Hello & Goodbye

*sniff* last post. Im getting a bit sick of it anyway. Singapore. All fine and dandy. slept most of the way from London so am feeling kinda perky.

A few mishaps though with excess baggage and the whole one of theengines doesnt work so lets all sit on the plane for two hours before even leaving london. Its amazing how it takes 5 min to say ' engine wont start because of a spark plug' and then it takes 2 hours to change it by a team of engineers.

Plan was to try and stay awake from london to singapore then sleep from singapore to melbourne to adapt to time change. new plan is to sleep whole trip. i like that idea much better. i think now is the time to acknowledge the power of the eye mask. 3 cheers! (perhaps i am slightly delirious)

Anyway, farewell blog, hello people. Lots more stories to tell about the trip but they are unfit for publication so will have to finish up there. Ciao, the big V.

The Trip in Review (Two Thumbs Up)

And the winners are.......

Best place visited in England:

York. Loved it. Had a whole week there and it wasnt enough. Quieter and less polluted than the midlands and further south. Nice accents too.

Best place visited in Scotland:

I don't think i can single out a place so Ill choose (hey, its my competetition I can do what I want) an area. Inverness - Oban via the southern side side of Loch Ness. The most breathtaking scenery I have seen the whole trip. Lots of animals and the highlands in spring, cant beat it.

Best Place visited in France:

This is a tough one, but I think Ill have to go with the little market street in Les Halles, Paris that I visited each day. The most wonderful pastries, ham, cheese and wine. Really friendly people and beautiful to top it off.

Best place visited in Ireland:

Kilkenny. Heaps of fun, actually got to see the place a bit and got a tattoo to top the night off.

And the winner of best place visited overall (comedy or musical) is....

Scotland. Sorry, cant narrow it down further than that. It was fantastic, had the car, spring time, really friendly people. So much more pristine and less crowded than England.

Worst place visited:

Montebaun. See previos post about train trip from Bordeaux - Cahors. I still dont want to think about it.

The Final Countdown

It was a big farewell on Wednesday night. Got to bed some time after 5 am and up for breakfast at 8 am to say goodbye to most of the group who headed back to London on the coach. It was heaps of fun and got to see a few really interesting places but it was also really quite crap with an incompetent tour manager. We didnt see any Cork at all even though we stayed there. The only way you got to see any of the cities was if you caught a cab in to town at 9pm to go to a bar.

Having fun in Dublin, went on a sightseeing bus around the place yesty (we had about 5 things pointed out to us as part of the tour so I figured there may of been just a little more about Dublin than that). There's still a few people here from the tour and we are all hanging out together wich makes it better than going off to dinner by yourself each night.

Im going to hike around the city today, ive been sitting on a coach everyday for the past week and eating full breakfasts and 3 course dinners so I need to get out and about.

Everyones had a rest from me for two months but im back in the country on Tuesday, so the fun is over im afraid. I have six hours at melbourne airport before I get a connecting flight to Wagga and Im considering stealing a car. I could get back in 5 hrs or if I have 'the heat' on my tail I could do it maybe 3 and a half.

Going to explore the river and phoenix park toiday along with Oconnell st and grafton st. The hotel is in temple bar and a couple of hundred metres from Trinity College (I went and had a look in the long gallery anbd at the book of kells on wednesday) Wednesday was also the guiness storehouse and a pint in the gravity bar. Tuesday night was in Kilkenny, my favourite place so far in Ireland. Would of liked an opportunity to explore it a bit more.

Im sure this isnt the last from me with the blog as the airports will be driving me insane and Ill jump on the net there.