aran islands - inis mor

from galway we embarked on a visit to the island of inishmore (14.5 km x 4 km), which is the biggest of the three that make up the aran islands. my concern that i would get sea sick on our voyage was somewhat heightened with the announcement that we should sit down the back because it would be 'a bit' rough. however, assisted by ramsey's helpful hints, such as 'wow, look out the other window now - it's like we're on a sea saw!', i managed to survive.

we has some amazingly clear and warmish weather in which to explore this spectacular island, which we did by foot. to the left you can see kim, who led us enthusiastically around the island. the island was full of very green, very small paddocks enclosed by a maze of stone fences.

the biggest highlight of the island was the 4000 year old fort, dun aonghasa, perched atop some very impressive cliffs..

here is me closer to the edge of the cliff than i initially thought ...

and a shot looking down at our feet over the edge of the cliffs at the fort where we stopped for a rest...

and looking back through the fort entrance over the island..

on the eastern side of the island were some lovely bays, which would have been appropriate for bathing with an increase in ambient temperature of perhaps 15-20 degrees celsius.

here are some happy locals..

and ramsey rowing a boat that requires some amount of maintenance..

in the evening we frequented the local and made friends with an islander who taught us some irish words which we now cannot recall.

grand so in galway

quite suddenly, everything got very irish. there was a moment of bewildered concern before departing dublin, which was that brian and sue did not live in galway, but in a place called gaff, which they told us was not very big. fortunately louise informed us before we had our travel route redirected to the little known small town of gaff, that gaff means house.



galway was excellent, except for the cryptosporidium outbreak in the tap water. this forced us to drink guinness for the sake of our health. this is us with our excellent hosts at perhaps stage two of our rigourous 10 step health program. ramsey may be on stage three in the following photo.

other fun times included a tour of the uni and very impressive college bar with greg, a friend of brian and sue. here we enjoyed a galway hooker (the name of a local pale ale) in the sun. although greg, like most irish people, talked exceedingly fast, we did learn from him that the words to the chorus of the song 'she moves in mysterious ways' is definitely not 'shamu, the mysterious whale'.


we again had lovely sunny weather for our long sightseeing walks- but failed to take any photos on those days. this is ramsey watching the spectacle that was brian and sue's tag rugby team being defeated. match highlights included the umpire falling over, sue being hit in the face with the ball and brian being sent off the field. note that these were not immediately succesive events.

here is ramsey pushing a dinghy ashore, with colourful galway houses in the background.

dublin...ar potatoes

we arrive in the land of potatoes! we stayed with simon and louise. there were some issues associated with locating their apartment, including, what we found out later to be, an unrequired bus journey. here is a picture of the kimba reunion with the big pointy dublin spire in the background..

we were spoiled again with delicious home cooked food, which gave us plenty of stamina to complete the entire bus tour of dublin by foot.
under simon's advice, we snuck into the guiness factory and avoided the admission fee. the factory was interesting from both an alcoholic and process engineering technical aspect...here is alex in quality control..

...and me with some ye olde guiness propaganda. i sympathised with his surprised reaction to a guiness-napping seal.

we also briefly visited the old jamison whiskey factory...this is some sort of process equipment.we very much enjoyed relaxing in st stephen's green with the beautiful flowers. we also went to phoenix park to unsuccessfully find deer. simon and louise took us on both a daytime and night time tour of temple bar... here is THE temple bar...

the area turns into some kind of crazy british hens and bucks nights extravaganza at night. to the left is us at the apartment getting ready to head out. this photo of temple bar at night is appropriate for publication.. we also walked past this quite frightening sculpture everyday. it is of extraordinarily tall irish people starving when the potatoes ran out. they look similar to the 800 year old preserved crusader corpse we got to touch in st michans church in dublin. arh!

one evening we went for a drive to the marina at howth. here is a pretty sunset.. nice.

kilmany and st andrews

from edinburgh we travelled up to kilmany, an estate outside of st andrews, to stay with jane's friends william and lauren. we very much enjoyed hanging out with their young family and having super tasty homecooked meals (very exciting after many many not so gourmet ham and cheese sandwiches on our previous uk adventures). we also discovered what the grand national is, and i became quite passionate about it after winning the family sweep.

longing to do something productive after a month and a half of holiday and travel, ramjet and i got stuck into some gardening at kilmany. william kept us motivated with a constant supply of pimms while we planted the following lawn over a couple of days...

during the night, floppy and/or jelly (the dogs) realised that it would be excellent fun to pull the individual tufts out..one..by...one. we learnt our lesson not to try any more productive work.

the weather continued to be wonderful, and we went for an afternoon trip to the seaside with lauren and the kids...this is ramsey constructing a sand castle and perhaps one of the characters from thomas the tank engine...

and some scenic shots...

we went to st andrews for a couple of hours one afternoon and pretended to play a game of golf. this is ramjet raking a sand bunker...

st andrews is where prince william went to university. i read he is single now.

edinburgh

after easter we headed up to scotland...here are some shots of the castle in edinburgh...



















we enjoyed the slower pace of edinburgh after london.. we did lots of walking and sitting in parks in the sun, listening to bagpipes and making nice friends in the hostel (except for the old man who smelt and who ramsey argued with passionately because of his unreasonable statements and random nonsensical claims). here is some lovely blossom in st andrew's square in edinburgh...

we went to a couple of pubs in edinburgh and it was fun. we concluded that it was very similar to going out at home, except the pints are larger (the more you drink, the more you drink) and we experienced slightly less inhibition associated with our fantastic dancing techniques as it was quite unlikely that we would see anyone we knew.

it was about this stage of the trip when we started to forget to take photos...or at least interesting blog worthy ones. we are working to rectify this.

a day trip to brighton

ramsey, henry and i made a daytrip to the seaside. here is a photo of ramjet and henry relaxing on the pier between the pleasure dome and the palace of fun (this is right outside the bar which claims to have 'probably the most interesting ceiling you'll ever see').

although the day was cool to start with it warmed up after our visit to the museum. we enjoyed this interactive experience immensly. this is us getting dressed up in some sort of perhaps early/late nineteenth century clothes.

we went to a pub with self proclaimed 'salubrious surroundings' for an afternoon beer in the sun.

here is a morning shot on the beach, followed by an afternoon shot on the beach... observe the increase in fun. also observe that the beach has pebbles instead of sand. an unfortunate pigeon discovered that although ramsey may throw like a girl, it is with pin point accuracy.

greenwich - not beach..beachcomber..

it was an uncanny coincidence (perhaps more uncanny than the shakira~mumbai concidence) that henry arrived in london on the same day as us... this is us meeting outside the national gallery in trafalgar square. we then decided to buy 'probably the best lager in the world' and drink without guilt in public places. then we went to greenwich, continuing this public place drinking experience on the train. greenwich is the place which divides the east and west hemispheres. this is us in both hemispheres, plus or minus 10 % (there was an admission fee in order to stand over the labelled date line, so we guessed a place in the park nearish to said date line).

then, inspired by pat mullins of we can be hereos fame(http://www.abc.net.au/tv/heroes/pat/default.htm) ramsey and henry rolled down the hill...

...while i followed the lead of all the other parents and followed/chased them down the hill with the video camera.

london baby

we arrived from a hot steamy mumbai to cold.. cold london, and very quickly made our way to an outdoor clothing shop to buy some wind breakers. immediately after these purchases, the weather cleared up and london proceeded to have the warmest days of the year. i may have even managed to get burnt in london. this is us in trafalgar square on our first day of sightseeing. after our chaotic indian experiences, we were satisfactorily stunned with the order and queuing abilities of the english.


on the cold days we did much museum and gallery viewing, and managed to briefly check out big ben, westminster abby, tower of london, and tower bridge (below). we enjoyed the art galleries very much, notable the impressionist display in the national gallery and tate modern. we also loved viewing the fruits of english plundering in the british museum.
we also watched the changing of the guards, which was slightly more pompous than the average shift worker changeover.
while in london we are staying with dan scan foodlan fran's brother (and five other australians). this is him in his backyard.