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Hi and welcome to my travel-page. Are you up for some exciting stories? Then you are at the right address!! 
May 01, 2005 06:00 PM Let's go home
We finished the whole of Northern-Ireland in just 6 days. Which was nice :o)
Because we didn't want to wait another day, we immediatly went to the docks, after we had been eating our dinner at a local Pizza Hut. After a little bit of driving and asking around we found ourselves parked on a boat, behind a small car they couldn't move off the boat because they didn't had the keys. Therefor it had to travel all the way back.
Anyhow, the boat was only for trucks actually, so the accomodations weren't all that much. But, we did have a room, because the trip took up 8 hours during the night.
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Apr 28, 2005 06:00 PM Capital Belfast
I had a bit fear to start doing Belfast. It isn't really a calm city as you should know. Or at least, that was the idea I had about it. It appeared to be actually a quite normal British city. The only special thing, which we don't really understand (but which is like that all over the country), are the police stations. They are almost like bunkers, completely protected by high fences and cameras. There are these big pansered vans from the police. Really weird and I must say, a bit freightening.
Now, we did do a lot of work today in Belfast. We are staying on a small parking somewhere in the docks of Belfast. REally close to the place where the Titanic was built. There's a huge add on the wall of a building, explaining that it was there that it happened.
Anyway, normally we should be able to work of Belfast tomorrow. We'll see :o)
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Apr 25, 2005 06:00 PM Ending Ireland
It had been a while that we got a shower, so we decided last night to do a bed & breakfast. It was a nice one, very friendly and interested people. We also got a couple of HD numbers which we could delete, so we started to backup our data on the parking of the B&B. This took a while, so we both got a shower while the otherone was backing-up.
We have finished off Ireland today and started driving only in Northern-Ireland. There are quite a few things which differ the two countries from eachother. As Northern-Ireland is part of Great Britain, it still uses pounds and measures in Miles. Also, there will be an election in a few days, which means there's a lot of adds for parties.
Ireland was beautiful, certainly towards the northern part, where the nature starts to look like tundra. Let's hope Northern-Ireland is at least as pretty.
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Apr 23, 2005 06:00 PM Touching Northern-Ireland
Today we have been driving partly through Northern-Ireland. That will be the next project. And because it's just next to Ireland, it's simple logic that we will be doing that after the current project. There isn't really a border, you can notice that you are going from one country to the other because suddenly everything is in pounds and miles. :o)
We are going to finish the whole of Ireland, before we start to really work on Northern-Ireland.
It is getting harder though. Because well, we don't have much gas left in our tanks, so we can't cook anymore. And the tanks they sell here, can't be connected to our gas-system. So we have to go out and eat every night in a restaurant or pub or something.
Next, there are no harddisks left. These external HD's are used to save all our data on. But, because of an internal problem there aren't even HD's at Tele Atlas left. So they can't send us any. Now, what we do have are a couple of safety backups. You should know that we always have an original disk and a safety, in case the other disk crashes, gets lost in the post or whatever.
So, after the original disks are checked, the safety disk can be deleted. But we don't know whether the safetys are already checked or not. And hopefully we'll get a phonecall tomorrow to tell us that may delete all the safety data... Aaah, we'll see :o)
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Apr 22, 2005 06:00 PM Rally driving in a 4x4
As we do have to refuel about every day (certainly when it's beautiful weather and we work a lot of hours), we also did today. So as always I first refueled and afterwards went into the store to pay for it. Behind the caisse there was the most beautiful girl I had seen in the whole of Ireland. Truly...as I might have said before, people aren't really beautiful here. I don't know why, but that's just the trueth.
Anyway, my cards didn't work. I even went back to the camper to get the bankcard of Wouter, to try it out. But it had the same effect, we couldn't pay...
Luckily the store owner just got back from somewhere and immediatly told me he would drive me down to the village to get cash from a bank. He would take his 4x4, because that would be easier than taking the mobilehome. He was right, but little did he know where we had been before :o)
So I got into his car (nice Mitsubishi) and we drove to the village. We chatted quite a lot. He told me he sometimes drove rallys. Something I had noticed by the way he was driving :o)
We got back, I thanked the guy and I paid my debt.
The people here in Ireland are really amazing, truely open and friendly!! Awsome :o)
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Apr 21, 2005 06:00 PM A taste of Dublin
We've been driving in and around Dublin for 2 days. We had seen almost all the streets (certainly the biggest ones) but only from behind the window. So we decided to take a day of and have ourselves a trip through Dublin by foot.
We parked the mobilehome cross over 3 parking spots on a "park and ride" (they shouldn't make the parking spots that little) and took the tram to Dublin city.
As we arrived we started going through the streets. We passed many shops and went to an internetcafe for two hours. The cafe was openly connected to a "subway" (a sandwich bar - it's a chain mark). So we ate a sandwich from there afterwards.
As we walked through the streets we passed a post-office. Here is where we had to be. I had token 3 HD's with data on along with me in my backpack. They had to be sent to Ghent (Tele Atlas). So we asked a man if we could send them. He told us we should get them into a box and then send it, BUT they didn't have any boxes in Irelands post offices. He told us we could get boxes from a store, two houses down the road.
So we went there, bought a box and some wrapping-plastic-bubble-thing (for safety) and went back to the post office. There we wrapped everything in, put the rest of the roll of wrapping-thing into the box as well, togheter with some other garbage, closed the box and sent it to Ghent :o)
Then we went on through the streets, while we suddenly passed a man who was telling his theories about what he believed in the world. Just for fun we stayed there, listening to his thoughts, while an old man grabbed Wouter's arm and started talking about the world of today and how he had been fighting in the war and when everything was better. He even wore a medal he earned on the inside of his jacket.
He couldn't stop talking and has kept on going for about half an hour...truly remarkable.
Anyway, we finally were able to leave him and went to a pub. Afterwards we went looking for a special tower we had seen while working in Dublin. When we came there we saw that it was an old shimany of the Jameson Whiskey distillery. They had put an elevator on the outside and a viewing cabin on top of it. Pity that we couldn't visit it anymore when we arrived, the shop where you had to buy your tickets was already closed.
So we went back towards the UGC (probably the only cinema in the whole of Dublin and most of the country...though they do have Irish movies, they don't really have cinemas. We wanted to see a movie, but it wasn't playing until an hour and a half later. So we went looking for a pub :o)
The pub we arrived at was from 1745 (or exactly 260 years old) and aclaimed to be the oldest pub of the city of Dublin. The Guinness was good :o) (truly, you have to learn to drink it...at first it tastes like nothing, but eventually you'll start to like it).
After the pub and the cinema we went to eat a burger at Burger King and then went to a last pub. It was a hell of a big one, but we couldn't stay too long, because we had to catch our tram.
So after a nice day we got on the tram. After a few stops it started to pull up, when it suddenly braked really hard. I didn't even knew that trams could brake that hard. Two people had fallen and had to be taken to the hospital. But they could still walk, so it wasn't all that bad...
What a day!! :o)
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Apr 19, 2005 06:00 PM Habbits and lifestyles in Ireland
Well, as I said before, the "new" house styles are really ugly. The houses are very clean and neat though, but the style is something architects from Belgium or so, really wouldn't want to build. Keep in mind that there are a lot of "old" style houses which are really nice. It's a typical style from here and they are nice, they are...Irish :o).
Next there are the clothes. Most people walk around in training clothes. REally odd actually, because on one side they wear uniforms at school, but when they are in there "free time", they wear trainings. And woman love the color pink. They all love it so much, it gets really ugly actually... But hey, that's the way they are here :o)
Nature is really nice. The viewings are cool, lots of grass, sheep, cows, ranches...
And of course there are the pubs. Like I said before, the people are really nice and friendly. So the people in the pubs are just great!!
After all, I like Ireland. It's a great country!!
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Apr 18, 2005 06:00 PM Children...they're everywhere
At the end of the day we decided we would pull aside, do the quality check, cook dinner, eat and then look for a bed & breakfast. So we stopped in a quiet living area. These areas are found all over the country. They are all look-alike houses. Mostly really clean and neat, but ugly as hell. I mean, they really don't have any style. For instance, they have up till 4 different kinds of walls. Anyway, that's another story.
So We stopped and started working. Suddenly we were approached by some local kids. The firstone just looked inside without even asking or bothering that I was sitting there. I couldn't really believe it. Anyway, they started multiplying or something, because in no time there were like 15 kids around us. All asking us a lot of questions. Because some of them were rather small I even opened the door to let them see what I was doing.
I was sitting in the right seat and suddenly the door of the leftside opened. Some other kids wanted to see the inside too. We couldn't really keep them out anymore and they just kept on asking questions. So I too started asking them questions about there habits. For instance if they all went too church on sunday (a habbit wich seems to be really in, here in Ireland). And so they did by the way.
We took some pictures of them. Of course, first thing they did was rising there finger. The language that came out of there mounth wasn't really what we would call normal, but hey...that's Ireland I assume :o).
It was actually really interesting to meet those people. We learned a lot from them. We had to throw them out a couple of times too, because we wanted to continue working and have our dinner, but all by all it was fun. :o)
And after we left we did found a B&B. It was the nicest we have ever had. Really fancy and everything.
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Apr 16, 2005 06:00 PM Sunday without sun
They predicted it and it was true too. It would be raining on sunday and it did. But not like we were used to, in showers. No it started to rain early in the morning and it hasn't stopped till 18 o'clock... So we stayed in, slept till 13 o'clock and watched some movies and television.
Tomorrow should be better...
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Apr 15, 2005 06:00 PM Sun...sun...sun...and pubs :o)
Today was a great day. We worked a lot of hours again and we'll be hitting the 60 hour barrier in just 5 days. If that isn't great :o)
Anyway, it's saturdaynight so we went to the local Irish pubs. I loved it there. The beer is very expensive, but we've tasted quite a few sorts. But what was even better were the people. They are so much different from Belgian people. Everyone talks to everyone, even if they don't know you.
One guy, Nigel, has been talking to us for a couple of hours. He tought us a few things about the Irish culture. Really nice you know. He also constantly wanted to fight me, or let me fight other people, just for money. He has done that before. He even showed us the marks on his body. Really weird...simply fighting for money.
The pubs here in Ireland stay open till about 1 am...which is way better than England of course. We have been to two pubs, but after the second, we decided to go back to the first one, where we stayed for the rest of the night and met Nigel (and lot's of other people).
There's also a strange way these people go to the toilet. Every time you go (and we had to go a lot, because the beer just ran through our bodies) and there are people in the toilet, they will ALWAYS start to talk too you. They won't really listen, or won't be really interested actually, but they just have to talk to you. Strange but nice people...these Irish men.
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