Roller Disco

Edell had a great idea that I was all for getting on board: a bit of late night roller-skating disco! It has been easily 20 years since I had gone skating. As Edell, Tullia and I stood up on our skates, the first few meters were a bit shakey and slow, but it all came flooding back to us. I may not be able to do all the tricks I once was able to do, but it still was fun, and great exercise! I even beat out a bunch of small children to win a free VIP pass back. The music was 80s theme, so when Edell's friend, Siobhán along with her sister Dierdre joined us, they were dressed in great 80's fashion. I was sad to not be able to dress up, as I love to do it, but I lived through the 80's the first time, and am not that excited to embrace those styles again. I need to go back since the craic was great! Now I look forward to someday skating at Oaks Park since it's four times the size as the one here. With a small rink though, I got really good at turning!

It was here for two days, and then has disappeared again. I did have to work for one of those days, but Ben had it off so he got to sit in the sun and read. The second day we went to the zoo. This would be my second zoo within two weeks in two different countries. I love the zoo!

Ben got a bit overwhelmed with so many children running about, but with all of the animals out soaking up the summer sun, he got some great photos of orangutans swinging, tigers pacing, rhinos being rhinos and a baby giraffe.

I was excited to pet my first cow and pig, and love on some goats and sheep. Ben took a pass as he had enough of them growing up. I was just as excited with the sheep and pygmy goats as I was the sleepy Red Panda and other frisky monkeys. Ben may not be a big fan of children running around being noisy loud kids but he did promise me that someday he would love his own children even if they are as active as all those primates and big cat.

Strange Anomaly #70

It is great living in Europe hearing so many languages, so it is not really that surprising that they end up dubbing English over other languages and vice-versa for commercials. The one that was strange was they dubbed English/Irish/Scottish accents over an American accent laden deodorant commercial. But I thought it was all the same language.....

Hanging with Non-architects, woohoo!

Tori and Andrew are our closest friends here in the Emerald Isle, but they are even busier with work and family than we are, which I guess makes us treasure the time we get with them even more. So when we got an invite to see what Tori does for her job, we totally jumped at the chance. We took the LUAS line out as far as it would go, to see areas of Dublin that we had never seen before. The project was done by a group of children who made a stop motion movie together and we got to see the screening. We sort of felt like we were invading as most of the people there all knew each other, but we really enjoyed the video, as looked like the kids had a great time making it with good results. We totally crashed the after part with the artists and volunteers with the project, but it was great to have some chats with non-architect folks over yummy nachos and some wine!

London not Hungover!

I must be getting old, I finally boarded a plane to London not deathly hungover! It was a weekend of firsts for me. I touched down between holidays for only a few days to make Ben some more food and was off to London. Rachel, who we crashed with when the ash cloud gave us a bit of trouble, said to come back anytime, so I did. I kept myself busy on the Thursday walking through Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, was diverted through St James’s park due to a parade, up past Westminster and Big Ben, stopping in Jubilee Gardens for a snack and then ducking into a café for some lunch as it poured buckets of rain. Once it stopped I figured museums would be my best bet for keeping dry and being entertained. All museums are free so I wandered through a Watercolour and Print Museum before heading to Tate Modern. I had always wanted to go to the Tate where there is a wonderful collection of surrealists, postmodernist, contemporary artists and of course Dalí. It was great doing it on my own. I could sit when I wanted to, go as fast or as slow as I wanted to and see what I wanted to see. With a break again in the rain I made it across the millennium bridge, past Saint Pauls and was at the top of The Mall when the sky opened up and started pouring. I kept myself busy in a bookstore flipping through “1000 Buildings to see Before you Die” and figured out I had seen 110 so far. Not bad. When it was about time to meet Rachel at Victoria Station after she got off work, I had to make a mad dash past Buckingham Palace while getting drenched. Luckily that night it was a quiet dinner out and to bed after a few bottles of wine to warm me back up.

The next morning I trekked through the Natural History Museum. I was pressed for time since I had to meet Niamh for lunch, so I flew through, at least seeing all of the exhibits. I love Natural History museums and this was the best one. I would love to see it again someday. The animatronic T Rex that growled, roared and sniffed at you was scary and cool all at the same time. I love dinos! After my lunch I walked up to Harrods, so see the infamous shopping centre. It is pretty cool, but I could never afford to shop there for real. I think I had more fun walking through the children’s section than seeing all the fabulous designer stuff I will never buy. As I walked out, the sun peeked out so I took a stroll through Hyde Park, seeing the Diana Memorial and up past Kensington Palace. I am all about walking, but I knew that I was not going to make it in time to meet with Rachel to see Wicked so I finally figured out how to take the Underground all on my own. It was easy and soon became a master traveller of the tube. I meet Rachel for Wicked which I had been wanting to see for years, so I got to see a show in the West End. It was very good, and after the show, we picked up some wine and headed to her house for our girlie chats since it was officially the weekend!

Saturday we walked through Wimbledon where she lives as I wanted to see where the play tennis. It is a great little village, that is known for its horse trails as well. When we walked up to the crosswalk, there was an extra high button that someone on horseback would be able to hit and cross with the little horse signal. I got a kick out of that. We were to meet up with some of her friends for a dinner and in true Irish style (even though we were in England, they were all Irish) we ended up at the birthday boys house for a sing song. In front of my own friends I have always refused to sing since I know for a fact I have a terrible singing voice. I have made fun of it recorded when I did not know it was my own, so I know it is bad. But when Rachel snuck out for a sneaky cigarette, it was my time to sing. I not only sung an Irish traditional song in English, “Spanish Lady”, I even sung an Irish song in Irish, “Beidh Aonach Amárach”. Yep, busted out my Irish! http://www.irishpage.com/songs/aonach.htm Karen would have been so proud. The guitarist for the evening was from Co. Clare so he was well impressed that an American could sing a Culchie Irish song. As the sun began to rise, we decided it was time to head home since in the morning we were bound for the zoo.

With working part time, I catch shows during the day. One of them is a children’s show about the zoo in Scotland and in London. I feel like I know all the keepers and the animals, so I had to see them for myself. It was a good sized zoo in Regents Park that is small, but considering it is nearly in City Centre, I was well impressed. The sun finally decided to shine on the day we needed it. All the animals were out and about which was great to see. The Penguin exhibit was the newest addition as the old penguin exhibit was designed by a famous architect, but it was cramped for the animals and was giving them knee problems walking up the steep ramps. One of the other cool exhibits was these little monkeys were playing in the bushes and you could be right next to them. Although there were keepers there, if we wanted to reach out and touch them we could. I love monkeys! I should just say I love all animals, I cannot think of one I don't really like, except for maybe spiders. After hours of walking we were starving, so we meet up with her boyfriend for some Mexican food, that they promised me was good. And it was, even the Margaritas were excellent! I have been missing Mexican food big time. We wandered Camden Town that has a real student/young person feel to it, as we hit up different pubs with live music, finally settling in a strange American pub for shots to end the night, as well as my trip with. Although I was not hungover getting on a plane to London, I was coming home…

O’Bama in his Homeland

As I landed at the airport from Croatia, what did I see, but Air Force One! I thought I was going to miss out on seeing my President, but I had made it just in time. As I boarded the bus to head home I got a text off Catherine who was on her way into town. I watched Obama on the telly drink his pint of Guinness with Michelle and his long lost cousins until Catherine arrived. I knew Tori and Andrew had been queuing for hours and was just happy enough to stand on the footpath and hope to hear him, when Catherine found an opening in the gate and talked the Gardi into letting us sneak in. My American accent in Europe for once worked for my advantage! This was just after I got a call from Tori saying she had been turned away. We waited about a half hour before getting through security, and we were in. The clouds parted and just before Obama made it onto the stage the two of us managed to push through the crowd enough to be at the bottom of the huge screen they had streaming the video live. I was technically unable to see the man in the flesh with my own eyeballs since they had the podium tucked into a recessed courtyard in the adjacent building, but when the sound of the video went out, I could hear him! It was a great speech and very uplifting. The teenage dominated crowd were even quiet and respectful to him speaking. I knew that this would be my only opportunity to see my president and I was glad that I did!

Strange Anomaly #69

When we go to the movies, which we do quite often, when the sex scenes come on, the audience giggles. Giggles. It is like they had never seen sex on the big screen before.

Balkan Tour: Bosnia

Our tour bus collected a few American tourists and we were off to Bosnia. Snaking our way through the mountains, past refuge homes that were haphazardly built, but are now permanent homes and down past the Neretva River. The Bosnian architecture is very Ottoman influenced with many mosques and a singular cathedral , St Mary’s, dotting the Mostar cityscape.

As we wandered through the old town streets, past the Kriva cuprija, a stone one-arch bridge, the sky grew more and more ominous, with the sunshine completely disappearing. As our group knew each other quite well, the very grumpy old ladies Americans kept shushing us, which made us giggle all the more. The “Old Bridge” of Stari Most had to be rebuilt after the Bosnian-Croat war, exactly as it had been. It had been an engineering feat of its day. It was a stone arched bridge that sat high over the river. A man came out and was going to dive off of it, which is quite a popular thing for the locals to do. I don’t think you could have paid me enough to want to jump off that. Maybe 15 years ago, but not now.

Many of the buildings were still bullet riddled, and partially demolished from the war. You could still see the scars, but the streets were teeming with life. One of the recently remodelled buildings we went into was of a typical upper class Muslim family, Bišćevića ćošak. It was interesting to see how the house was once like a few hundred years ago, and how they conducted businesses in the Turkish/Muslim way of life. The decendents of the original family live in a building in the lower parts of the house still. In the main courtyard there were many turtles walking around which we did not think were real at first. Just as we concluded our tour, the thunder and lightning came with a vengeance, and it absolutely lashed from the heavens. Most of our group managed to duck into a small restaurant with the owner being the cook and the waiter. He served us all the same thing, but with 45 minutes until the bus was leaving he fed the 20 of us a scrumptious meal of kebabs, salad, potatoes and freshly squeezed juice. He was so happy with us group of girls and praised him for such a great meal, he gave us a free dessert that was just divine. We stole a peek into the cathedral just as they were starting mass, and it was back onto the bus where we had a final night at our hotel. The food there was bland and sort of awful, but the craic was great, and with the wine flowing, we laughed all the way to bed.

Picture Albums Updated

I finally uploaded Iceland, Paris, and Berlin photos (among others). You can check them out here.

The 4th, Irish Style

Today is the 4th of July, and it was a crackin' day! Perfect weather for a BBQ, and that is just what we did. My office threw together a BBQ, used the 4th of July as an excuse, but we had us some ribs, chicken wings, salads, my homemade apple cake and chocolate fudgy cake. We started the day early with mimosas, moved onto the various beers and then ended the day with a few more beers. It felt like being at home, except for the lack of fireworks.....wish they were not illegal here or else I would have been setting some off!