Holidays!!

I've not necessarily named the countries in any particular order, just as they popped into my head, so i thought of Spain first as I've been there a lot over the years. I've also visited Scotland with the Irish Universities Swimming and Waterpolo team back when I was in college. We took the boat over to Glasgow and competed against the English, Scottish and Welsh Universities teams. I can't remember whether we won or lost but I do remember it was one hell of a trip!! Heehehee  

Of course I've been to a lot of cities all over England quite a lot over the years. I've competed in swimming competitions in places like York, Manchester, Rotherham, Liverpool and Ponds Forge in Sheffield to name a few. I've gone to some of the theme parks on other trips too and they are super fun!! Places like Alton Towers and Chessington. These days I mostly visit London as my sister Sarah lives and works there.

I've also travelled to France many times!! I had one of my first trips away on my own to Paris ...without any family...ok so I was with about thirty other school mates and some teachers... but that's beside the point when you're twelve!! I spent time in Nice which is a city in the south of France near Monaco. Another trip I took was to Euro Disney which was so much fun! I just loved all the roller coasters and rides they had there!! Super!

I travelled to Greece on another family holiday where we took the ferry from Athens and stayed on the Island of Naxos for a couple of weeks. Had a fantastic time and met some great people, I even ended up being handcuffed to a bar one night but that's another story!!! I spent a month in Austria in the capital city of Vienna in 2000 but for work purposes only. I did manage to get one day out of the four weeks to take a trip around the city and check out the sights and museums. What a beautiful city!!

Seeing as my brother in law is Dutch I've managed to visit The Netherlands too. We flew into Schipol airport and stayed in a beautiful town called Hardinxveld. More recently I spent Christmas skiing in Andorra!!! Oh my God what a fantastic holiday that was!!!

I spent a week camping in Hamburg in Germany with the girls on my waterpolo team, that's the Trinity Waterpolo Team. We were there of course to compete against teams from all over Germany and managed to get a small bit of partying in too!!! hheheeeee the understatement of the year I think!

Italy is another one of the countries I've managed to visit on a few occasions. I went to Rome and Venice when I was very young and still have the portrait that a street artist drew of me when I was only five years old. I went to Milan with the Irish Team and competed there in the International Youth Games also. We had one or two days of sightseeing as well as competing so that was great fun!

A bit further a field I've also headed off to Sri Lanka for a holiday a few years ago and that was some experience I'll tell you!! In this country the cows are sacred and so they are left to roam the streets as they please and they end up walking along the paths and in front of cars and buses!! The capital city Colombo is very smoggy and very busy too. None of the taxis or buses have air conditioning so in order to cool down you can always open the window and let the smoggy dusty warm air in! that was fun! Not!

After a two hour drive in these conditions we eventually got to the southern town of Galle where we spent our two weeks holidays. On our way there the taxi driver had to get out and pray for a while and make a donation at this huge big temple while we were left waiting looking very confused as to why the man had stopped, jumped out of the car and ran away in mid journey. He did come back after a few minutes though and we continued on to the hotel and had great holiday.

I only had a week and a half though as I had to fly back early in order to compete for the Irish Universities team in Limerick. But while we were there we had such a good laugh, well actually we ended up laughing at Sarah most of the time, with there being the 'Tar incident' and the 'Dog incident' it's all too much to go into now! heheheee

My trip home however was another story entirely...and to cut it short lets just say that after the two hour taxi trip back to Colombo I ended up flying to the city of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, then to Bahrain in Saudi Arabia where I stayed ...I say stayed... I do mean I was Stranded for 24hrs of course...meanwhile my sister had called my parents to make sure I had arrived safely in Dublin only to realise that no-one in the world knew where I was but ME!! It was the whole "but I thought she was with you...No she was supposed to be with you!!" story... But I eventually got a flight to London and finally London back to Dublin and arrived home after two days. Needless to say I swam terrible in the competition!!

I have also been to South America before, when I stayed in Sao Paolo in Brazil. This was a much more enjoyable trip...oh well, except for the shooting incident. ok so lets not talk about that one. But I did get lots of surfing done while I was there. I figured, "I've seen 'Point Break' I can surf!!!" Ha! well it's harder then it looks believe me! And watch out for the board smacking you in the head when you get sucked under by the waves cos that's not fun! Sao Paulo was beautiful though and we were there for some great carnivals and danced salsa, meringue and samba 'til we dropped!

More recently I travelled to The Dominican Republic in the Caribbean for two weeks and had a fabulous time as you'll see from these photos!! ;-) I also flew to Toronto in Canada and had a great trip sightseeing, shopping and partying with my sister Sarah!! I even took a lift to the top of the CN tower and climbed the climbing wall at the base of the building too!! Super fun!

Lastly, well for now anyway, I've been to a few different places across America including Florida, Arizona, Miami, Atlanta and New York... so click and here to read all about it.