinda straight past Trinity College without even batting an
eyelid - hey I was tired after flying and waiting for nearly 24hrs!! Shame shame....

Anyway, it is very nice to be in a big city again with hot water (forgotten how nice a hot shower was), flushing toilets and a relatively organised public transport system...at least I hope so! Though I will definitely miss the steamy Asian weather, beautiful beaches, cheap tasty food, hassle and groovy people I met along the way.

Gotta go - more house hunting to do.

Ciao

Love Belinda

27 Jan 2002

Hola.....

Back in beautiful Madrid! (actually I seem to be saying that about a lot of places but there are truly many beautiful places here and we have visited many).

I left Paris on Wed morning after 6 fantastic days........Our last day there was mostly looking for postcards and souvenirs etc.... We also visited the Pere Lechaise Cemetary where you get to see the graves of folks like Jim Morrison (complete with lots of flowers and love poems written to him), Edith Piaf, Balzac, Chopin, Pisarro, and many others. Almost got locked in too as we arrived about 45 mins before closing time and the security guards came chasing us out the gates with stern warnings! In the evening we headed down to the non-existant Bastille, did some meandering around the Marais district (the centre of both Paris´ Jewish community and the its gay life - interesting combo!) and went to our favourite little Chinese restaurant just around the corner from the hotel. I tried to persuade Denise to try some escargots but she shuddered at the thought. I can´t say I blame her - for me it was absolutely a once off thing....maybe frog´s legs one day though.

Anyway, Denise had to fly out of Madrid yesterday so she came straight back down from Paris while I headed to San Sebastian (Donostia) in the heart of Basque country. This place is (wait for it...) extremely beautiful.....there is the old town with lots of great shops, bars and cafes, three impeccable beaches with REAL sand, and two mountains up each end of the beach strips which offer fantastic views over the beaches and the Bay of Biscay. I didn´t actually do much in San Seb but sit on the beach and squirm my toes in the sand whilst reading a travel guide, wander about the old town, eat some Tapas at this nice little bar we found opposite the main beach and scale the (smallish) mountain on the side near the hostel. There were a couple of Aussies at the hostel and we contemplated going for a swim out to the little island that is 500m out or so from the beaches, but the water was seriously icy - much colder than in winter back home. One of the girls from the hostel and I (she was actually from Sydney which is cool because no Aussies I have met thus far have been from anywhere but Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth!)..... caught a bus out to Bilbao (a dump) to see the Guggenheim collection. It houses a great collection of modern art and an exhibition of Frank Gehry´s architectural models and furniture. He also designed the museum which is in itself, a fantastic site! Outside the museum is a ginormous puppy dog statue (Jeff Koons designed it) which is covered in flowers and is quite fun.....Julia (Sydney girl) said it actually was in Sydney a couple of years back so maybe some of you saw it then....

Unfortunately no big riots or explosions when we were in San Seb - not that I really wanted one but it does sound a bit more exciting when you talk about your holiday. We did come across some tiny protest of about 60 people outside (presumably) some government official´s workplace.....the cops were there with those riot shields and batons and machine guns (serious!) but nothing eventuated as far as I know. I was a bit disappointed to not even hear a smidgen of Basque being spoken by the locals either.....Spanish everywhere......

Anyway......back in Madrid...I am staying at the hostel which is right up the other end of town from where we stayed before. Not sure what the place is like yet as I dumped my stuff off and headed into town. I was hoping to meet up with some Aussies for Australia day but the only guy I met at the hostel was a Pom! Then again, it was mid afternoon and everyone is out sightseeing etc as they should be. Tomorrow I am going to visit the Prado (last gallery for the trip!) as it is Sunday (free day), go to the bullring and walk around the Parc del Buen Retiro (a gorgeous park with an amazing fountain, some statues and lots of chi-chi mamas with their poodles!

I´m thinking about heading out to Salamanca on Monday but it is a three hour ride one way and I am going to be doing a heck of a lot of sitting between Tuesday and Thursday (on the plane) so that may not yet happen.....Avila is much closer and so maybe I will go there instead.

OK Well this is it for me........I have had a fantasitic 9 and a bit weeks but it will be sooooooooo nice to get home to some normal food, TV in English (although it is fun to try and translate), my family and friends (most of you anyway), and of course my cat! The poor little bugger won´t remember me!
Hasta luego!
Bel x