Author Archives: ngwright

May 22 2011
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Travel

Ireland – Day 4 – May 7

Waterford

The thing I remember most about Waterford is the good waffles we had. I’m fairly simple that way. Of course Aarti informed me that Waterford Glass is very famous and there was a pretty massive shop devoted to it. I just thought it would be an interesting old city to visit. Reginald’s Tower is apparently the longest occupied building in Ireland. Also, there is apparently a tall ships race there and we know that because we saw a series of massive cloth billboards hanging down from a few waterfront buildings while we were checking out the tower; also the bandstand along the shore was shaped like a ship.

Avoca

Very quaint little village that we stumbled into by accident. The town was little more than the main street, but it had a very picturesque parish church and is also on the tourist map for its weaving.

Wicklow

I’m apparently not very good. We thought by going through Wicklow, we were taking the coastal route, but there was no water to be seen from where we were at. It was actually a pretty cool little town, but like usual were trying to make up time so we could back to Dublin and return the car.

Dublin

I hate toll roads sometimes. I probably had to go on and off the N50 four times. After getting into Dublin and getting off where I thought we needed to be for our hotel, we found ourselves lost again. After asking for directions, we headed back, but then I took the wrong direction and we had to back track. Both of us were pretty exhausted but we managed to find our hotel and spend Saturday night out in Dublin.

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May 22 2011
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Travel

Ireland – Day 3 – May 6

Killarney

Very cool national park.

We stopped at Ross Castle, and Aarti and I were attacked by a really happy dog. There were ducks around the creek, and the dog was having a great time scattering them. We spent a couple hours and did a walk around Muckross Lake, which had some pretty spectacular views. It would have been nice if we could have done the ring of Kerry, but there was no time. Its pretty famous, but apparently it would have taken us about five hours to do.

Blarney

Blarney castle was really cool. Aarti and I kissed the Blarney Stone, which is supposed to give you the gift of the gab. I don’t really feel any more well spoken, but maybe it takes a while to work. There’s also some pretty cool caves around the castle that used to have some secret passageways.

Cork

Cork is the food capital of Ireland, so we spent a night out wandering the city streets. After some food, we went out for some traditional Irish music and a couple beers. Good times.

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May 19 2011
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Travel

Ireland – Day 2 – May 5th

Day 2 was all about a proper visit of Galway

Galway

After a quick drive around Kennedy square, we parked for a bit of a walk around. Just around the corner from where we parked, there was a really cool rock music mural – split into three sections: it had Elvis reaching for god (like the scene from the sistine chapel), the other had rockstar heaven with the likes of Johnny Cash, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, etc, and the final had famous rock stars still alive like Bono.

We walked through the old part of the town, and there are a few streets that have loads of pubs.  Galway is supposed to be big for music, but there wasn’t as much of that early in the morning besides a couple of buskers. Also, we were there a bit early for a visit to the pub.

We did see the Galway cathedral, St Nicholas Church, Lynch Castle, the Spanish  Arches, and a few of the canals.

Lisdoonvarna

According to our book, this  is a matchmaking hub for a few weeks in the summer. The place was  a bit quiet, but we stopped for lunch and I had my first Guinness in Ireland.

Burren National Park

Very cool, very big park. The hills were a kind of purple and looked amazing. We were probably driving through this park for at least an hour. It would have been nice to walk some of the trails, but there was no time.

Cliffs of Mohor

Amazing views. Lots of bugs and some funny safety signs.

This was pretty awesome.

Adare

Near Limerick, this is a pretty little village so we stopped for a little walk around the park and up the main street.

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May 19 2011
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Travel

Ireland – Day 1 – May 4th

After flying in early Wednesday morning on Ryan Air, Aarti and I had only the most general of itineraries. Luckily, she bought a travel book two days before and we were able to educate ourselves while on the plane. Despite growing up mostly in the US, she was born in Belfast and had been to Northern Ireland a few times so we were content to explore the Republic of Ireland and skip the north.

Good thing too because our initial itinerary was far too ambitious for the amount of time we had to spend in Ireland. Even driving, it felt like we were always trying to catch up.

Sword

We just drove through here very slowly, no stopping so soon after leaving the airport. There was a very strange looking castle on the end of the high street – it had only been partially rebuilt, so it was also part ruin.

Tron

This castle and village was our first real stop. According to our trusty guidebook, this castle was used for the filming of Braveheart so it has a celebrity connection.

The sun was out and we managed a quick walk over to the other side of the river to check out the nearby tower and manor house– not part of the castle. While walking around the castle, the importance of the river came into sharp focus. Land has since been reclaimed making the river side more accessible but at the time of its construction, it would have been a powerful fortress.

Also, I was misbehaving a little so was put in the pillory for a while.

Hill of Tara

This is apparently the ancient seat of power in Ireland. Ditches all around mark the place of ancient wooden fortresses and outbuildings. Apparently, there is even a spiritual connection to the place because of its early connection to celtic and druid ritual.

The ancient history was interesting, but I was much more impressed by the view of the surrounding valley. The visitor centre was closed when we arrived, so it was basically just us and a handful of others standing atop a windy hill. However, it started to bustle as we were leaving as people were coming to the teahouse in droves.

Kells

Should have skipped it. There was almost nothing to see here and no one really around. This is the original location for the famous Book of Kells, which is now under a locked display case in Trinity College.

Galway

Very short time here – mostly a drive through because it was already starting to get very late.

Spiddal

We camped in Spiddal for the night. Very nice beach.

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May 13 2011
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England, Travel

Newcastle – Part 2

No trip to a city called Newcastle will skip over a visit to the castle that gives the city its name. The city has been called Newcastle since the old wooden castle was replaced by the keep in the 13th century and Aarti and I spent almost an hour exploring the castle keep. There were excellent views of the river (including the bridges) and of the train station from the top and plenty of narrow corridors to explore. It’s a little unfortunate, but even though the city is called Newcastle, the castle keep itself was strategically useless after just a few centuries. This was mainly because a massive city wall was constructed.

By this time, I had also realized that Newcastle is not far from where George Stephenson was born, and the city claims the father of the steam railways as their own – Stephenson Rocket. There was a big statue of him near the train station. The station is truly massive. It’s also got a bend in it, which is much easier to spot from up above.

That evening we joined up with Luca and Morgane to go out and do what Newcastle is known for. We probably tried half a dozen clubs at the Gate.

It’s hard to describe what I saw, but it’s safe to say that I’ve been scarred for life. The girls, even the ones who looked way too young, were wearing the sluttiest clothes imaginable and way too much bright coloured make-up. There were a few near fights, among both genders, but I have no doubt that we’d have seen more than one had we stuck around. Also, plenty of crazy costumes for the stag and hen nights.

The club we spent the most time in was playing classic rock from the 70’s and 80’s. It was pretty cool that all of us were rocking out to YMCA. We also chilled out in a salsa bar in a failed effort to find dancing, but a successful effort to find mojitos.

The next morning we walked down to the riverside outdoor market for some breakfast and to check out some of the shops. About 30 minutes before we had to leave, the Millenium Gateshead Bridge began to open, and that is a very cool piece of engineering. Instead of opening in the middle, the bridge tilts up on its side. We managed to get a few photos of the whole process – it was very impressive.

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May 13 2011
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England, Travel

Newcastle – April 14th and 15th – Part 1

A night out drinking in Newcastle is not exactly a rare outing for Scots. In fact, there are probably as many Scottish Stag Nights and Hen Do’s there as there are anywhere else in Glasgow or Edinburgh.

The timing of this trip worked out well, because of French friends who were visiting Newcastle the same time as us. The train deal I found was a bit cheaper, but left very early on Saturday morning, 6:15 am.

The first things on our minds was dropping stuff off at the hotel and finding some breakfast. It actually took us a fairly long time to get around to the latter. We walked along the river and checked out the bridges, Sage Gateshead, and some public art before walking up the hill to find somewhere to eat.

After having a bacon sandwich at a French cafe near the arcade, we wandered off in search of Grainger Street Market, which we found quite accidentally – we were advised to go there, but made no effort before hand to find out exactly where it was.

We went through the entrance by the Black Garter pub – I am keeping a running collection of amusing place, shop, and pub names, and that one sounded very saucy. The market reminded me a lot of the Granville Island Market, but had to be at least twice the size. It was split into a few parts, but it looked like it could have been a converted warehouse like the one in Vancouver. It had a high glass ceiling, and all of the large open spaces were filled with vendors selling fresh produce, deli meats, cheeses, clothes, and tourist knick knacks.

While walking around a few of the other shopping streets, we stopped for a moment to listen to some buskers, and were met with a very nice surprise. We were expecting to meet up with Morgane and Luca at the train station later that afternoon, but there they were sitting on a bench not far away.

Now being a foursome, we walked around a bit more and eventually made our way over to the Laing Art Gallery. They were doing an exhibition on a Victorian painter (named John Martin) that we all really enjoyed – lots of vibrant colours, vivid landscapes, and stories from ancient mythology and the bible. One of these days, I’ll actually have to read the bible front to back because I always find there are a few gaps when I try to remember the stories.

We arranged to meet up later, and split into pairs again. Aarti and I went by bus out to the biggest mall I’ve ever seen called Metrocentre, which kind of sounds similar to a place in Burnaby where I used to work. It dwarfed that one. IT’S A BIG, BIG, MALL.

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Apr 21 2011
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Film, Thoughts and Musings

Canadian Movie Night

A couple people were over last night, and we decided to watch a modern classic of Canadian cinema – One Week. The movie stars Joshua Jackson as a young guy who finds out he has cancer and is probably about to die. Before entering treatment he wants to take an adventure, and begins a motorcycle trip across Canada, from Toronto to the westcoast.

As the film goes on, he questions his life so far and his relationship with his fiancee, and searches for a mystical creature called Grumps. He also takes photos with the world’s biggest dinosaur, adirondack chair, nickel, fire hydrant, hockey stick, and others.

We were also having a little fun with the mistakes in geography. I guess doing an actual cross country trip would have been too much, because they did jump back and forth between east and west. Duncan’s giant hockey stick is apparently in Ontario according to the film.

It was still a good film. It makes you a little homesick.

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Apr 11 2011
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Uncategorized

Canada Bowling Night – Last Tuesday

I was really excited that so many meetup people were interested in coming out for a night of bowling. I even got to meet a few new people, which is always great.

Apr 07 2011
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Dundee

I have been so busy this week. I went Saturday and am only now getting around to writing about this on my blog.

The Great Timmies Trek was postponed due to bad weather, so on Saturday Aarti and decided to make it up. Instead of the train, we took one of the CityLink buses from Edinburgh and switched buses in Perth. It took almost an hour longer each way, but part of that is the ten minute stop in Perth and the indirect route that the coach takes. Worth it though because it is about half as much money.

After some aimless wandering in the city centre, Aarti and I started walking west. On the way to Glamis Road and the promised Tim Horton’s coffee. In our aimless wanderings, we did spot a few interesting pub names – Tickety Boos was probably our favourite. After what felt like a lot of uphill walking, we eventually made it to Glamis Road and almost immediately saw the SPAR in question and were rewarded with some really good coffee.

With an incredible show of willpower, we waited until we reached Mills Observatory before we opened the box of donuts. The observatory is in Balgay Park, and after I took us on a wrong turn, Aarti suggested in a surprising show of bravery that we go off trail and down a steep hill. Of course I went first in order to offer encouragement/criticism from down below. Instead of walking, she chose to slide down most of it on her bum.

After leaving the park, we walked to another hill, the Law. Its an old volcano that sits above Dundee like Arthurs Seat sits above Edinburgh. I still need to write a review of that for the Woodlands Trust website. I have already posted a few photos on Flickr.

Dundee is really more of a city than I imagined and it reminded me of the older part of Nanaimo. Its history has been tied to the ocean and the city’s importance as a port. Its also about the same size if not slightly larger.

On the way back into the city centre, we walked past Dudhope Park and saw the tulips starting to bloom. The weather was sunny for almost all of our time, and we had the heat of a proper spring.

Back in the city centre, the McManus Gallery was also an extremely good way to spend an hour and half – a mix between an local and natural history museum and an art gallery. Outside is one of the oldest statues of Robert Burns – from 1880. After a short walk along the shore, we were both sick of walking and started back to the bus station.

Mar 20 2011
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edinburgh

Weekend in Edinburgh

Its been a  tough couple of days as I’ve been fighting off a bit of a cold this week. Starting to get better though.

On Friday, Aarti and I went out to see the Lincoln Lawyer. She’s never read any Michael Connelly, but we were both pretty happy with how the film turned out. I met up with friends on Saturday, had lunch, and explored some pubs on Leith walk.  Fortunately, there are tons of them on that street. Too many to explore in a single pub crawl.

I’m playing baseball again. It still feels a bit weird, but I’m getting it back again very slowly. I even put on the catchers gear this afternoon.

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