The World in Dublin Harbour - August 2010

On my usual morning walk from Sandymount to Eastpoint Business Park, there it was, one big cruise ship. If you pass by walking, you get the feeling it's an apartment block floating on the water. Who wants to live in a skyscraper travelling the ocean? I do love the sea, but no, I don't want to travel that way...

Theater Weekend in London - 24th to 26th June 2010

Originally, me and Martina wanted to go over to London to view a certain actor, but as we couldn't figure out when he was playing, we just decided to go with the flow and watch as many different plays as possible.

So we left our countries in the early morning too meet up in London, settling for a tiny B&B in the Westminster district. During the day, we went to stroll through London, passing by Buckingham Palace, meeting a musician in the nearby park, before watching our 1st play in Covent Garden's Fortune Theatre: 'The Woman in Black', a very nice and gruesomely told story.

The second day, we went to explore more of Covent Garden, as I kind of managed to have been to London several times without enjoying this very nice part of London. Afterwards, we left for the National Theatre, because we really wanted to watch 'London Assurance'. However, when we arrived there were no cards left, so we went upstairs and waited patiently for 2 cards to be returned. We, jokingly, decided that we would like to get 2 seats in the middle. And, we got 2 seats in the middle. The play really was awesome, very enjoyable and very well played. (When I came back to London, I found that the Cineworld featured this very play as well... We watched the show live!). After the theatre, we headed to Chinatown to have a bite to eat (again, my 1st time to go there!) and to enjoy the lights around there.

Our last day, we spent in the Gallery of Modern Art, strolled by the new Shakespeare Theatre which we decided to visit next time, before Martina had to head back to the airport. I walked around the town a little longer, but then, fearing, if the English lost against the Germans in the football game, the town might be a little upset, I returned to the airport too.

London, we will come back very soon!

Trip to Stockholm - 17th til 20th June 2010

Our trip to Stockholm was kind of a reunion between, Helen, Maria and me, after working together for the Central Reservation Line and sharing lots of distress with customers, shared cinema evenings and dinners and...

I arrived first, on Friday night and went straight to the new Park Inn Hotel which was very Ikea-like and gorgeous.

The next morning, cuz I had lots of time, I went to the city center to explore it on my own. It was a wonderful morning and I could have stayed within the old town (gamla stan) for quite a while... I found Drottingholm and H&M (where I had to buy a sweater, because it was colder than I expected). I had a coffee in a shop, walls plastered with Marilyn Monroe pictures.

Because I still had time before Helen would arrive and we would meet with Maria, I took the sightseeing ship to drive around the small islands, visited the Vasaa museum with a Viking ship that never left on a big journey, as it just sank in the harbour were it was left to water. I traveled to the Museum of Modern Art with some statues of Niki de Saint Phalle. Before I could reach the ship, a storm came. It was raining very heavy (and me, having lost my umbrella earlier this morning) so that waiting for the rain to go over was the only option. The poor soldiers, however, had to wait in the rain without moving. It was quite a show.

I met with Maria at the bus station to pick Helen up. We had a quick dinner and then went to our respective sleep-overs to meet in the morning for the show: Did I mention that we managed to show up in Stockholm at around exactly the time when the Princess was about to marry her boyfriend? No? Well, there we were and, as it was our fate to be in town at around the time, we decided we could as well go and catch a look.

We did go, but the catching a glimpse (or picture of the couple) proved to be too difficult. After a morning of shopping and waiting for the royal couple to show up, we were exhausted and returned to the hotel, spending the evening watching the reception in the hotel and rating the dresses of the invitees.