Travel time!

We've been so busy lately with our guests that our first out-of-country trip has snuck up on me! We are actually planning three trips over the next few months, with more to come I'm sure! It's so interesting here how easy it is to travel from country to country. The flight from London Heathrow to Dublin is about the same time as flying from Ottawa to Toronto. And costs significantly less. We are both flying to Dublin for about the same cost as one person flying Ottawa to Toronto. Our plan is to arrive in Dublin and head out right away to drive down around the south and southwest coast. We're spending the first night in Waterford, hoping to get there in time for a tour of the crystal factory. Then we're driving along to a town called Kenmare, with a stop along the way at Ardmore. One of my favourite Nora Roberts triologies is set in Ardmore and I am thrilled at the chance to visit this little seaside village myself. From Kenmare we are driving around the Ring of Kerry, and the next day will have an equally scenic drive around the Dingle Peninsula. The night between we are staying in Dingle Town, and then the next night in Doolin. Along the way there we will also be seeing the Cliffs of Mohr. From Doolin we return to Dublin for two nights to explore the city. I think it will be a jam-packed trip, but there should be time for everything we want to see. I'm so excited! Visiting Ireland has been at the top of my list for so many years, I can't believe I'm finally going!

I mentioned previously that we were considering a weekend in Stockholm, but that has been revised now. The reason for going to Stockholm was to see a hockey game between the Ottawa Senators and the Pittsburgh Penguins. But the tickets we were hoping to get on ebay went for more than we wanted to spend, and we don't really want to plan a whole weekend around the hopes of getting tickets on the street when we get there. So instead we've decided to use the long weekend to scratch Paris off our list! No actual plans yet, but we're thinking we'll take the train across, and I still need to figure out exactly what part of the city we'd like to stay in. Any suggestions?

And finally we have a 4-day weekend planned in Berlin in December to visit the Christmas markets. Our friends P&K suggested this as a nice weekend away, so we decided to check it out! We got a cheap flight to Berlin (£116 return for both of us!) but we still need to decide on a hotel. This should be a relaxing weekend away with nothing more to do than wander the markets and have hot chocolate! I bought a new coat today (shhh, Noise doesn't know about it yet, but he can't be too upset, it was only £13!) and am already envisioning myself wandering Berlin in it!

The Singer and Serdic will be winging their way towards us in 2 weeks! Noise showed me an ad in the paper for a birthday concert in Hyde Park for Andrew Lloyd Webber, and it happens to be on the weekend that they will be here! For those of you who don't know the Singer, she is the biggest musical theatre fan there is, so I was not surprised when she jumped at the chance to go. So I've ordered us 4 tickets and am really looking forward to it! Lots of musical theatre stars will be performing ALW's music, and then the show is capped off by fireworks. Sounds like fun, eh?

Noise is out of town for a few days, so it's just me and Buggy. Tomorrow I am planning to take the vespa to work, which will be a first for me! That way I can come home on my lunch break and take Buggy for a walk, so he doesn't have to hold it for the whole day while I'm at work (usually Noise takes him out in the morning after I've left). Driving the vespa doesn't worry me, it's a lot of fun! But I have this fear of not being able to get it started!

I started mapping out our Ireland route today on AutoRoute until I discovered that half the roads in Ireland are missing from the map - even roads that look pretty major! So I'm not sure that we'll take the GPS after all, as it won't be much use to us if it just shows us as a dot in the middle of nowhere with no roads. We'll have to do it the old fashioned way, I guess, with a paper map!

Anyhow, I'd best be off! I'll keep you posted with plans and reports from Ireland! Later!