blog d'europe

after a 13 hour coach trip from dublin, i was back in london at 8am. rather than take myself and my heavy pack back home, i made last-minute plans to catch up with a friend from back home - anna. she's passing through london for a few days before jetsetting off to ghana for three months, as a volunteer worker in an orphanage. wanting to catch her before she left, today was the only day possible.

so, i strapped my considerably huge pack to my back, ready for a nice, somewhat relaxing day in a quiet part of london...

well, anna had other plans. "hey steph, let's go to camden!" ...imagine trying to casually stroll in and around market stalls with a big pack on your back - that was me. don't worry though, i made anna carry it too ;)

despite threatening grey skies, we didn't get any rain - so we whiled away a good 7 hours at the markets, both warm & dry. originally walking into the markets telling myself that i would. not. buy. anything. ...i walked out that afternoon with a new ring to add to my collection - a silver treble clef. in my defence i did barter the price down four quid...

eventually, our exhausted legs found their way to chin chin laboratorists. it's a nitro ice-cream bar, where they make the ice-cream on the spot, using liquid nitrogen to freeze the mixture. we shared a valhrona chocolate, with caramel & honeycomb, which we ate just outside the 'ice-cream laboratory' on a few wooden swing chairs.

it's things like this that make camden such an exciting, loveable place - there's always something new to discover. although next time i'll definitely make a point of leaving my backpack at home...

good luck with all your ghanian adventures anna, see you in the summer!

platform elastic sandals...enough said

massive pack to the right..

post-paddywagon, and we were back in dublin. the tour finished the day before, so we were able to walk around the capital at our own pace. it's the capital of the republic of ireland, and by far my favourite place on the emerald isle. dublin is divided into two by the liffey river which runs through the middle, making it very easy to find your way round.

a bunch of us paddywagon-ers were staying on the north bank, right near the custom house & o'connell street. top spot for us, with tesco's around the corner for quality (cough) food & an off-license opposite that.

o'connell street has a street market most mornings, so for those who managed to get up before midday, it was nice to stroll amongst the stalls. the tall & incredibly random monument of light sits in the middle of o'connell street. at something like 120m tall, it's the tallest sculpture in the world, cost about €5,000,000 and has been given the loving nickname 'the stiffy on the liffey'. it's tip lights up at night, and helped us find our way home on more than one occasion..

the life & soul of dublin lies on the south side, in the temple bar district. it's a bunch of cafés, pubs, bars, old record shops, vintage clothing shops, and a bunch of other random odds & bods. whether it's night or day, it's a fun & funky place to walk through - with buskers and live bands, there's always music floating through the air. we had sunny days & warm(ish) nights so the streets were full of people, and there was a real bohemian feel to the whole place.

then there's baggot street, location of 'the baggot mile', a mile-long pub crawl for post-exam university students. the ratio of pubs per yard is very high too, so i'm guessing it'd be a pretty mean pub crawl...

i loved grafton street, near temple bar. it's an older part of dublin that's now the place to go to for shopping, with cafés dotted along the strip for tired shoppers. we walked past a man making giant bubbles, and even someone who had wheeled his piano out into the street to play some tunes. i was reminded of bourke street mall in melbourne when i first walked along here, only grafton is much more narrow & with no cars/buses/trams along it.

there's a bunch of bridges across the liffey, my two favourites were the ha'penny bridge (you used to have to pay a 1/2 penny to cross the bridge) - which was designed and constructed by the same people who built the titanic, and o'connell bridge. on the bridge lies the memorial plaque of father pat noise, whose horse & carriage went over the edge of the bridge and drowned in the liffey in 1919. sad story, until you find out that father pat noise never actually existed - it's just a big irish inside-joke. mm irish humour..

there's so many things i could talk about when it comes to dublin...but i might just let the pictures speak for themselves.

as the irish would say: happy days!