BIG NEWS!!!!!!!

I'm going to be an auntie, twice over, in March 2008. My sister is expecting twins.....

Havhingsten fra Glendalough - The Sea Stallion from Glendalough

Wrecks of Viking longships were found in Roskilde Fjord in the 60s. At some stage they found out that one of them had been built in Glendalough in Ireland app. 1000 years before. So then they decided to build a replica and sail it back to Ireland in homage of our shared heritage, and to see what it was like and all that.

So here it is! The Sea Stallion from Glendalough, which arrived in Dublin yesterday after leaving Roskilde on 1 July. It was very rainy when we got there, after work, but that just means there aren't hordes of people on my pictures. Hehe.


Anyway, we were sneaking peeks at the live footage from the actual arrival in the afternoon, and it was a very impressive sight, seeing the ship come up the Liffey, with the bright yellow-and-red sail blazing. They had to take it down pretty soon though, to row to shore.

Here is a picture of the big poster, where you can see the sail:

Family Weekend 2007

I'm back in ol' Dublin after a lovely weekend in Denmark with lots of beer and chocolate. Someone had had the fantastic idea of getting a 3 kilo thingy of little chocolates (pictured) for our family weekend (paternal side including aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins' kids, but not dogs).


We did not manage to finish it, but I think everyone got a few to take home? I know I did :) I'm sure people in the office will be very very grateful when I bring them in tomorrow (I can already hear some of you screaming, 'aargh, no more chocolate! We've had enough!' To that I just say 'MUAAHAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAA! I am not eating it all by myself!')

Anyways, the weather was beautiful (at least on Saturday), so the Viking Games (there were two copies) came out, and while some people were thrashing other people at Kubb (another name for the Viking Game), some other people went to the beach to play with a wee wellspring that was there. It was very curious - a freshwater wellspring about 2 feet from the edge of the sea. I don't have pictures of that, but it was very cute.

P.S. More info on Kubb here

What I was up to while blog was hibernating....

Okay, so I'm backtracking a bit now, to share some pictures from my holiday in Denmark in March with my family.


Among other places we went to this beautiful area around the Skjern River, which flows into the Ringkøbing Fjord. In the 1960s the river was straightened, literally, to make the wetlands suitable for agriculture. Unfortunately, this ruined the natural habitats for many of the animals in the river, and also had an adverse effect on the pollution of the river and the fjord. So, in 1999, they decided to put the river back in its original course, which meanders quite beautifully through the landscape. The whole area is now a natural reserve, and the scenery is breathtaking. It's also home to an awful lot of birds and other animals - we saw mostly geese, but then again, it was only March.

You can find more info and maps and stuff here

English - Long Story from the Lego and Disney regions....

So I haven't updated my blog in a while. I'm a lazy bugger, I'll be the first one to admit it, so I am not going to give as much detail as if I'd actually written about stuff as it happened.

I've been traveling quite a bit - first to Denmark on holidays, then to Florida with work. In little old DK I got to see Viki again for the first time in FOREVER, and I also went to Legoland with Mum, Dad and Anders. It was a very hot day that day, and the families and pram mob were out in force. (If you don't know what I mean by pram mob, ask me).

Anyway, Legoland in Billund is a magic place for people of all ages. We spent an hour and more just walking around Miniland, where all kinds of buildings from all kinds of countries are built to scale. A lot of the most important Danish castles are represented, as are interesting feats of engineering and architecture, such as a canal thingy from Sweden and a ditto from Germany. There's also an oil rig, lots of windmills, an airport, a train station and a race track - all with moving vehicles (expect for the planes - all they do is taxi around the place). I think this part of the park alone is worth the price of admission. We only went on 1 ride (the little train that takes you past Lego Mount Rushmore and Lego Sitting Bull, as all the cool rides also had very long and not very cool queues :( On top of that, this year's new ride broke down in the middle of the day, which didn't help.

The other (for me) absolute must-see thing in Legoland is Titania's Palace, which is a massive doll house, full of cool miniature things, and handmade marvels. You could literally spend hours just looking at all the details. I remember watching a documentary about Titania's Palace, narrated by our Queen, when I was a kid - fascinating stuff!

I went back to Ireland and spent all of 2 days at home, before my colleague Giorgia and I headed off to Orlando, Florida. It was a business trip, but we managed to squeeze in a trip to Daytona Beach, where we watched a sunrise from the beach, because we couldn't sleep (jet lag). I found the Atlantic shore a very dramatic place, and loved watching the waves come crashing in. The sky seemed bigger than in Ireland, although I know that sounds ridiculous. :) Blame it on the jet lag, hahaha! Orlando is very hot and very humid, but we sure didn't complain..much :) It just takes some getting used to, when outside is a wall of heat, and inside is cool airconditioning.

Our last day before work kicked in, we went shopping. We had a list of all the outlet malls around (thanks Yvonne!) and other interesting places. Ah, what a lovely day. We were in the office, just up the road from the hotel, for the following three days, and it went really well. It was so nice to finally meet some of the people, who had up until then only been voices on conference calls. And we learned a great deal, and had some fun along the way too. It felt like we had been gone for a month, but when we went back to the airport for our flight home, it seemed like only yesterday we had stepped off the plane from London.

This is when things turned sour. The flight was already delayed a good 2 hours, when they announced that it would be delayed for another 24 hours. As there were a lot of families with kids on this plane, the poor airline staff had their hands full explaining to people what they should do, getting information on who could be transferred to another flight leaving for Manchester that evening, sorting out luggage, etc. I felt so sorry for them. That's a customer service nightmare - to be surrounded by frustrated customers and not have the information they want. Giorgia and I were as nice and patient with them as we could be, understanding their situation and I think that paid off for us in the long run. Although, I can understand that if you're traveling with kids, it sure ain't a laugh being stuck in an airport.

Anyway, they put us up in the hotel which is actually part of the airport terminal, gave us vouchers for our meals, which I thought was very nice. At first they said that our luggage would be transferred to the new plane, but then news came that the bags would be off loaded, and put out on the carrousels. So we hung around for a while, until they could tell us that the bags were indeed ready to be collected. I think it was around 11 when we got to our lovely rooms at the Hyatt. We were tired, but at that really goofy stage of tiredness where lots of stuff is just fun. That was after we'd had dinner at MacDonalds, which was the only thing that was still open at 10pm. Yeah, I'm loving it!

The other bad thing was that we would be missing our connecting flight from London to Dublin, but because this ticket had been booked separately from the Orlando ticket, the airline couldn't guarantee us a spot on a new flight - they did their best, but said we had to talk to British Airways ourselves once we got to London. Fair enough - not their fault.

The next day, Saturday, we hung around the airport and spent our vouchers on Krispy Kreme doughnuts amongst other things. The vouchers had to be spent in total - we couldn't get change back on them, so we had about 11 doughnuts between the two of us for breakfast. Whew. Many of them were glazed, and extremely sweet, and I think we left a good two thirds behind. Anyway, we got on the plane as planned that evening and when we got to London Sunday morning, we were very lucky and got stand-by seats on a flight to Dublin. Otherwise, our lovely peeps in Orlando had actually managed to get BA to book us in on another flight, although from Heathrow later that day. But that wasn't the end of our troubles! Our bags had not made it onto the Dublin plane, and so we had to collect the bags late Sunday evening. End of story. I'm so glad there were two of us, I think if I'd been alone, I would just have sat down somewhere and bawled!!

Jet lag on Monday was a lot less fun than it had been in Orlando - I couldn't concentrate on anything and felt all fuzzy and tired. And I had to WORK. Argh!