Saturday, December 24, 2011

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all our friends and family back home (and the friends we've made on this trip) a magical, food-filled, happy, safe and festive Christmas. We are so lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives.

This year we will be spending Christmas in Edinburgh, hoping for a Christmas miracle to make it snow tonight so we can wake to a White Christmas in the morning. We were wandering around the Christmas markets yesterday when Jon suddenly spotted some reindeer loose in the street! No not really, but there really were reindeer! They were so beautiful! Here they are....

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Love us xx

Friday, December 23, 2011

Aussie Goodness

I love love love trying new food around the world, but there are some days when you just crave something familiar (for example I would seriously kill for a Wyton's coffee... hell I'd settle for a decent coffee from anywhere right now) and this is where the Aussie Shop in Covent Garden comes in. When you look at the pictures below please imagine you haven't seen these items for months....

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Miss my 'choccy biccy at nans house'

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The loot = £6/$10!!

I thought we were quite modest with our purchases and I managed to wait a WHOLE MONTH before I ate that cherry ripe (don't ask how long the twisties lasted)

Dublin

Jon asked me yesterday if I had written a post about Dublin yet. I checked and found I hadn't, I'd only written about our visit to the Guinness brewery. So I flicked through our photos, to find a few to accompany the post (or let's be honest, to make up the post as there are usually more pics than words!) and realised that it would be hard to convince anyone that we did anything other than drink and eat in Dublin. Rest assured, we did manage alot of walking and sightseeing during our 8 days here, but the following photos will not support this claim. There is no doubt though, the best thing to do in Dublin is frequent the plentiful pubs and enjoy the live music (along with a wee pint or two of course!)

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The best place for afternoon tea!

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Workaway -Borris House

For our first workaways we spent eleven days at Borris House in the little town of Borris (I think the population was about 500) It was a stunning property, stretching 650 acres and it was lovely to escape the bustle of the city for a while. We helped prepare for and run two Christmas events (I had the privilege of dressing as an elf for FOUR days! ) helped to round up sheep and lots of other little jobs around the farm.

For more info on Workaway, click here

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The main house

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Church on Borris House grounds, services are still held here on Sundays

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Santa's train, or as they would say here 'Santi's train'

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Wandering through the beautiful grounds

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Roast Pork Rolls at the Christmas fair

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The front entrance

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Our little cottage (jono mocking my 'pin leg' pose I tend to do in many photos. I don't know why)

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I think I found my calling!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

The Giants Causeway...

After a few days in Belfast we headed up North to the Giants Causeway, which is a popular natural phenomenon created millions of years ago by volcanic activity. The day we visited wasn't the clearest (or the warmest!) so it was a bit hard to capture the beauty of the place on camera, but it was awesome all the same.

An alternative to the volcano "theory" ...

"Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhail) an Irish Giant lived on an Antrim headland and one day when going about his daily business a Scottish Giant named Fingal began to shout insults and hurl abuse from across the channel. In anger Finn lifted a clod of earth and threw it at the giant as a challenge, the earth landed in the sea.

Fingal retaliated with a rock thrown back at Finn and shouted that Finn was lucky that he wasn't a strong swimmer or he would have made sure he could never fight again.

Finn was enraged and began lifting huge clumps of earth from the shore, throwing them so as to make a pathway for the Scottish giant to come and face him. However by the time he finished making the crossing he had not slept for a week and so instead devised a cunning plan to fool the Scot.

Finn diguised himself as a baby in a cot and when his adversary came to face him Finn's wife told the Giant that Finn was away but showed him his son sleeping in the cradle. The Scottish giant became apprehensive, for if the son was so huge, what size would the father be?

In his haste to escape Fingal sped back along the causeway Finn had built, tearing it up as he went. He is said to have fled to a cave on Staffa which is to this day named 'Fingal's Cave'."

(story sourced from http://thenorthernirelandguide.co.uk/giants-causeway-and-legend-finn-mccool)

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