Happy New Year

Happy new year to everyone. I hope you all had a great christmas and new year.

I spent most of my christmas holidays in Ireland. I flew into dublin and spent a couple of days there before catching the train to Killarney to spend chrismas with my brother. I had a great christmas day with James. I brought lots of french wine and some other french christmas foods over and we cooked up a huge meal. Some friends of James's came over for lunch and we spent most of the day eating and drinking. James and his flatmates had bought and decorated a huge tree and hung stockings over the fireplace which we had burning all afternoon. Unfortunately there was no snow but it still felt like a traditional "cold" christmas.

After christmas I headed up to Galway on the west coast of ireland for a few days. Galway is a gorgeous city and has a great pub scene with lots of really good traditional music. I went out a few times to see some music and I even got to see two of the River Dance dancers "Hunting the wren" (ie dancing) in one of the pubs, which is a tradition from the galway area for 26th december which invloves locals parading through the streets in weird clothing, and singing and daning to traditional music, and stopping by local pubs to do a small performance.

I also did a day trip down the coast to the cliff's of mohar which are stunning, and stopped on the way to see a few other interesting spots in the area.

I spent new year's back in Paris. Nick and Pauli (friend's of mine from australia who now live in leeds) came over for a few days and brough Kim, a friend of there's, along as well. We spent most of new years eve eating and drinking (way too much) and then at around 11 we headed over the Champs Elysee with a couple of bottles of champagne (and half of Paris). Luckily it was a very mild night and we had lots of fun hanging out drinking our champagne. Afterwards we went to a bar in the marais to meet up with a few of my friends and then walked home in the early hours of the morning.

Unfortunately Kim had to leave the next day but Nick, Pauli and I spent the entire day in our pajamas, lying on ly bed watching millions of episodes of Arrested Developement and eating pizza. On tuesday we did some Parisian stuff, walked around the Opera district, saw the christmas decorations at Galleries Layfayette and had some wine and cheese at Bercy village and walked around the bibliotheque Francois Mitterand. In the evening we had a nice meal at les philosophes in the marais. The next day it was back to work for me, and back to leeds for Nick and Pauli.

Since then I haven't really been doing alot alot of my friends are still away and I have had a cold, so I have mostly been hanging out at home watching TV. Last weekend I caught up with an australian friend Naomi, who is moving back to australia. I also went to her farewell on tuesday night, which was a bit sad as she was one of the first people I met here.

I don't have much planned for this weekend either, although I will try to brave the crowds at the Sales, which are very very good over here. Almost everything is reduced in all stores by nearly 50%, but they are always a bit crazy and crowded. Next week my best friend here gets back from australia and the week after some more friends return so hopefully I will be busier then.

Here are some links to some photos from Ireland and also from New Years.

Ireland - Part 2

New Years 2007