Archive for the 'General' Category

Eugene, our bus driver for today, collected us from the hostel just before 9am and took us out to Cobh to the Queenstown museum which features displays to do with the migration of the Irish to America and Australia.  It discusses reasons for the migration, including the transportation of convicts to Australia, and the conditions [...]

We were collected by Michael Lyons, our bus driver, at about 11am and headed on our journey to Cork , via the town of Kilkenny.  It was a picturesque journey through what is clearly quite good farming country.  Micheal told us that we were travelling through an area that just this week had held a [...]

This morning we visited the archeology collection of the National Museum.  This is a fascinating collection of items and I have always enjoyed visiting it.  We began with an audiovisual presentation which was a detailed account of the development of crafts in Ireland over the centuries.  There are examples of Viking artifacts and ancient gold [...]

My day began at 1pm with the discovery that I had contracted the gastro bug that has been going around… Not happy Jan!  It made my day pretty tough, and I can just hope that no one else is in line to get it…
The group started with a tour of the Guinness Storehouse.  The centre [...]

We landed at Heathrow at 6.30 this morning and made it onto our flight to Dublin almost without incident – for a minute there we thought we had lost Grant, but he was more organised than we thought and was already on the flight!
A quick bus transfer into the city and we were at our [...]

Our delegation of 13 students, 2 teachers and 3 parents met at Adelaide airport for our 12.15pm departure to Sydney.  It was a bit of a rough journey to begin with, given the thunderstorms, but we eventually cleared them and settled in… mostly.  One of our students had come down with a 24-hour gastro bug [...]

Its been more than 12 months but I am off over seas again, this time with 13 students, 1 other teacher and 3 parents from my school in tow.  We are a delegation from my high school who will be visiting our sister school in Co Clare, Ireland.  We live in Clare, South Australia, a [...]

England apparently haven’t had much of a summer this year, but it was 28 degrees when I arrived this morning from Bergamo! I am staying with my friends Hilary and Keith in Keyworth, a village near Nottingham and we are heading to the Lakes District tomorrow morning. It does promise to be a [...]

I am in Vernazza, one of the five villages of the Cinque Terre on the west coast of Italy. I have been here before, loved it then and still love it!  One day I will come here for at least a week, longer if I can manage it, and just hang out!  The food is [...]

So now I can tick this one off!  Yes, I have seen the leaning tower of Pisa and can verify that it is indeed on a lean!  Acutally it is quite pretty, a bright pure white that contrasted beautifully with the surrounding emerald of the grass!  It was being cleaned while I was there so had [...]