Road trip!

Hi-diddly-ho, neighborino!

Yesterday Ken, myself and Mandy went to Wexford for the day. So we drove through Wicklow, Arklow and Enniscorthy, as you can see on the map, and ended up in Wexford. I love road trips like that  because you get to see so much and you get to listen to music in the car which is always a lovely experience. The journey took about two hours, we saw mostly nature and small strawberry venders. I was excited because Ken used to live there for a long time and I keep hearing stories from Wexford so I can finally put a "face to the name".

It was sunny and really nice, I was rocking the backseat. Muse, Mark Tremonti, Alterbridge and Avenged Sevenfold were on the playlist and all of those put me in a great mood. I also got to hear even more fun stories from the way like they told me how Enniscorthy is always cloudy and they were right. It was bright and sunny without a cloud in the sky, but as soon as we came to Enniscorthy it was super cloudy and all the clouds went away when we past it.

The reason we went to Wexford was for Mandy to look at a house. She needs to move as they're selling her current one. I love house hunting so I was quick to say I'd love to come.

My view from the backseat.

I was never quick enough to take a photo so this is a very zoomed in photo of a gas station. A really old gas station that is! I've never seen one of these other that in movies. 

A frog bin outside a gas station

Some cool looking house I saw on the way.

Arriving in Wexford it was just a lot of houses and cottages. We stopped outside a massive Tesco (grocery shop). It's by far the biggest supermarket I've seen. We got some chicken and drinks and had lunch in the car. It was really nice, I absolutely love doing pretty much anything in a car I don't know why, I just think it's so nice.

When we were finished lunching Mandy went off to have coffee with her friends so Ken took me to show me the town.

 The first thing I saw was rows of these chairs which seemed to be an alternative bench solution. It looked pretty funny, I never tried them, wonder if they're comfortable.

Then I saw this art sculpture thing as you can see around it everything is made of stone so it's quite Grey looking. When we got further into the town there were more colours.

 This is main street in Wexford town. It's like two or three times the length you can see it the photo, so quite small. It was nice though. Apparently it looked much better now than when Ken lived there six years ago. The streets were really narrow so it seemed very hectic for the cars. Being there makes you feel like you go back in time, just let me show a photo of the local bus:

!!

 I could't even believe Ken when he told me. I was in total shock, I thought those were an urban myth or at least belonging to a museum.

At the seafront there was also a train driving through. I looked scary because it was so close to the cars and had no fence around it.

Those photos were taken on the sea front. It was really nice and full of boats. 

The Wexford flag! Those colours were everywhere! 

 There were really nice coffee shops there so we went to some of them. We also went to Wexford Silver which was owned by a guy who made Kens necklace. He actually remembered making it so many years ago and cleaned it for him for free. It was so shiny afterwards.

I aslo went to a chocolate store of course. I love chocolate so I spent my last fiver on that. I loved it, it was so nice. They even had piano shape!

Wexford looked a lot like any other small town in Ireland to be honest, it was really nice. We had a great time and we got to see the house Mandy is maybe moving in to. The land lady was really nice and knew two of Mandy's friends so that was great.

Around wexford there were lots of farms, stables, bad smells and tractors. It's nice to see the country side though. It's a lot like Norway just different, I can't put my finger on what it is.

If you look closely at the wire you'll see it ends just right there, haha.

xoxo

Supremacy

Hey sweeties!

Today has been really long. Pretty early (as in the afternoon, but you know how I feel about mornings) me and Ken went to Sea Life in Bray. It's a small building on the middle of the pier. I was really excited, but there wasn't that much to see, haha! What was there was very nice though. Pictures! I'm having a bit of trouble with my camera on my phone at the moment, I'm not sure what it is, but every photo gets blurry and if I use flash the whole picture just turns way too white. My digital camera has a little water drop in it's lens after I dropped it in the water while rowing so the quality of my pictures won't be really good, my apologies!

Cutest seahorse!

A tiny shark!

A shark egg! You could see the baby swimming inside the egg.

Ken and me in front of the shark tank.

Afterwards we went to get ice cream and coffee at my favorite place in Bray. It's Italian and the ice cream there is the best! 

I can not forget to mention that I got the new Muse album last night. After midnight Ken was so kind and downloaded it for me. So exciting! There was like making of the album videos and stuff with it so we saw them in bed before we went to sleep. It was so nice and hilarious. We kept pretending that we were stealing their stuff by trying to take it of the screen it made me laugh so hard! I can't express my love for the new album enough, I literally can't get enough of it. It's amazing!!

Here it is on my phone! Eeee!

Then I got a phone call from someone very important!

Aren't my shoes so pretty??

Later we were gonna go and see Burning Amber, our friend Eoin's band, like I mention in a previous blog. They were playing in the Harbour Bar in Bray. For pre-drinks we drank some very fancy champaign that was a gift from my mum when she here last time!

The band killed it at the gig of course, they were great and very funny! It was their very first gig too so it was extra special.

Ken doing some sound check

For 11 euros you can get this!! Haha!

I had a really great day all together. Right now I'm about to go to sleep at Mandy's house because we are going to Wexford tomorrow morning looking for a new house for Mandy. I'll take some photos and blog about that tomorrow.

We also have our final moving date. We're officially leaving for Norway the 9th of October. Very exciting news!

Again if you want to see Ken's blog you can click here!

I'll see you soon:)

Lots of love xoxo

Éire

Dia duit! Conas atá tú?

After having been here in Ireland for over a year you learn a lot. Like they take any day that seems a little special and make it into a holiday so they can go out and drink. I've never been in a country with this many bank holidays. There really is a bar at every single corner and they have no problem bringing their kids around alcohol. 

It is a catholic country and they tend to get married pretty early. Early compared to Norway, that is. In Norway it's more of a choice than a tradition. There are a also many churches here. Not quite as many as there are bars, but I think they are faithful to their religion to make up for how much they drink and swear (I hope they have a sense of humor, then again I'm leaving the country so there's not much they can do if they get offended). They also have their own language, not that many speak it. It sounds like english, but with words you can't understand. It's trippy when they start speaking it because I keep thinking I'm losing my mind and suddenly don't understand english anymore.

Food wise they just seem to make a lot of stew. I'm not quite sure what it's made of and I can never decide if I like it or not. It just tastes good and bad at the same time. I've also been served warm sweet desert. That's certainly something I've never had before. They get payed very little and pay a lot in taxes yet the food is really expensive. I'm never quite sure how they manage to make things work.

They are much more open minded here than in Norway. In Norway it's very important for people to be normal and be accepted socially. Here in Ireland you can see girls with red hair or blue hair and that's just totally normal. You see all kinds of styles fashion wise and you can be a total weirdo and people will still think you're 'sound' and 'class'. They just wanna have a good 'craic'(pronounced crack, means fun). Their colour is green and their drink is Guinness. All bars play U2 all the time even though they always complain about it and they all hate Bono.

They have something called Debs which is like prom where they dress up and go to a booked venue to party and stay out all night to dance and drink. The girls usually buys expensive ball gowns and get their hair and makeup done and the boys wear a tux. We were invited over to a family a few days ago to see their daughter, Karen, go off to her debs. She looked absolutely stunning.

 Karen with her debs date and cake. 

It was really nice, she looked so classy and beautiful. Ken's taken these beautiful photos, as usual he was the photographer and he did a perfect job. 

When it comes to the horses they have a thousand different horse sports. Unlike Norway where we mostly have jumping and dressage Ireland has things like hunting with dogs, eventing, racing, cross country and so on. They have things I've never even heard of and these are major serious sports where in Norway they would be small fun hobbies. When I went to Dublin Horse Show this year I was excited for the dressage as usual, but to my disappointment there were none which is shocking to me. Jumping was the dominating sport in the Horse Show. Eventing is a big sport too where you compete in jumping, dressage and cross country using the same horse. Mandy showed me yesterday that they have an national ploughing championship too. You can read the article here. Wonder how they judge that, haha! 

At the horse show I met Irish Cian O'Connor, the olympic bronze medalist and got his autograph! Here's the proof and a picture of him. I had to put that in there to brag!

Another cute Irish thing is the Claddagh ring. Here's mine:

This too was a gift from Ken, I'm very spoiled. The Claddagh ring came from Galway and it's meant to show love and friendship the motto is "let love and friendship reign". You can wear it three different ways. If you wear it on the right hand with the heart facing outward like towards your nail it means your heart is free and you're single. If you wear it on the right hand with the heart facing you it means you are 'spoken for', you're in a relationship. If you wear it on the left hand heart facing towards you it means you're married. 

The origin of the ring is unclear, but the myth goes that this guy called Richard Joyes was kidnapped by an Algerian and sold to slavery. He was sold to a wealthy goldsmith who trained him to be a goldsmith too, he was really great at it and was noticed by his master. King William III had just taken over the throne and sent out people to Algeria to free the slaves. When the master heard that Richard had to be released he offered him his daughters hand in hope that he'd stay with them. Richard declined and went back to Galway to begin his new life as an independent jeweler. His most famous creation was the Claddagh ring.

To end this blog I would say I would definitely recommend to go to Ireland. It's always fun and the people are lovely. I've had a wonderful time after I moved here with Ken. The nature is beautiful. I've been living in Dublin and I absolutely love the city, it's great for shopping and there are buskers(street musicians) on every corner. I've been to Cork and Belfast as well and especially Belfast is really great place to go. It's going to be sad to leave soon and I'll be looking forward to come back. 

Sláinte

xoxo

A really good few minutes!

Howdy!

I'm currently at Mandy's house with a proper internet connection which is heaven! Where I live in Bray doesn't have wifi at all so we use Kens 3G phone to connect me to his internet. Complicated stuff!

I'm so excited because my shoes are here!! They're a gift from Ken. They are just so pretty! I'll try to take a better picture of them tomorrow, but I had to show them off, they look like candy and they're even more sparkly than they look in the photo.

I'm so excited to wear them with my new dress. They make me so tall! I'm already 5'10 so in these I'm like over 6 feet tall. They're a bit hard to walk in, but for shoes like that I'll get used to anything.

I'm listening to the new Muse album right now and I'm just so in love with it! I can't even mention certain songs I like more than the others, they're just all amazing to me. It's fun hearing Chris sing for a change. I can't wait to get the album on Friday! I'm streaming it online at the moment. I always find it somewhat stressful when all the songs come out at once, it's so much to take in. I'm enjoying every second of it though. 

I recently heard that Lana Del Rey is releasing her Born To Die album again called Paradise Edition. That's very exciting news to me. Soon after she released her first album she became one of my favorite artists. I adore her music and style. Here's the new album cover:

Here she is looking stunning as always. There's gonna be eight new songs on the Paradise Edition, she released her new single 'Ride' yesterday, I love it. The album is out 12th of November. It's gonna be great having some new songs as I've had the same 15 songs from her last album on repeat the last four months. Poor Ken is so tired of it, haha. 

Good times lies ahead of me musically especially when Muse comes on tour. I'm going to see them in Austria because it was the only place in Europe with standing tickets left a few hours after the tickets came on sale. Muse gave us too short notice, they sent out an email announcing the tour and that the pre-sale starts tomorrow and the general ticket sale starts in 3 days or something silly like that. We didn't have money straight away, but we got money the morning of the general sale. We had to go in to town to put them in the bank to pay for the tickets so we were quite late and after having seated tickets on a Coldplay concert a few years back I promised myself never again. It's just not cool to sit on concerts and that's that.  Muse fans are crazy as usual and all of the standing tickets were sold out in five minutes or so everywhere apart from Austria so that's where we ended up buying tickets to. I'm fine with that, I'm actually very excited to go there as I've never been before, it's also really cool because a big part of Kens family is Austrian including his mum so it'll be nice to see Vienna. 

The Killers also released their new album 'Battle Born' recently which is always exciting. I'll probably catch them on their tour as well at some point. I like their new album. They can't seem to get enough of writing love songs which is fine by me.

I think now is a good time to introduce the animals here in Mandy's house. So here we go!

Evie is the dog, She hyperactive or something like that, she literally never gets tired, she always wants to play and be petted. Her intelligence is very impressive and she very well trained. I'm certain she understands what I'm saying to her. If we even mention the word 'walk' in a sentence she'll run to the door.

Here she is on Killiney Beach. They think she's an Australian Border Collie. She's always happy, positive and she loves everyone.

Suki is one of the two cats. He only has three legs because he was ran over by a car years ago. He loves me. He always wants to sit on my lap and he's always excited to see me. He's been Kens best buddy since they were kids.

Here's a picture of us from earlier. He's so adorable and his nose is all pink, it's so cute!

Gabriel is the second cat. I don't know him very well, he keeps mostly to himself. Here he his!

He just showed up one day and decided to live in their house so he chose them more so than they chose him. He's Mandy's cat, he'll only hang out with her. 

And Squirt, the turtle. She used to live at our house until we moved. She's gonna stay with Mandy while we're in Norway. She's getting bigger and bigger by the minute. She was apparently the size of a nickel when Ken got her and now he can barely lift her. She's grown a lot since I came here too and she still got something like two years left to grow which is terrifying. 

Here she is:)

They're all lovely. They all have big outgoing personalities which is always fun. 

These days we're watching The Simpsons. I've never watched before, but it's great fun! It's especially nice to have a show to watch now because it's still raining a lot, there are flood warnings and everything.

Maybe I should properly introduce Mandy as well.

  

She's great, she's one of those amazing mums, like my own, who knows everything! She's always got a helping hand and a good advice. She's always fun to be with and has great taste in music. She made me  feel so welcome when I moved here and she takes care of me when I need it.

That's it for today, let's hope the weather gets better so I can wear my new shoes! Hope to see you soon and if you want to read Kens blog you can find it here:)

xoxo

Musey!

Eee! Excied! I just saw that Muse's new album is streaming right now! You can find it here!

Unless you've been living under a rock lately you'll know this is what the new Muse album cover will look like. The release date is 1st of October and I couldn't be more excited! Ken has ordered me the special edition and every time he wants me to get excited he turns on his "sexy voice" and tells me how he ordered the Deluxe Edition, it's so funny! I'm a hardcore Muse fan, they've been my favorite band since I was fourteen-fifteen years old.

Sadly my internet connection is really bad at the moment so I don't get to listen to the album yet, but if you're one of the luckier ones I hope you can find it on my link up there.

Earlier today we had a visit from Finn, he's Ken's dad's dog. I just have to show a photo of him because he looks like a big teddy or one of those big stuffed animals that are first price when you shoot or throw things at fun fairs!

Isn't he so fluffy?!

I had the limited edition Diet Coke cans designed by Jean Paul Gaultier earlier too. He designed one called 'Night' and one called 'Day'. I had the 'Night' one. I couldn't see the 'Day' one, but it features his signature Breton Blue-and-White stripes. This ''Night' one has a corset and cone bra design.

Yesterday I was at Eoin's band practice, they're really good, they have a gig at the Harbour Bar in Bray on Friday evening. If you're in the area you should definitely stop by! They're called Burning Amber. Eoin is one of Ken's old friends I think they've known each other through their entire teenagers. He's super nice, he's the go-to-guy if you need anything done. One time he climbed up and washed our sunroof windows from the outside!

Eoin is the blurry, hairy one in the middle. He's also Ken's best guitar buddy. They always write music together and he used to be around our house all the time to record with Ken. They play many of his songs in the band and it's fun hearing them now with a full band after having heard the songs played many, many times with only vocals and an acoustic guitar.

I'm going to visit Mandy tomorrow and I'm so excited because there is a pair of shoes waiting for me that was delivered to her address. I'll blog about them tomorrow, be excited, they are so stunning!

Here in Bray it's raining a lot today, it's really nice, it makes such a lovely sound. I hope it's raining less the next few days though, I wanna wear my new shoes a lot:)

xoxo