Let My Opera Begin...: A Quiet Day to catch up...Sunday 18Nov 2012

Just sitting here in the Paddy's common area room, which is also the check-in office, catching up on the past 3 weeks of hectic activities.

USA was great; things so cheap, make-up 1/3 the price, as they make a lot of the top brands there.
Food was ridiculously cheap and one of the hostels we stayed in made fresh muffins or huge crunchy Anzac type biscuits daily for morning and afternoon tea, gave free breakfasts, free dinner at night and had tea and coffee on tap all day. Others had free breakfasts, tea and coffee on tap all day and another gave a free BBQ dinner of hamburgers, onions and lettuce.
Enough to get people through to the next day for sure.

The weather was perfect temp, about 22C for most of the USA trip and for the last 2 days it really got icy cold winds off the mountains and dropped to a nice 14C.

This was the first time in a long time that I actually had what I'd class as a holiday...
Most of my travels over the past 15 years have been Seminars or with the kids from way back when, but USA was 2 weeks of touring for pleasure. So very different to my backpacking on a budget tripping around!
I was taking Val on a personal guided tour of USA to places and things she had not seen. We ate out a lot, never washed our clothes, just went and did things so differently to when I go by myself.

I just enjoy the colder weather and like "being" in an atmosphere where I can breathe and feel alive and am usually on a mission with a purpose and the entertainment element is very low on my agenda.
I enjoy being by myself, doing my blog, planning the next leg of my trip and watching the budget of just on $250 a week, so the USA leg was a real change.

Summing it up we each spent just on $900 for the 2 weeks, including buying a new camera, a mask for Redux9, the QM night, LasVegas, Grand Canyon ,Disneyland, tripping around, food, Imax theatre etc etc.

Ireland is great too; it's definitely the weather for me...Temps of 7C yesterday, no snow here yet, but it's cozy inside and beautiful outside! The sun was out all day yesterday and was still a nice 10C or so outside, so I'm a happy camper here at Paddy's.

I got caught by not buying my ferry ticket across to Cherbourg in France when I found it the other night and when I went to do it yesterday, it was all sold out! Firstly they moved the Sun night sailing to Tuesday because of mooring probs, so I thought I'd have time...but not so!

Then I found another ferry on Wednesday night, sailing at the same time at 9.30pm, arriving Cherbourg, at 5pm the next day for $155 Ausd for a cabin and the overnight crossing. Spending a night on a ferry in a cabin, crossing from UK to Europe is one of the things to do on my bucket list, so it serves two purposes. Cherbourg is where I want to do some research for my Phantom 3 book, so I must go and do my thing there and take some pics for the book.

It's 1.30pm here in Dublin and 11.30pm in Australia!

Looking out my window at 10 am on a perfect sunny day in Dublin...

The view towards the East from my 8 bed dorm room...Looking at the old customs house building...

I cooked my first meal in 3 weeks last night! Yummoo..

Went shopping...All this cost me 12Euro, including 3 Bounty bars. the Bistro bag is salad mix. I bought a bottle of olive oil, a bag of brussel sprouts, broccoli, a bag of potatoes, a tomato, 8 little Irish sausages, as I'd never tasted them, 2 bananas, 3 garlic thingy's, a capsicum, 6 eggs, an onion, the lettuce mix and a 3pak of bounty bars. Great prices! Had bought 2 packs of mandarins and a bag of apples the day before for 2Euro, plus a rotisserie chook for 4.50 Euro.

A lot of boys from Argentina, Brazil and Spain are here now. The Aussies have gone out. The kitchen here even has a dishwasher and a cleaner washes up all the time to keep it tidy.