To Norway!

Yesterday morning we left Ireland. Mandy was kind and drove us to the airport where we were traveling with SAS to Bergen via Copenhagen. We had a lot of luggage of course and when checking in to a very nice Russian woman, we had a bit of overweight on our luggage and Ken offered straight away to take something out and rearrange our stuff. She answered with a Russian accent "Don't worry about it, we're not Ryanair". It was hilarious! I love SAS.

Saying goodbye to Mandy was so sad, but I think she's coming to visit and we're planing coming back to Ireland to spend time with her on her birthday next month. It was heartbreaking to say goodbye to Evie too, she was really upset.

The flight was a little delayed so we had a delicious smoothie while waiting and I got a new foundation (Rimmel, only 10 euro, but absolutely amazing).

In the two photos above you see Denmark. It's so flat, I don't think there's a single hill in the entire country so everyone cycles, but more about that some other time!

The airport in Copenhagen is amazing, it was a lovely surprise to see that they are opening a Victoria's Secret store there. That's very exciting. I'll make sure always layover in Copenhagen no matter where I go!

Lana Del Rey is signed to NEXT model management and it was very exciting to see her pictures with H&M in the store in Copenhagen. She is on loads of the busses in Dublin too, but I never got a chance to take a photo. 

Our second flight was delayed too, but I didn't mind at all, I love that airport. It's got all sorts of shops and several Starbucks shops. They're just as busy as they normally are. It's very beautiful looking too and the people are all nice.

The pictures above are all of the wonderful Copenhagen airport. I have great memories from there. The flight we took to Bergen was very small. There were only two seats on each side of the isle and Ken were too tall, he bumped his head of the roof, it was very funny.

It's always fun traveling with Ken, he always somehow manage to make laugh the entire way. He also inspires me to be a better person, he's really the best.

The pictures above were taken on the flight between Copenhagen and Bergen.

My mum came and picked us up from the airport. Here we are with our tons of luggage. It was great to see my mum again, she came straight from work. She was working for a British Pink Floyd tribute band, Brit Floyd. She was leaving almost straight away to see their show and work some more, but we were lucky to catch her on her break and she was very nice to come get us. We went straight to my dad's house where we'll be staying. He had to go too, he's working in Moss I think so he's gone till Thursday afternoon. We have just been relaxing and sleeping last night and today, it's been so nice. We've been tired after the travel and since we had to be up so early to leave for the airport in Dublin I hadn't slept very much.

I saw Jenny later today though. She's my very best friend. We've got a lot of history, it's great having a friend like her. Even though our friendship has been on hold for a while as I've been abroad for over two years it's great that we can pick it up just where we left it. I'm pretty sure no matter how many years I live away from Bergen she'll always be my bff! She was very persistent and even though I was way too tired she dragged me to a shopping centre, Lagunen, for coffee.
Here we are!

The rest of the evening I've been sitting inside watching The Simpsons and eating pizza with my love. That's always fun. It's nice having the house to ourselves, I don't think we've had that since we left our old apartment. I love it!

xoxo

So long Ireland

As you can see fall is sneaking it's way onto the Irish trees and it's lovely. We are leaving for the airport first thing in the morning to catch our plane with which we've bought a one way ticket to Bergen. It's definitely weird leaving Ireland and the people here. Ken's family feels like my own, I'll miss them so much. Though I am excited to go to Norway to see my own people. 

We have rented a storage unit with all our things. Our previous apartment was unfurnished so we have so many things. I have lots and lots of clothes and shoes of course too that I have no space for it in my luggage and Ken's got so many instruments and recording devices so it was perfect getting a storage unit. It's a little expensive, but worth it for us so when we come back everything is in one place. The storage unit is a really good idea and and the space is nice and dry I would recommend it to anyone. I tried to take a photo of the place, but Ken stepped in and it became a cute couple photo instead.

 The other day Mandy came home with what must be the first christmas calendars of the year. I ate it all of course. It was delicious! She also got Kinder maxi king which has been the tradition every time we go to Lidl. They come in a pack of three so one each. It's was nice of her.

I also think it's mentionable to tell that they have a pizza vending machine in Dun Laoghaire. I've always wanted to try, but I never did! I will when I come back though, it's five euros.

Yesterday we had a goodbye dinner with Ken's dad, Eamonn and his girlfriend, Birgit, her daughter, Aminata, Ken's sister Marie and Granny Carmel. Birgit just moved here from Austria and made us a traditional Austrian meal. It was delicious! 

We got cards and presents. Above is Granny and a part of the card signed my their dog, Finn.

 I also got the cutest things from Marie. It was pink and horsey, perfect!! She started a music school in Stillorgan called Harmania and she's doing really well. She is one of the most talented musicians I know. I've had piano lessons from her and she's just great she taught me new techniques and ways of playing that improved my piano playing so much. I'm a classical player so I think the techniques are really important so it was perfect. She also plays guitar and has a very powerful voice. She just opens her mouth and out comes effortless beauty. Her website is here. This is her youtube page where you can find videos of her from her school. She's super nice too as you can see by her thoughtful gifts.

 Granny also gave me a travel bag for my makeup. I absolutely love her, she is so sweet, considerate and funny. I love hearing stories from her life. She has so many good ones, like once she lived in a castle and she knows all about traditional Irish things. She cooks the best meals of course, I'm always excited to visit her and eat, haha.

I'll be landing in Bergen at 5.40 pm tomorrow. I'm excited for the fresh air. Ken is going to blog every Tuesday so you can check his from today here. It's worth checking out.

Now I have to go to bed to enjoy my last night in Ireland and because we have to get up early so sweet dreams. Lots of love:)

xoxo

B sharp!

Hi:)

Today the artists performing on the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show was announced! Quite exciting. It'll be Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars. I wonder which songs they will be performing? It's airing 4th of December on CBS in America and I'm excited as always. I hope they are quick to air it in Norway too. I wonder if Lima will be there as she gave birth just a few weeks ago to another beautiful daughter called Sienna. I assume not, but she's my favorite so I'm hoping. It's going to be in New York this year, one of my favorite cities in the world. Ambrosio and Lima both instagramed the photo to the right this morning. It's always exciting to wake up to good news! They have revealed three drawings of outfits that'll be shown this year, you can find them here.


Yesterday Ken, Mandy, Bernie(Mandy's friend) and I sent up sky lanterns. Bernie had one, she wrote her wishes on it and we tried to send it up and it wasn't quite successful! It ended up like this even tough Mandy ran after it trying to make it fly, it was a funny sight.

Thankfully we had another one with warm wishes for Ken's sister Cat who lives in California. We all wrote a little something on it and filmed the whole process to send it to her. That lantern was a lot more successful.

Sky lanterns are an Asian tradition where you make a wish and by letting go of the lantern you also let go of the negative feelings from the past and have good luck in the future. They are used a lot in weddings. Chinese troops used them to send signals to one another during the war too.

We went down to Killiney Beach and did it there. The moon was stunning!

We are leaving for Norway in less than a week now, I'm getting excited and nervous at the same time. I'm happy I don't have much to do, I can pretty much relax until we leave, the only thing I need to do is repack because I have packed way too many things and it would cost a fortune in overweight at the airport. Thankfully we are flying through Copenhagen on the way to Bergen as there are no direct flights between Dublin and Bergen. I'm happy about it because when you fly through Oslo you have to get your luggage there and check in again which always results in lost flights and double the luggage overweight pay, it's all happened way to many times.

I'm watching The Simpsons with Ken these days, we're on season six already, I'm enjoying it a lot and I'm catching up on Gossip Girl, I just started again on season four because I can never remember where I stopped watching two years ago. I had almost forgotten how good GG is it's like catching up with old friends.

That's it for today, hope you're having a good week!

xoxo

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

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