Beer, beer, beer....

Tonight we went to a bar that serves over 2,500 types of beer according to the menu - is in teh Guinness Book of Records for it and all. An alcoholic's heaven!

Hee Hee

Just been playing with the Kitten Cannon. Just got teh cat up to 1,015 feet, but teh bloody scoreboard won't load so that I can submit it.

Hope Anne-Marie never catches me playing this........... ;-)

sounds interesting...

Seems there's a new web app out now called Twitter, which is sort of an SMS service for the web. You can send short messages to anyone who subscribes to your twitter identity. I haven't tried it yet, but here's an article describing how someone else is using it...

Must give it a go when I get home!

So much for yahoo weather....

I'm never going to take Yahoo Weather at face value again. "Chance of scattered showers" my arse! Has been pissing rain here all day. Weather.com isn't all that much better. Right now it says it's "partly cloudy" here - which I suppose is accurate if you count 100% cloud cover as "partly". Both sites say we should be expecting "showers" tomorrow. Suppose that means I should start building the ark tonight so......

Bruxelles

Well, here I am, in what seems to be my 3rd home after Waterford & Dublin! Yup, am back in Brussels for the weekend. The weather, thank god, is a lot better than it was when I left Dublin - have almost cloudless skies as opposed to the pissing rain I left! The trip over was for once uneventful, it took me 5secs to check in using the self-service checkin kiosk, about 10mins to get through security, and then the plane actually took off on time! The only hassle was missing the train connection into the city by the skin of me teeth (got tot he platform to see the tail lights of the train disappear around the corner), but even then the next train was only 5 mins away so it was only a minor hassle. Oh, to live in a country with such an efficient public transport system!

I had a rather unusual thought on my way to the airport yesterday. The first time I came here, back when my uncle & the family first moved over, it was my first time on the continent and I think my first time in a "proper" airplane (the little 12-seater that took us to the aran islands that time not really counting), and I was so excited I could barely sleep the night before. Now I'm so blase about travelling that I was leaving work yesterday 4hrs before the plane was supposed to take off, I still had to go back to the apartment and pack my bags, I had no idea what I was going to pack, and only had a vague idea of where I'd left my passport the last time I went travelling! Is funny how things change eh?

Oh, on one good note, it seems that while you can't bring any more than 100ml of liquids through security, you can still buy crap in the duty free and bring it onto the plane SO looks like I may be bringing belgian beer home after all!

What country am I living in again?

I saw this sign by a construction site on my way to work this morning.



It just shows that there aren't really all that many Irish people working in the construction industry in Ireland any more. There are so many eastern europeans around these days that a few ppl I know have started calling Dublin "Dubliningrad"

Alleluia!

Finally, I'm after getting my phone back! At least, I think it's my phone. There are a few images & sounds on it that I'm pretty sure don't come with a "vanilla" factory-clean phone, and I'm not 100% sure that the dent in the camera cover is exactly the same as on the one I sent in for repair, but at this stage I'm perfectly willing to take the shop's word for it that it's mine. So, third (or fourth?) time lucky! Now all I have to do is copy all of my stuff back onto it. It's going to be a bit of a pain in the hole moving the phone book back - the SIM card only holds ne number/field per entry so the entries I have on my Sharp which have more than one field are going to be fun to reproduce, but I'll manage. I've lost a good few pics, and a few numbers and stuff, but at least I still have all of the apps, themes, sounds etc on the computer. At least it givs me something to do over the weekend.....

Ski jacket, not a rain jacket.

Well, I'm just after discovering something rather annoying about my chinese ski jacket. While I was already after finding out that it wasn't really breathable (sort of important in a ski jacket when you're sweating up on the slopes), I now know as well that it isn't the best thing in the world either for wet weather. I was walking home from work and about half-way in along Amien St the heavens opened on me. Now, the jacket mostly seems ot be waterproof, but "mostly" isn't really enough, and soon enough I found the chink in the armour, teh achilles heel, or in this case the achilles armpit. The problem is that the sleeves unzip to turn it into more of abody-warmer, and the two zips on the arms don't quite meet flush underneath the arm. So, the rain was able to get in the gap. Got home and my arms were soaking.

So, now I know that while it may be prety warm in the cold and it's snow-going abilities are yet to be proven, it's definitely not the thing for the rain!

James Bond's poor choice of phones

You know, I feel sorry for James Bond. Sure, he gets the girl every time and all, and he has cool gadgets most of the time (altho invisible cars are a bit silly), but in his latest adventure he has the misfortune to be stuck with Sony Ericsson gear. Now I'm sure that they work very well for him and all, but god help him if he has any problems with them that Q can't fix and he has to send it back to Sony Ericsson to get repaired.

Finally, after 7 weeks of being dicked around by Sony Ericsson with my phone, I got the call on friday to say that the phone was back from the factory and it was repaired. So, I went in yesterday to get it. I handed over my docket, and the guy took out my phone. Or was it?

I took one look at it, and said "that's not my phone" - the dent in the camera lens cover where I dropped it a good while back wasn't there, and the quickshare logo from the front was missing as well. Sure enough, when yer man went to check the IMEI numbers, it was a different phone that SE had sent back. So, seeing as it wasn't mine, naturally I couldn't take it - I have ot wait until tomorrow to find out what's happened to my phone.

So, to recap all the fun and games I've had with my phone:

• I tried the Sony Ericsson Online Firmware Upgrade of the phone, which screwed it up so badly it wouldn't turn on any more.


• I brought it into the shop, where they said it'd take 2 weeks to repair, as they had to send it back to SE.


• Two weeks later, they called me up and said that SE had said that yes, they could repair my phone, it'll take two weeks. Did I want to go ahead? I stifled my urge to say "well duh!" and said "yes" instead.


• Two weeks later, I get a call from the shop - SE hadn't apparently gotten the confirmation to fix the phone and had sent it back unfixed. Did I want to send it back to get done again?


• Two weeks later again, I went into ths hop to find out what had happened. Again, apparently they hadn't got the confirmation to fix it, so it still wasn't done. Yer man promised to light a fire under them and see what he could do.


• A week later (this week), they had supposedly fixed my phone, but sent the wrong one back to the shop. Now I have to wait to see will I actually get my one back, or have they sent it to 007 by mistake.

Licence to Kill - I wish!

New blogger, New templates

well, I was just after getting my old blogger template teh way I wanted it, and now blogger.com seems to have gotten itself taken over by Google, so I have to go and change my layout, templates etc. Not too bad a job I guess, are a few nice bits in the new way of doping things - but now my header pic is out of whack! Was trying to edit the raw HTML but seeing as I never really learned XML or CSS before, is pretty much guesswork for me. Ah well, will try again later.

I love it!

Am probably going to hell for posting this, but........ :-)

The iPod lives!

Well, I finally got my iPod working again. I was home the weekend with the battery replacement kit, and tried opening it up and replacing the battery. It didn't go as badly as I thought, altho it's stil a bit unnerving to hear so many 'snaps' and 'cracks' when you're levering the end caps off - will they go back on? I got the battery replaced anyway, got the thing back together with no bits left over (always good that) and followed the instructions to leave it charge for 24hrs.

24 hours later, I went to try to update my music. Nothing. Wouldn't turn on. The little 'battery charging' icon was on when it was plugged in, but as soon as I plugged it out, nada. Plugged it into the laptop and got nothing. First thought that went through my head was "aw crap". First the phone died, then the rolex strap broke, now the iPod is fubared. Didn't have time to play with it much after that as I was back on IT support for my mother. Shoved all teh bits into my bag, and brought it back up to dublin.

This morning I decided to have another go. Cracked open the thing again, and straight away noticed the problem - I'd plugged in the power connection the wrong way around! Switched it around and sure enough, was back working! Now all I have to do is wait for the fecker to charge fully and I'm back on the road again! :-)

So, one problem down, two to go......

Finally an online campaign I could get behind.....

Away from home again.

Well, looks like I'm off travelling again. I'm just after booking 4 days in Brussels again, over to see my friend Sara there. This seems to be becoming an annual event - am flying the 14th and back on the 18th of december. Will probably be the first real test of my ski jacket!

I decided this time not to go with Ryanair like I usually do, despite them being the cheapest option. With Ryanair, I could have gotten the trip for €20 return including taxes (or €9 less than it costs me to go home to Waterford for the weekend), and with Aer Lingus it was €75 - €58 of which is tax! So I'd almost be paying as much after tax with Ryanair as before tax with Aer Lingus. Once you include though the "transfer fee" to and from the airport at €10 and 50min-1hr each way, the differnece gets to be a bit smaller - with Aer Lingus I'm flying into Brussels itself (Zaventem airport) not some dipshit little town in the south of the country (no offence intended to anyone from Charleroi who's reading, but....), and it's 20min and about €2 for the train in to Midi! Besides, the last time I flew Ryanair to Brussels I had a 2hr delay on the way out and a 4 1/2hr delay on the way back, so I think it's time to give someoen else a chance.

I've also gotten off my ass finally about the ski trip on February. I'm heading off to Kitzbuehl in Austria with some friends, the 24th feb to the 3rd March. Shgould be a good laugh, altho we still have to figure out such minor things as transport from teh airport to the ski resort, accommodation etc..... ;-)

things of a hardware nature

Well, I finally managed to get a spare battery for my iPod! After trying loads of shops, and each one telling me to tr somewhere else, and then being told the best solution was to send it to AppleCare to get done for €150, I finally spotted it in Maplin on the 3rd attempt (seems they'd just got them delivered in) for €32. So much for AppleCare! Now my only problem is that I left the bloody iPod in waterford last weekend so I cna't replace the batt yet! :-( Looking at the instructions it's not goign to be easy either - they use the word "prise" a bit too much in the booklet for my liking.......

And if only that were all my hardware problems sorted. The phone saga is still going on. I went into them on sat, 2 weeks after I last heard from them and 4 weeks afte rthey told me it'd take 2 weeks to fix. Last time I was told that seeing as I couldn't prve it was under warranty, I'd have to pay €90 to get it fixed and it'd take 2 weeks. So, I go back in expecting to pay out my €90 (or half what I paid for my phone) and get my phone back. Nope! Apparently Ericsson had lost the confirmation order to actually fix the damn thing and sent it back unfixed - a common problem with them apparently. So the guy asked me did I want to send it back and get it fixed again, which would take another week. I bit back my reply of "well, duh, what the f**k good is a broken phone" and said yeah. Think just to be on the safe side I might see who wants to get me a new mobile for Xmas.

Just to top things off, along a similar note, the strap on my fake rolex broke a few weeks back, and I need ot get it fixed. I thought I had some spare links for it but couldn't find them, so I brought the broken links and the watch into the shop to see oculd they do anything for me. Nope, will need a new strap. This of course will probably cost me more than the watch cost originally. Have one last chance, I got another guy a fake rolex of the same model too, will have to see if he has spare links still.....

And on teh last hard-ware related issue of the day, the gfx card on my laptop is acting up again. It seems that whatever they did in firefox 1.0.5/6 to fix the prob where firefox crashes ATI cards & OpenGL, it's back again in firefix 2.0. I upgraded a few days ago and now am lucky to go 5mins of using forefox without the fecking screen freezing or goign black. Sometimes I just get a screen flash and get told "hardware rendeing is fucked, we're gone back to software rendering" which is grand for me when I'm not laying games, but I don't want to be stuck like that for good

It deffo seems to be a firefox issue as well, as I'm using IE7 here for the last few hours and nary a crash have I seen. Thing is, after using firefox, IE7 sucks! It has tabs now which is handy, but you sort of get used to all them nifty little extrensions and stuff, and the font rendering on some of the pages I go to a lot is absolutely brutal (probably the page rather than the browser, but still looks sucky).

New look blog header.... ;-)

Well, I got a bit bored with the header on my blog here, so I decided to change it a bit. My intention originally when I set this up many moons ago was to have a chinese-style pagoda as the header, so I tried to draw one myself. Unfortunately, my art skills suck ass so badly, so I never got it quite the way I wanted it.

So, now I was browsing though my camera pics on my hard drive in preparation for backing them up while I wipe the fecker clean and re-install, and I decided "yeah, I can do something with this pic" so I played around with it and here's the result! :-)

Oh, here's what the original gate looks like!

note for the future.....

....when you're ringing up AIB 24hr banking and you put in your pin code etc, and they ask you for the service code, rather than waiting for the robot to realise you're not clairvoyant and actually tell you what the service codes are, just hit "88" to go straight into the queue to wait 20mins to talk to an actual human while listening to the Lighthouse family.......

My iPod officially sucks.....

Well, it looks like it's time for me to upgrade my iPod Mini. I have it nearly 2 years now (2 years at xmas) and the battery on the damn thing has just about had it. I only ever use the thing twice a day, once walking to work, and once walking home - half an hour each way. Not too much to ask that it survives the trip on one charge is it? At the mo tho, I'll charge it up overnight, it'll work on my way to work, and then die when I'm half-way home that evening. Not exactly what you want in a "portable" music player!

Read a joke(?) about Apple's sales strategy a while back, about their iTunes lock-in:
Day 1: You buy a deveice that can hold 3,000 songs
Year 1: You buy $1,000 worth of music off iTunes
Year 2: You buy $1,000 worth of music off iTunes
Year 3: Your iPod battery dies and you have to start all over again.

It sucks that Apple expect you to buy a new iPod when your old one dies rather than just replace the battery. Looks like I'll be going on the web, see if I can get a cheap nano (my 4Gb mini is plenty space for my music collection, but I might as well buy a 20Gb or 40Gb so I can back up my hard drive onto it). Failing that, there's lots of 3rd parties that will do Apple's job for them and sell you replacement batteries.

phone upgrades :-(

Well, I decided a few weeks ago to upgrade the firmware on my phone using the instructions at this site, and I think I may have killed my phone. I followed the instructions, downloaded the app and went to run it. It dind't work the first few times as every time I plugged in the phone, as bloody windows autorun kept interrupting and trying to download pics from the memory card! Got it to shut up eventually, and the firmware install semed to go ok.

After I put the SIM card back in tho, nada. The phone wouldn't turn on any more. I tried to do the "recommended" way of a soft boot by holding down the 'c' key and plugging it into the USB port, but nothing. Decided to leave the battery drain down for afew days and try it again, nothing. Looked on the web for the solution, and all anyone could come up with was "send it back to sony ericsson". So, thinking that seeing as it's half the name of the phone so they might have something to do with it, I went into the Sony shop. Nope, they don't do phones apparently (never mind the fact that as the sales guy was saying this I was looking over his shoulder at the w800i in the display cabinet. Muppet.).

Finally found a shop to do it, and the second I mentioned "sony ericsson" and "online firmware update" the guy winced. Apparenlty that thing rarely ever works, and he doens't know why they even have it up there. So, now my phone has ot go back to Ericsson (as sony apparenly don't want anything to do with it) and I'll get it back with all data wiped in about 2 weeks.

Then another problem arose. I had the IMEI number so they could check to see was the phone reported stolen, but the guy then said that I'd probably ned proof of purchase before tehy;d fix it for me. Problem is, I got it off ebay so I don't actually have a real proof of purchase for it! Sent it off anyway, said I might get away with it.

So, here's hoping I have my phone back in 2 weeks time!

Lisbon

Well, there goes my last trip for the year anyway..... Probably!

Now I have another country marked off on my map of europe - Portugal. Think at this stage the only pre-accession states of the EU I haven't hit now are Greece, Sweden and Norway. And all thanks ot Air France! Thanks to them overbooking my flight and stranding me in Birmingham last year on my way home from Paris, I had a €150 token to use with them - which I forgot about nearly as soon as I got it and only found in the drawer 2 days before it was due to expire! Was a quick "Oh shit" moment, and straight on to the info-hyper-global-web to see where I could go with it. After finding out to my disappointment that their other sky alliance (or whatever it's called) partners wouldn't take online bookings with air france tokens, I found myself back at airfrance.com. Looked at the destinations, and decided that Lisbon was the place to go - Sara had been there last year and loved it apparently. Then, I discover something else. Not only did their partners not take them. but you couldn;t boko on Air France witht he token either! I had to ring them up, book over the phone, and then post off a print-out of my booking details along with the token! How 20th century!

The day of the flight arrived, and I found pretty quickly that the one disadvantage of booking with Air France was that I had to fly with Air France, which meant going via Paris. Knowing Dublin Airport's less than stellar record of getting planes off on time, I'd given myself plenty of time for a stopover in Charles de Gaulle, which was a bit unfortunate since we only took off maybe 30mins late and I had about 2hrs to kill in the airport. Landed at terminal 2F, and had to make my way to terminal 2D. I'd forgotten how big Paris airport was! Thought at one stage I must be passing by lisbon on my way! When I got there, I took an instant dislike to the termional. I know that airport terminals are there to be endured rather than enjoyed - Charleroi airport for example has all the aesthetic grace and ambiance of a school gym, but doesn't pretend to be anything other than it is - but for some reason Terminal 2D in Charles de Gaulle really rubbed me up the wrong way. A big long half-tube of a place with a ceiling so high that any flight announcements drowned in their own echoes if you weren't directly under the speaker, and yet such a lack of space on the floor that you had to squeeze past the queues of people boarding their flights. Crap shops and a crap-looking restaurnat at either end complete the ensemble. Having such time to kill, I decided on getting a coffee, only to discover that whatever about Gay Paree itself, the airport can give good old Dublin a run for its money in the rip-off stakes - €5.50 for a regular coffee! At least I thought that, it being france, the coffee would be good when I got it, but it seems that however they may complain about "France for the French", they have ebraced globalization enough to have discovered the machines that spew black plastic crap into a cup with "coffee" written on it at the push of a button. To top it off, the waiter made a big osmg and dance about having to break a €50 whe I went ot pay - lots of gallic shrugging and sighing!

Finally, the time came to leave, and we started boarding. Problem is, after the first 5 ppl went through, we stopped boarding again, and remained that way for 20mins. Eventually, we got ont he bus, which proceeded to bring us all the way back to a gate at terminal 2F, which I believe may actually have been the gate I landed at! All that walking for nothing! I wouldn't have minded had we been bussed to a plane out on the tarmac, but we even had to climb the steps abd board via the jetway just like we'd been checked through at that gate! Anyway, eventually Paris receded beneath me, and I was on my way to Lisboa!

When I got there, I decided to be a bit adventurous. Never mind the fact that I didn't speak the local lingo, or know my way around, I decided to take the local bus into town. According to the guide book, I could take the 41 bus which would drop you off at gare de oriente, at the end of one of the metro line, which would leave me on my favourite form of transport. Unfortunately the airport was just another stop on the bus route rather than one end of it, and I forgot to check which direction the bus was going! Luckily I copped this soon enough, and hopped out at the first sniff of a metro sign. I eventually got to my hostel at about 7 in the evening, after leaving the flat at 9 that morning. The joys of transfers! The hostel itself was pretty small - only held about 30ppl total, and I arrived to discover that on friday nights some local woman came in and for a minimal fee, cooked a meal for whoever wanted it. So, I threw in my dosh and was soon snacking on Portugese chicken and pasta - score! Before dinner, there was also a free portugese class of ppl wanted it, and seeing as I knew a grand total of zero portugese words, I decided to take part as well. I soon discovered that portugese, while similar enough to spanish that I could read it (yeah, like I'm fluent in spanish), is pronounced a lot differently. It's sort of like spanish as it's be pronounced by a russian with a Sean Connery accent. So, after learning such useful words as "thank you" ("obrigado"), "sorry" ("me desculpe" or "con liciensa"), and "beer" ("cerveja" - some things don't change), munching on damn fine chicken, and getting to know some of my fellow hosteliers, I was ready to head out and see what Lisbon had to offer. Then I discovered that the hostel bar was serving bottles of beer for €1 a pop and cocktails for €2.50 each, I decided "shur it's been a long day, might as well relax for a bit, I'm on holiday after all" and proceeded to do just that!

Now, nightlife in Lisbon apparently doesn't really get going until 2am, just about the time us poor Irish folk are trying to hang on to our last drinks of the night and listening to "are ya right there folks, have yis no homes to go to!", so a bunch of us decided to head out about midnight(ish). In typical hostel fashion, it was a mixed group, there was an irish, an austrian, a few yanks, a few aussies, a couple of brits, a mexican and a welshman - there's a joke in there somewhere..... The bar street in Lisbon (or at leat the one we found) was, um, different, not like back home at all. Was a pokey little side street on a hill, with the bars being on average the size of your front room at home, with ppl packed in and cheesy music on. We hopped from bar to bar til about 4am, at which point the combination of a long day travelling, the pissing rain and €1.50 a bottle of beer made me decide enough was enough for my first day!

The next morning dawned bright and sunny - too bright and sunny, as I realised I'd left my damn shades at home! So, first stop, buy sunglasses. Luckily there were some nice gentleman hanging around placa de commerciao who were quite wiling to part with "genuine" armani and DKNY shades for a mere €25 (must have been a special limited edition, as they didnt even have armani written on them!). there was a british guy who was bying a pair ahead of me, and he drove a hard bargain, and got hem for €20. Then it was my turn, and while the guy was prob used to haggling, he hadn't learned his trade in Beijing's Pearl Market like I had. So, newly adorned with my €5 pair of shades, I got on the hop-on hop-off bus to get my tourist on! I always find this is the best way to take a look around a city you've never been in before, take the tourist bus first thing, stay on for the whole trip and then you know what you want to go back and see later. This time tho I actually got off at one of the stops, which was a bit out of town and which I'd pretty much have had to get a train back out to again. On the way we passed by a big-ass bridge across the Tagus river which is the spit of the Golden Gate in San Francisco, and that added to the fact that Lisbon is probably the hilliest city I've been in since San Fran made me a bit confused as to where I was for a while. Then, I looked across the river and was even more confused as they also have a big-ass statue which is the spit of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio! By the time I got off the bus in Belem tho, I had my bearings back again. So I wandedered around a bit saw the big monument to Henry the Navigator, went up to the top of it (good view), and was just debating whether or not to eat there or go back into town to eat when the hop-on hop-off bus arrived along. Seeing as they only go every 45mins I took it as a sign from the gods that I was meant to eat in town and hopped on.

Once I arrived back, I headed up Baixa to get some grub. there were no shortage of restaurants but they were all pretty much serving the same thing, so it was a case of pick one at random. The food was OK but nothing to write home about, but the experince was slightly enlivened by guys coming up to me every 5mins and offering me drugs - and I mean nodges of hash the size of your thumb for feck-all money! And this just off the main shopping/touristy street in the town, Rua Augusta! After that I decided to do my pressie shopping for the folks back home, as I heard that pretty much every shop in Lisbon closed on sundays. Miracle of miracles, I managed to get every single pressie I needed in two shops! So, laden down with gifts, I struggled back up the hill to the hostel (did I mention that Lisbon is bloody hilly?) Got there and met Gunther, the Austrian guy I'd been on the piss with the night before, and we spent a bit of time chatting to the really, really cute Estonian girl who was working the reception at the hostel. Gunther had been to the butchers and had gotten pork kebabs at a ridiculously cheap price, which he threw in the oven and offered to share with a few of us, so instad of going out for a meal that night we again ate in again! While he was cooking, Guenther hatched a plan to save himself a lot of money on groceries - apparently it'd be cheaper to catch a flight to lisbon on fri night, stay in the hostel, do all of his food shopping in Lisbon and fly back sat afternoon than to go out and buy everything at the local Tesco in Edinburgh! We hung around the hostel again, got chatting to a Serbian girl who'd just arrived, then about midnight headed out with our new-found Estonian and Serbian friends, the barman from the hostel (a yank) and a few other guys. Went to a small-ish club near the hostel, which was deserted til about 2, but after that the place filled up in short order and it was jammers by 3. Music was shyte (crap danc remixes of crap 80s tunes) and women were nothign to write home about, so left early-ish - maybe 5.

Sunday morning, I got chatting to Olja, the Serbian girl, and Lynette, a Canadian who was in my room the night before (who, probably rightly, was accusing me of snoring), and they said they were heading out to Belem with some others (mostly aussies), and did I want to come. Decided to tag along despite it being what I'd pretty much done the day before, but I had no better plans of my own so we headed out with a bunch of about 8 ppl to catch the train out. We discovered when we got there that touristy stuff like museums in Lisbon were free in until 2 on sundays, so we went into the Mosterio dos Jeronimos, then wandered to the castle at the mouth of the river, then to a bakery which our guide books told us was famous for some local custard-filled pastry delicacy. Have to say it was damn nice!

After that, the Aussies decided to head back to the hostel, and me, Lynette, Olja and Mel (an Aussie girl) hopped on a tram to got to see the castle. The tram ride was a bit mad, the hills were so steep and the roads were so windy it was almost like a slow-motion roller coaster! We got to the castle and were just debating whether or not to spend the €5 admittance fee whn it started to piss rain, which decided the issue for us, so we browsed the touristy shops a bit and then headed back to the hostel, as we'd agreed to meet the rest of the crowd from that morning for dinner. The plan was that maybe 4, 5 ppl were going out for dinner, but then someone else heard we were going and wanted to tag along, then they asked their mate, who suggested it to their friend, and so on and so forth, until eventually 17 of us forayed out to invade some hapless unsuspecting restaurant! I have to say, I was well impressed with the place we found - not only did we all manage to get the one table, but the food was good and the service was so fast that we gave the one waiter we had a big round of applause (and a big tip!) at the end. We eventually rolled back to the hostel and, despite the rain, ended up huddled up underneath the umbrellas out at the outside bar talking bullshit til the wee hours - a pretty chilled night I must say. Lots and lots of beer was drunk, and I'd say we drove our cute estonian friend nuts after teh bar closed by going down to buy beer off her at reception!

Finally, eventually, on monday morning I had to leave. The sun broke though the clouds just as I was leaving (typical), and seeing as Gunther was heading off as well, we split a taxi to the airport. We were both going to the same place (Dublin), but seeing as he was going direct and I wasn't (Bloody Air France!), he was taking off at 10:30am and getting to dublin at 12:30, and I was taking off at 11:30 and getting in at 6pm! Seeing as I hadn't had the chance to do much shopping for myself over the weekend, I was hoping to pick up a t-shirt or somethgin in the airport. So, I went thru security fairly early only to discover that there were shag-all shops thru the gate so all I could do was get a coffee! I only had about 1h15min of a stopover in Paris this time, so I was a bit concerned about the flight, but we took off relativly on time (as in, we were boarding at the time we should have been taking of and in the air 15min later), and I made it to my gate with hust about enough time to catch my breath in CDG before we boarded. Was too bad actually I didn't have more tiem, as Terminal 2F looked like it had a lot more going for it than the one I was stuck in on the way over! When we went to board, I was a bit unnerved to see a 747 waiting for us at the gate - to dublin? - but instead of boarding that we went down the stairs and hopped on a bus which seemed to take us half-way back home already before dropping us at the expected little BaE 50-seater plane, same as we had coming over (think "minibus with wings").

So, I arrived in dublin again evenbtyallu, and pretty much went straight out on the piss with Gunther who had a night's stopover in dublin! A nice way to end the trip!

Oh, and the pictures from it can be seen here.....