Two weekends ago was Australia day. I went to a bbq at Kelly and Gayles
place. It was good fun. They'd been to London for New Years and whilst
there visited the Australia shop and stocked up on some Aussie foods,
the ones I remember are: twisties, fan tales, burger rings and tim tams
but there might have been more aswell.
Carmen had made lamingtons aswell which were fantastic. I hadn't had a
lamo in ages so that was good to eat them again. And, of course, there
were sausage sangas. Most of the sausages in Ireland seem to be pork but
these were proper beef sausages and they were delicious!
We went out to a pub afterwards but it was chock a block with Irish
people who wished they were Australian so we didn't stay too long.
On Saturday night I was still recovering from it so just had a quiet one
and went and saw 'The Last King of Scotland', which was really good, at
the movies.
The weekend just gone I went up to Belfast with Kelly, Carmen and one of
her friends. We met Dave up there (who lives in Dublin now but his
parents are still in Belfast).
As soon as we got off the bus we met a crazy old guy called George in
the ATM line. He started talking to us about Australia and he ended up
singing us a song about the Anzacs in Gallipoli. I had to hold his
umbrella and gloves for him because apparently he needed his hands free
to sing. Not the last crazy person we met in Belfast.
We did the Lonely Planet's walking tour of Belfast in the afternoon and
saw some of the murals painted along (the Catholic) Falls Road. I'd
already seen some of them when I came to Belfast in June but there were
some that I hadn't which were interesting to see.
In the evening we went to 'Foo Kin', a chinese restaurant which had a
foo kin crazy maitre de. He was this big Belfast guy, no chinese in him
at all, who liked to try out his Australian accent on us and say things
like: 'What's your favourite colour - blue' and 'What's your name -
Sheila' which he seemed to think were really Australian.
Dave took us to a couple of bars after dinner and we ended up in a
slightly gothic night club where the four of us really stood out from
the crowd. But as the place filled up more 'normal' people came in and
we had a great night out there.
Sunday was pretty lazy, we woke up late, not that it mattered cause
Belfast is a ghost town on Sunday and hardly anything is open. Caught
the bus back to Dublin just in time to watch Australia beat New Zealand
at the MCG thanks to Ricky Ponting and Brad Hodge.
That's me up to date so, hope everyone is well at home, and talk to you
later - Pete
P.S. I'll put some photos from Belfast up in the next few days
