Days 3 and 4 in Linz

It's been a busy couple of days! Yesterday, my cousin Sabine and her mom came and got us and this time we took the tram into town. From Solarcity, it takes about half an hour or so to get into town. We got off in town and were immediately surrounded by yet another set of Christmas booths -- it seems that one of the things Austrians love to do is setup markets around Christmas time. I hear the Christkindlmarkt in Vienna is something to see, but I guess we won't get to see that one. But having seen the ones in Salzburg and Linz now gives us some idea of what to expect. It's a fun atmosphere with people selling many different food, clothing, and arts and crafts. There's some fun traditional food as well, that we would try that day as well. In Linz, there are two locations (that we saw anyways) where the markets were setup. The first place we stopped was the first one and then we walked up the main street a ways to the second. En route, we stopped at a grocery store (where we may have purchased some Austrian chocolate ...), and at a bookstore where there was a fair number of English books as well as German ones. We continued up the main street there (I'm not too sure if it is *the* main street, but it was pretty busy and it is where all the trams run up and down the length of the city). We got to the other market and this is where we tried some kind of sausage in a bun (the name escapes me now) with some sort of spicy ketchup. It was rather tasty! We continued on and tried Kirshpunsch (cherry juice mixed with warm wine - very tasty) and a pastry kind of resembling a doughnut, but not quite. Dented in the center and deep fried, they are served with jam in the middle and are also quite tasty (although I'm sure terrible for you!).

After trying some of these delicacies, we bid farewell to Sabine's mother and Sabine took us on a bus up a hill that would let us overlook Linz. The bus ride took about 15 minutes and we were soon looking over the city. The view was a bit obscured by the cloudy sky which was a bit unfortunate, but even with that, it was a pretty nice view. We wandered around the top of the hill for awhile taking photos and then caught the bus back down again. Apparently the bus isn't the normal way to go up there -- but they are upgrading the train that would normally take us up there. The bus dropped us off back in city center next to the market place again. From there, we walked a little ways to the nearby art gallery.

We went inside and had a look around. It was pretty cheap to get in, so we walked around and looked at some of the art. I'm not really much of an art fan most of the time, but there was some neat stuff there to see. It was enjoyable though, and certainly not a waste of time. Probably the neatest thing about the art gallery was the building itself. A new building, the gallery itself is elevated with two "legs" for support. It is quite striking, but tough to describe. The outer walls are glass with words written on them which kind of make the walls glitter a little when you pass by it. About two or three feet behind the glass, the building is mostly concrete within. Strange and interesting to look at, that's for sure!

After checking out the art gallery, we headed back to the tram and took it back to Solarcity to have dinner with Kien's family. They cooked us up a big batch of chili con carne which was pretty satisfying after a day in the wind and rain and relative chill of Austrian winter.

The next morning, we accompanied Kien and his mother to do some shopping. We hit up some discount grocery stores, and we were amazed at how cheap some stuff was compared to Dublin. In particular, the wine on the store shelves was ranging in price from 1.69 to 2.50 euro or so. I don't know if any of it was any good, but it was cheap! We dropped off the groceries and then went back out and walked around Linz's big mall for awhile. It was an interesting experience. Unlike malls in Edmonton or Dublin, people are free to smoke anywhere they like in the mall, which was a little odd and not too pleasant. But people were pretty cheerful and the atmosphere was pretty nice. Because it was just before Christmas, there were tons of vendors lining the walls and/or down the center of the mall. There was a lot of variety in the things to look at!

After wandering for awhile it was getting late for lunch and we started to get hungry. We tried out an all you can eat sushi restaurant -- one where the offerings came by your table on conveyer belts and you just grabbed whatever you wanted. We were a little surprised to find out that it was an all-you-can-eat style rather than similar ones in Vancouver and Dublin we've seen where you pay by the plate. There wasn't a lot of sushi there, but it was tasty. There was a lot of other asian food as well like spring rolls, fried rice, and other stuff. It was all pretty good and we probably ate too much.

We journeyed back home and relaxed for a little while. Our plans for the evening were to meet up with Sabine and her husband in town to enjoy the markt on the last night before Christmas to drink more punsch, eat more of those doughnuts and otherwise enjoy the atmosphere. So that's what we did! We enjoyed some more kirshpunsch, and stood around a table with Kien, Sabine and her husband, as well as one of Kien's school friends and his wife and chatted for awhile. We then moved on to a bar called Punsch Tempel, where we tried another drink called Jobär. It was another sweet fruity drink similar to punsch, but I guess made with vodka instead of wine. Tasty and warm, and probably pretty dangerous as you can't really tell there's alchohol in them!

The big day for Christmas here is Christmas eve, so there will be a big gathering tomorrow to have lots of food. So that's what we'll be doing then!

Morgan

First Days in Austria

On December 20th, early in the morning, Diane and I made our first trek into continental Europe together. Our plane was supposed to leave at 6:20am, which is entirely too early! We had a plan: to catch the still running night-luas (during Christmas weekends, the tram line runs until 3:30am) a couple stops over to catch the Aircoach -- a comfortable and cheap way to get to the airport. Unfortunately, as we were walking towards the place where the aircoach picks people up, we saw it turn the corner and leave, and the next one didn't get there for another hour that early in the morning. So instead, we caught a taxi that was conveniently coming by and took that to the airport instead -- getting there ridiculously early: 3:30am! They hadn't even opened security up at the airport yet ... they did that at 4am. Salzburg is a short 2 hour direct flight from Dublin. Both Diane and I slept most of the way there, but not without missing sunrise on the plane. I didn't get any pictures though - the sunrise was more to the front of us than the side of us.

We arrived in Salzburg and had no issues claiming our baggage and going through customs and were greeted by two of my cousins. Our first stop was a small bakery in the airport for some Austrian style buns. They were fresh, warm, and tasty! The plan for us was to wander around Salzburg a bit before heading home to Linz ... so we drove into town from the little Salzburg airport and found a parking spot and started wandering around a bit on foot. We wandered into the Christkindlmarkt, which is an amazingly large Christmas market. There were booths selling arts and crafts, food, hot drinks, and all kinds of other stuff! Salzburg is a rather charming town, with lots of old buildings. One of its easily seen features is the Festung Hohensalzburg - a huge castle/fortress on top of a hill overlooking Salzburg. To get up there, you can either walk up or take a railcar up a very steep slope. We tried the railcar and it was pretty cool -- I sure hope those cars have good brakes!

There sure was a lot to see in the castle! Tons of displays and information to absorb about the castle. It was built over several hundred years, with a lot of the wealth required to do so coming from the salt trade. We learned that the castle had never been taken by force, but it had been surrendered to Napolean.

After walking around the castle grounds for quite some time, we found the railcars again and headed back down to the town where we walked back through town a bit and visited Mozart's birthplace. At first, this little museum felt a little underwhelming with the first few rooms seeming a little odd. But the museum was actually quite a bit more extensive than we first thought and we explored several rooms detailing quite a bit of information about Mozart's life. The requisite gift shop had quite a few Mozart themed items including Mozart perfume (eww?), Mozart chocolates, and of course, Mozart t-shirts.

We explored that museum for awhile and then went back out to the street where our cousins looked for a place for us to eat at. We ended up at a charming Austrian pub called Sternbraeu. There we tasted austrian beer (Kaiser), and had some tasty Austrian food: Diane had some incredibly tender deer stew, and I tried Wiener Schnitzel. Both were excellent and tasty and made for a nice end to our explorations of Salzburg.

The drive to Linz (where all my Austrian relatives live) is about an hour and a half, and Diane and I were both pretty sleepy on the ride home. We arrived and said hi to everyone and soon after that we were eating again! I have a feeling this trip will involve lots of food.

Both Diane and I were pretty tired so we got to bed early and slept in which was quite nice. The next day was pretty quiet and relaxing. We got up late, and after a bit of breakfast my cousin Kien showed us around SolarCity: the development that he lives in on the outskirts of Linz. The development is pretty neat -- they have a bunch of buildings that are built to conserve energy and most of the buildings have solar panels on top to help supplement the energy supply. It's quite a new place, built in the last 5 years or so, but it's pretty cool.

We walked around for a little while and then returned back to the house where we had some lunch, and met up with the rest of the family. We spent a little time planning out the next few days and then my cousin Sabine and her husband took us into Linz to see a little bit of the city. The city was alive with more Christmas markets. Our destination though this night was a little candle-making place which was pretty cool. We got to make our own candles by starting with the wick and dipping it into pots of hot liquid wax repeatedly until we got a desired thickness. Our candles didn't quite turn out as nicely as I might've liked -- no one told us how fast we should dip them, so we went a bit too fast. Our candles are a bit bumpy, but it was still great fun! Some people were doing some pretty neat things with the wax! It was a great atmosphere, and a surprising amount of fun.

After our candle making foray, we attempted to go have dinner, but were thwarted by closed restaurants (many of them aren't open on Sundays or open only from Tuesday through Saturday. Eventually we did find a place to eat though ... and after we made our order we quickly learned that the portions at this restaurant were *enourmous*! Each of us got a large frying pan full of food -- which none of us finished entirely. Mine had Roast beef, ham, a white bread dumpling, and an egg/potato thing stuffed with little chopped pieces of ham on top of saurkraut. Diane had bratwurst sausages with potatoes and saurkraut. It was all very tasty, but also quite plentiful!

We returned to Solarcity stuffed and happy and quite relaxed! So that was our first two days in Austria. There's a lot more to come, but I'm tired so I'll write more when I next get the chance.

Morgan

October Long Weekend

In Ireland, the last weekend in October is a long weekend. We hadn't made any plans for the weekend until early in the week Xan and Diane started plotting to get us away from town for the weekend. After a few days, they had us booked in a B&B just outside Kinsale -- a little Irish town south and a bit west of Cork. Getting accomodation in the area was a bit tricky, as the October long weekend plays host to the Cork and Kinsale Jazz festival. So it was lucky we got accomodation when we booked so late. So Darse and I took Friday off and we headed out early-ish on Friday morning towards Kinsale. On the way, we stopped at Cashel and Cahir to take in some sights. At both locations there are castles to go see, so we got to see our first real Irish castles. That was pretty cool, but I'll let the pictures do the talking for the most part. We liked Cahir castle a lot better than Cashel -- maybe because there was a little bit more to do there. You could climb up and down several narrow stairways that twist and turned through some of the walls. It could also be because Cahir was in much better shape. It could also be because the friendly people at the gate let us in for the family rate, even though we weren't of the typical 2 adults, 2 children family composition.

It's really quite amazing to see some of these structures which have been standing for so many years. It makes you realize just how much humans are capable of -- even without modern technology to help.

After exploring Cahir castle, we continued our journey through Cork and on to Kinsale. Both Cork and Kinsale were madly busy, although Kinsale quite a bit less so since it's a lot smaller than Cork. Kinsale was mostly nuts because they were undergoing heavy construction on several of the roads including the main road you'd normally go through town on. Driving in Ireland is a terrifying experience -- drivers don't give you much in the way of leeway, and they're on your tail a whole lot. Between that and the narrow roads and the terrifying speeds that other drivers tackle the road with, you can't help but tense up whenever you see another car. And I wasn't even driving!

We arrived safely at our B&B: Walyunga. A charming little place with an excellent host by the name of Mirtle. She was quite helpful making sure we got ourselves settled in and gave us directions in town to negotiate the construction filled streets as well as some recommendations on where to eat. Having spent most of the day on the road, it was more than time for a good meal, so we headed back into town and eventually ended up at a pub called Jim Edwards. The food was relatively cheap, and pretty tasty -- especially the smoked salmon starter that Diane and I shared.

After having dinner we still had some energy so we wandered around Kinsale a bit and took in the scene. Being there for the Jazz festival was a really cool experience. You can walk down the road and hear live music coming from several pubs all at the same time. The first place we stopped was a pub called Muddy Mahers where a blues band had just started playing. We stayed for a beverage and for a few songs. It was pretty fun. We wandered around the town a bit more after that and stopped in another place for some more music (the name of the establishment escapes me now). We didn't stay long though. It had been a bit of a long day and we returned to our B&B with the idea of getting some rest before hitting the road to explore the southern coast of Ireland.

Unluckily for us, the weather had different ideas. We woke up to Saturday morning only to discover that the sky had opened up and some seriously unpleasant rain with gusting winds took over. As a result, we ended up sticking around the B&B for most of the day, only getting out for the evening for a bit of dinner.

So we were well rested when we left our B&B on Sunday to try and cover as much ground as we could. So we hit the road and explored the southern coast of Ireland a bit. Our first target was the Drombeg Stone Circle, which was pretty neat. There's a set of stones arranged in a circle. At the winter Solistice the sun is supposed to shine through a pair of gateway stones at one end of the circle. There's also some remains of a couple of stone huts which were cool to see. One of the cool things about this was just being able to walk through the circle.

We hopped back into the car and drove towards Blarney which was our next stop. On the way, we stopped in a Irish town called Bandon and walked around a bit and had a coffee at a lovely little cafe. Irish towns are so colourful -- the buildings are often each painted a different colour which gives towns a wonderful feel. After our coffee and a quick snack we moved on to Blarney castle.

Blarney Castle is an impressive structure. The castle is quite tall, and is still in good enough shape to climb to the top of -- which is a good thing or kissing the Blarney stone would be pretty hard. On the climb up, there were quite a few rooms to explore, and the view from the top of the castle was pretty nice! Both Diane and I kissed the Blarney stone -- it was kind of one of those silly touristy things that you gotta do.

Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to walk around the Blarney castle grounds, so we'll have to return to do that. It looks like a beautiful area, but we had to get moving so that we could drop Diane off at the train station. Before we made our weekend plans, Diane had volunteered to help out at the Dublin marathon and she didn't want to cancel on them. So she hopped on a train from Cork on Sunday evening to take her to Dublin so she could help with the marathon on Monday.

We didn't spend too long in Cork, but we did walk around a little bit. We were there a bit early for the full in the evening before the Jazz festival really kicked off for the evening. We might have to go check out the jazz festival next year, but since we had to drive back to Kinsale that evening, we decided to head back and have dinner in Kinsale instead of staying late in Cork before having to drive back tired in the dark.

Darse, Xan and I ate dinner at a fancy little place in Kinsale called Jolas. We had tried to get into it the previous night but it was full. Jola's is the town favourite restaurant and it turned out to be quite a nice choice. The food was fantastic, but it wasn't the only cool thing about the place. You enter the building at street level, but the main floor of the building was cut out and the tables were arranged below ground level. So you go down a stairwell into a warm room with a very high ceiling (since it goes up for two floors). The walls are beautiful stone, but it didn't feel cold -- they had the fireplace going and it was a very comfy cozy atmosphere. It was a rather nice evening.

The next day, we had a limited amount of time to explore Kinsale before we had to head home. So we spent some time looking through both James and Charles forts, as well as walking through Kinsale by day. Charles fort in particular was really quite a neat place. There was so much space inside the fort to explore that it felt like it would take us forever to see it all. I'm pretty sure we didn't see it all, but we got through a fair amount of it. There was some nice views both inside and outside the fort and it was really quite a good experience!

The drive home was relatively uneventful, and it was good to get home to relax. Doing touristy stuff is tiring! It was a four day weekend, and even with the relaxing we did hiding from the weather on Saturday, we did a lot of walking and sightseeing!

Morgan

Settling In

It's a little crazy to think that we're fast approaching three months in Ireland! It's been a big move, and we totally miss seeing the people we're used to seeing all the time. Thankfully, with this being the internet age, we're able to video chat with people. If you'd like to hook up with us on the video chat, we're on skype and AIM. Give us a shout and we'll organize a time to meet up. It's been pretty nice to be able to chat with both Diane and my families back home. Anyways, back to point form updates (since I'm tired and it's time for bed):

• Last weekend Darse and Xan got us out of our house to go check out Kildare. The main attraction there is the Irish National Stud which is a thoroughbred horse breeding operation of apparently some fame. (I don't exactly know much about horse breeding, but I learned some). We did a guided tour of the grounds, and saw some of their stallions. The most expensive one's stud fee comands €75,000! The grounds there are actually quite lovely, and we got a chance to check out a couple of gardens -- a Japanese garden, and Saint Fiachra's Garden. I got quite a few photos that I'm actually quite happy with, and it was fun to get out of the city!
• Work has started to get busy. Lots of projects are under way now and I'm starting to get into the thick of things. There's still a few moments where I don't feel particularly useful, but on the whole it's starting to feel like I'm settling in okay. Lots of stuff to learn though, that's for sure! This week, we released a new version of the software which introduced matrix tournaments. They're a new format of poker sit and go tournaments, but you play 4 tables at once. Not only do you compete for individual prize pools on each table, but how you do at each table contributes to how you rank for the matrix tournament as a whole. I haven't had a chance to try playing one yet, but it's a pretty cool new feature.
• There's been quite a few nights spent late at the office playing games. In addition to playing poker with Chris Ferguson, he's stuck around a bit longer to play some geeky board games with us. So there's been a few late nights of Ticket to Ride, Blokus, Medici, Aquaretto, Carcassonne, and other fun board games. Chris really liked quite a few of them, so hopefully he'll be back soon to play more of them with us.
• Thanksgiving isn't really celebrated here, so we were a bit envious of the food our families were going to be enjoying this past weekend. It's a bit weird not spending thanksgiving with the folks. It was nice to be able to chat with family over the weekend though!
• The desk that we ordered from Argos came this week, so our place is getting a little bit better organized. We also got blinds several weeks ago, so our home is starting to feel a lot more like home.
• The weather here has actually been quite good for the past couple weeks. There's been some rain, but not as much as we might've been led to believe. As a result, we've had a chance to take in some rather pretty sunsets, and some beautiful weather for walking around a bit.

That's all I can think about from this update. Be sure to check out the photos from our visit to the Irish National Stud!

Morgan

Photos!

Sorry for the break in your regular programming. I've been busy between seeing parts of Dublin (we saw the Guinness storehouse yesterday, and are going to see some gardens today) and sorting through photos from the honeymoon in an attempt to get caught up so I can start posting Ireland photos fairly soon. To that end, I've now worked my way through photos from the Man-Machine Poker Championship, our Vegas Holiday, and San Diego. Have a look and let us know what you think!

For those that are reading the blog, do you like it? What would you like to see change? If we get a little feedback, we might be able to work on tuning it a bit to the people who like to read it. Leave us some comments! Don't worry, your email won't be published.

Morgan