Dublin take dhá

A third weekend of rugby! Not that we are rugby heads, but the chance to watch all three All Blacks tests seemed too good to pass up.  Up early Saturday morning for our Ryanair flight.  In typical ruanair fashion we were lined up at gate 440, when over the PA it is announced we will now be boarding from gate 443.  A mad human crush followed as people rushed to keep their place in line.  Oh how I wish for allocated seating. A short flight later we landed in Dublin and let the gunniess flow!  We went to the temple bar to watch the Kiwi league teams last minute semi-final win over the English.  We then walked around the city, taking in Trinity College (the oldest university in Ireland) and two Cathedrals.  Nath and I headed back to our hostel for a nana nap later in the afternoon before heading out for dinner with my cousin + girlfriend and Scott + his friends.

Next morning Nath and I headed to Jameson's Old Distillery home of the famous Irish Whiskey.  We didn't think it would be open at 10:15, but it was, and we had our first whiskey of the day at 11am!  The whiskey hit us in the head so we grabbed a bite to eat before slowly making our way to Aviva stadium.  We stopped at a pub called Oil Can Harry's and had a guinness with some pretty funny older Irish guys.

Game time and what an amazing atmosphere.  The Irish supporters were writing off their team before the match and were stunned to score an early try - an then another and another to take the lead at half time.  Luckily the Irish scored no points in the second half and the All Blacks were able to win the match in over time.  What a game! An Irish supporter gave me his scarf afterwards and shook my hand - so lovely.  We celebrated our victory at a massive pub called O'Neills where we had Irish stew to warm ourselves up.  Time to take the bus to the airport and board our last ever ryanair flight.  The best of the three rugby weekends by far.
Ah Dublin you were grand!

All Blacks V England @ Twickenham

Off to our second rugby game in as many weekends.  It was a lovely sunny day so we met Aaron along the river for some pre-match guinness (preparing for next weekend) then walked to the stadium to watch a pretty exciting game of rugby.  The opening quarter was very action packed and NZ was dominating.  Unfortunately England was able to put a stop on our point scoring, and at one point even took the lead. The All Blacks never looked in doubt and came back to win 30-22.

After the game we walked along the river from Twickenham to Richmond.  Of course we stopped at a lovely old pub along the way.  Nathan and I went to Acton to catch up with my brother as he left London the very next day for life back in NZ.  

Paris take deux

 We traveled to Paris on the eurostar to watch the All Blacks play France.  As the game didn't kick off until 9pm we had some time to sight see.  We started at the catacombs, which is an underground ossuary holding the remains of roughly 6 million people.  I was totally fascinated by all the bones and loved every minute of the visit.
The remainder of the day was spent lunching (had the yummiest croque monsieur), stopping off for a quick drink at an Aussie pub (it was not our intention to have a drink but when we saw that pub we thought it would be rude not to), having a few pre game drinks in our hotel room before leaving for the game (detour via the eiffel tower so we could photos of lit up at night).

The rugby game itself was pretty ho hum.  Not the best game of rugby; but we did have amazing seats and the stadium looked like a UFO.
We started Sunday off with a leisurely French breakfast (coffee and croissant) before taking the metro to Notre Dame. After the regulation jump shot we walked along the seine to the eiffel tower, stopping off to buy some authentic art works from river side artists.  After more regulation jump shots at the tower we then walked to the arc de triomphe to see the crazy round-a-bout.  We fitted in a cheeky beer at an Irish bar before boarding the train back to London.  Au revoir Paris.

Our Engagement!

I have been waiting a long while to write this post as I was waiting on photo's to be sent from Vincent who made my ring.  He took photo's of the ring in making.  However, I was disappointed with his photos as they are not quite what I expected them to be. 

The proposal: Nath proposed on our last night in Santorini.  The sun was setting over the Caldera and we were drinking a bottle of wine enjoying the view from our private balcony when he popped the question.  To celebrate we finished our bottle of wine and went out for a lovely alfresco dinner. 

So far we have no wedding plans.  It is likely we will get married in New Zealand, but I do love the idea of getting married on a Greek Island!

 

 

The ring: we got the ring hand made at The Diamond Shop in Hatton Garden.  We met Vincent and discussed with him the style that we wanted and our price range.  Vincent then ordered in diamonds that met our criteria and Nath and I had a meeting with Vincent to choose the exact diamond we wanted in the ring.  I narrowed it down to 3 diamonds and left Nath to make the final decision and sort out the nitty gritty details with Vincent. The ring is beautiful - it is so shimmery and it just isn't done justice in the photos!

The ring in the making

 

The finished ring :)

Madrid

We celebrated Nathan's birthday by spending a long weekend in Madrid.  It was very chilled out (read sleep-ins) but action packed with tourist activities.  We did a 3 hour walking tour around Hapsburg Madrid with a local guide, and along the way came across the oldest restaurant in the world! We started at Plaza Mayor, the main square in Madrid, and finished outside the Royal Palace. From here Nath and I went to San Miguel markets to find some lunch before returning to do a tour through the Palace.  The Palace is magnificent and it is a shame it is not used anymore by the Royal Family.  The most impressive display was all the armoury, especially all the protective armour for the horses!  We were recommended a Mexican restaurant for dinner but it didn't open until 9 so we had some drinks in the square close to our hotel until the restaurant opened.  Weird eating so late. 

Today we were up earlier as we were going to Toledo.  Toledo is a UNESCO heritage site and they are always worth visiting.  Toledo used to be the Capital city of Spain and is known for its co-existence between Christian, Muslim and Jewish cultures.  There were many religious buildings (churches and synagogues) devoted to the three religions around the city.  We visited the very impressive Cathedral and walked up the bell tower of another church to get a view over the city.  There were very narrow alley ways that were fun to explore but it was easy to get lost and lose our position on the map.  As we visited on a Sunday many of the museums and galleries had free entry.  We visited the Army museum which gave the history of the cities battles which was interesting.  On walking back down to the train station we saw esculators that we could have taken up in the morning to save us walking up the hill to reach Toledo.  We both commented on how hot it was, when I spotted a digital sign saying 38 degrees! Time for a beer as we waited for our train back to Madrid.

Our last day was filled with another walking tour - this time we were our own guides as we had picked up a map from the tourist office and walked around the more modern areas of Madrid.  We walked past some pretty impressive architecture, including City Hall, and spent some time relaxing in the park.  We found the best tapas bar for a long lunch - €3 bucket of beers and €3 calamari sandwich big enough for the two of us. Bargain.
An excellent summer of travels has come to an end for me as I'm back at work next week.  This coming weekend will be my only weekend at home for the whole of summer so I guess that is pretty awesome.  We might walk along the Southbank or check out the Pompeii exhibition at the British Museum.   

Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro & Italy

I had some summer travel adventures with Anna & Borrie in Sarajevo, Mostor, Kotor and Sveti Stefan.  Nathan then flew out to join us for our Italian leg of the trip.  This was to be our last travel adventures with Anna and Borrie as they are now on their way back to NZ via Africa. While the travel was fun it was also sad knowing we wouldn't be seeing them again for a long while. 

Sarajevo was interesting with bullet holes still visible in some buildings.  We weren't here long as we flew in late at night and left at midday the following day.  Really only enough time to walk around the old town and find some breakfast. 

On the bus trip to Mostar we saw some beautiful scenery - lots of lakes where people were swimming and holidaying.  Anna was certain the accommodation was 1km from the bus station so in the middle of the day with travel packs on and 37 degree's we decided to walk.  After an hour of walking we were not so sure of Anna's 1km and wished we had taxied.  Upon arrival the host laughed at us and said they do a free pick up from the bus station as it's so far away! Borrie and I shot Anna a few death stares at this point.  The big attraction in Mostar is the old bridge that people jump off (after they have collected enough money from tourists!).  The bridge was totally destroyed in the 1990s conflict and rebuilt in the exact same style and is now UNSECO protected. 

Our next bus trip was the bus from hell.  It is a very short distance from Mostar to Kotor so we naively thought the bus trip would be 3 hours max.  A little research on the internet the night before informed us there was only one bus departing at 7am and the journey would take 8 hours.  This is impossible we thought.  Turns out there are 5 boarder crossings (Bosnia-Croatia-Bosnia-Croatia-Montenegro) and at each boarder crossing we had to wait roughly an hour, although crossing into Montenegro we waited 2 hours.  There were no toilet stops or food breaks along the way so this definitely was a Nazi bus trip.  Also, we had to literally change buses 4 times, having to shift our own luggage from one bus to the next.  Arriving in Kotor was relief at finally being off the bus.  Kotor is surrounded by city walls and we had to find an opening to walk through to get to the city - very cool.  Medieval styles.  This is a UNESCO protected city that was fun to explore, lots of narrow alley ways that open up into large plazas.  We took a boat trip to an Island Monastery and also another small town called Perast.  We didn't see much of Perast as it was so hot the unanimous decision was to have a beer stop and cool down rather than explore the town.  We spent the afternoon at the beach swimming and relaxing.

Our bus trip from Kotor to Sveti Stefan was a breeze - only an hour and before we knew it we were at the beach swimming and enjoying the beach bar. This was the extent of our stay in Sveti Stefan.  Sleep in and head to the beach. 

The next leg of our journey was a ferry from Bar in Montenegro to Bari in Italy.  It was an 8 hour journey and 2 hours in we thought we would hit the restaurant but alas it was closed, and would remain closed for the journey.  Just as well Anna and I had foresight to buy pringles, oreo's and milky way at duty free - as these got us through our starvation.  The ferry was deserted and was kind of creepy, the perfect set-up for a horror movie. 

From Bari we bused to Naples which is the shittiest city in Italy, and definitely worth avoiding.  Unfortunately we had two night here!  We did a day trip to Pompeii and drew out our time here to avoid spending too much time in Naples.  We were up early the next morning to get our train to Sorrento which was beautiful and a stark contrast to Naples. 

We took a bus out to the beach and after doing a spot of rock climbing we eventually found some where to swim.  The following day we took a ferry to Capri and spent the day marvelling out how expensive everything was.  We took a chair lift up from Ana Capri and had amazing views looking down on Capri. This was our last day with Anna and Borrie.  From here they continued down the Amalfi coast, and then were getting a flight to Sicily.  From Sorrento Nath & I caught a train back to Naples to get our 15 hour night ferry to Sardinia.

In Sardinia we stayed with Zane in an area called Costa Rei, and met our 7 month old nephew Kai for the first time.  Here we went to the beach in the morning, arrived back at the house for lunch, then went to another beach in the afternoon.    It was fun, but pretty full on, staying in a house with 8 adults and 4 children!  We were glad to have the weekend in Cagliari with just the two of us.  We had a big sleep in, watched the All Blacks smash Australia and went to the beach.  A really nice way to end a long holiday on the road.

Greece

I am really behind in my blog updates.  The next few days I will attempt to catch you up on all our summer travels - starting with Greece.

Nath and I had a day exploring Athens which we jammed packed with all the big tourist sites - Acropolis, temple of Zeus, Hadrians arch, and my favourite the Panathenaic stadium (home of the first modern Olympic games).

We enjoyed our Sail Croatia experience so much last summer we signed up with the same company to do Sail Greece.  We spent 6 nights sailing around the Saronic Islands. There were so many highlights from this trip that I will try to narrow it down to one highlight per Island we visited. 
Perdika - first night on the boat and big night out to start the trip.  Anna found a tambourine and wouldn't stop shaking it.
Ermioni - a rough days sailing for those that went a little too big the night before.  We had a welcome cocktail party thrown by medsailors. Nath got a nasty eye infection that warranted a trip to the doctors.
Spetses - when hired quad bikes to circumnavigate the 23km Island, stopping at beach bars on the way around.

Hydra - having a delicious gyros for dinner and watching the amazing sunset while drinking strawberry daiquiri at the sunset bar.
Poros - spending the afternoon on the water sports pontoon getting free beers  I went parasailing and really enjoyed the serenity of the experience. 

Aegina - spending the afternoon at a pool bar, getting my nails done and swimming in fresh water.  The Greek dinner and dancing finished the trip off nicely.

We arrived back in Athens with heavy hearts as our yacht trip was over.  Luckily Nath, Laura, Scott, Anna-Marie and myself were off to Santorini.  Nath and I stayed on our own and spent Saturday afternoon exploring Oia and Fira.  We walked down the 500 odd steps to the Old Port of Fira avoiding all the donkey poo as we went.  The donkeys smelt so bad the we decided to take the cable car back up rather than ride on a donkey.  On Sunday we rented a little red rocket car and picked the others up to explore the rest of Santorini,  We started with the prehistoric town of Akrotiri, before swimming at red beach.  We then found went to Pyrgos before finishing the day off at Santo Winery. 

For Nathan and I this was the end of our Greek Odyssey as we flew home the next day. Greece was my number 1 destination I wanted to visit before we left NZ so I am glad we got there.  It was amazing and I would love to go back.  I miss swimming in crystal clear waters, eating gyros and tzatziki, and the friendliness of locals is so welcoming.