So when we booked the flight I was excited to see that the hotel we were staying at was in the middle of the Kasbah! Check out the hotel here: http://www.slh.com/morocco/marrakech/hotel_marsul.html

http://www.lasultanamarrakech.com/# (Click on Marrakech)

And what a place… The sounds of horns beeping, the 5 calls to prayer from the Imam, the smells of lamb cooking in the myriad of herbs they use, the thousands of people wandering around… It was amazing!

Myself, my fiance (Rachel… more about her soon!), and Rachel’s parents spent 4 wonderful days roaming the streets of Marrakech and haggling with the local shop owners.

And did we haggle…  I was not so strong on this but I did enjoy the time doing my little bit.

I will relate some of these stories:

- When I was looking at Leather jackets I didn’t want to come across too interested and said that I was only looking to shop owner.  He said “Brother you must come over… You have no obligation to buy but you do have an obligation to try!”.  What could I do…  I went over and tried on a couple great jackets.  In the end I got a great leather jacket for a very nice price…

- Rachel’s dad, Winston, was a great haggler and set a great benchmark..  His favorite saying was “It may be worth that to you but it is only worth half that to me!”…  And generally he ended up getting it for close to that price!

We also did a day trip up into the Atlas mountains.  And to our surprise when we pulled into this village we were ordered onto muels for a 3 hour ride through the hills.  We had mint tea in a berber home, dinner in a local trekking hotel overlooking a valley and a stones throw from the snow capped mountains… Then muel rides back down into the village.

I must admit that I was very nervous about going because of stories about pickpockets etc.  But I must honestly say that we all felt very safe and looked after.  The Moroccans were very friendly and hospitable and made our stay an incredible experience.

Anyway… need to get back to work now, so have a great New Years!

The journey started at 5am on Wednesday the 13th and our three car convoy embarked on a journey that ended some 9 hours later.  Along the way we caught up with some friends and multiplied our convoy to nine!  Check out the picks… we went rally car style and called our team “Le Rosbeuf Invasion 2007″

Le Mans is an amazing experience… lots of Ferraris, Lamboghinis, Porsches, Aston Martins and if you were lucky enough… a car made to look like the Back to the Future Delorean! Pretty wicked stuff!

The only downside was the weather… 5 days of almost total unrelenting rain.  It was teeming down from a great height.  And despite it being the middle of summer it was bloody freezing… well it got as low as 3c.

Our tent village was never a dull moment and the night playing on the xbox 360 was one of the hightlights.  We camped out in style!  Xbox, sattelite receiver, projector, 3 fridges, and aircon units (which never really were needed).

 I have taken a swag of photos and hope to put them up soon… along with the photos of my new set of wheels!  I am now the proud owner of a loan for a BMW 325ti Compact (Mystic Blue colour, 2.5L straight six).

 Anyway it is late now and I must be off to sleep…

Ciao..

Ian 

I have added to my array of sites and have added myself to the world of Myspace and Facebook. The links to these are in the links section on the righthand side of the page!

Anyway… last week I went to Kew Gardens and relaxed with Drew, Liz, Lou, Gabby and Meg. had a bbq and played badminton at a friends place, played tennis and about to embark on a Jack the Ripper tour of London!

Speaking of which… if i don’t get out of bed now then I will not make it….

CIAO!!!

Love to all
Ian xx

I have loaded some new photos in the gallery pages of this site. They are mainly those that I took last weekend in Poland.

I am still waiting on Drew to give send me some from New York… hang on… I haven’t given them theirs yet either

Ok let’s just say that there are some more coming for NY,NY and Poland 07.

Cheers
Ian

66 years ago this place was the scene of some on the most horrific and inhumane treatment of innocent people the world has ever seen, and hopefully will never see again.

The day was cold and bleak and Louise and I were on an old train inching its way towards the camp. We were wondering why we were doing this to ourselves. We were joking to each other mainly trying to bolster our spirits. Trying to forget what lay before us. I wonder if the poor condemned souls on those cattle trains did the same?

We arrived - the 60km trip from Krakow took us almost 3 hours - we weren’t complaining! We paid our money for the tour 52 PLN (around £10) and joined 28 others on a journey that left me emotionally shattered.

I will not talk about the sights we saw, or the stories that were told. It is still too raw for me. Instead I would like to share my observations as I walked through the camps.

- Everyone felt the pain and anguish of the souls that perished there: regardless of age, race, religion, or sex
- The wildlife was non-existent - I can’t remember seeing one bird or animal at that site - it was like mother nature has not yet forgetten
- The wildflowers that grew outside the boundary fence were strangely sparse inside the fence: they just stopped growing
- No one talked in the gas chamber
- People looked numb when they went through the main exhibits
- Hardly anyone was eating - even at lunchtime

But I think the one observation that will stay with me forever was the breeze that passed by when we were walking back towards one of the barracks. Louise called it eerie - I called it the whispers of a million lost souls.

Was visiting Auschwitz worth it? Most definately. If I start to feel that I have it bad or tough, I will just send my mind back to the time time I was in the gas chamber, or standing on the railway siding, or…

…looking at the sign that said: Auchwitz II - Birkenau - Extermination Camp.

My troubles will disappear and I am thankful that I was not one of the 1,500,000+ people that never had the luxury of experiencing my troubles.

May their lives never be lost in vain

This week I had the pleasure of going to New York with Drew, Liz and Bec for 5 nights and days of sightseeing, shopping, eating expensive steaks and corfee.

NYC is an amazing city! It is stunning actually. Wide city streets, friendly people, nice buildings and last week, some bloody cold weather! Minus 21 at times. Brrrrrr…. Thankfully I had been through similar before (Sweden at xmas) but this was a first for the others and I did feel sorry for them.

The one thing about NYC that amazed me the most was the friendly people. Everyone was willing to help if you looked lost. In London you don’t see that so it was very reassuring to see.

The next highlight was the HUGE T-Bone that I got for dinner one night. Just to put this into perspective… it has been almost 3 years since I have had a decent steak. Anyway… I realised how much the Americans love their food when everywhere we ate there was a guide on the wall on what to do when people were choking. Does this mean that people there love their food so much that they throw it down without chewing????

The rest of the time there was spent:
- Shopping at the world’s largest factory outlets! What a place!!!!
- Seeing Monty Pythons Spamalot on Broadway
- Wandering around Times Square
- Watching the New York Knicks lose by 1 point at an NBA game at Madison Square Garden
- Trying to work out the correct and appropriate tip for everyone for anything
- Gazing over the city from the top of the Empire State Building - chose the coldest and windiest day to do that
- Walked half of Brooklyn Bridge… started heading back when I couldn’t feel my legs anymore
- buying new toys for my camera at the world’s largest camera shop… lurve that place!
- Paying respects at Ground Zero
- Staring at Libby from Battery Park
- Chilling out at Strawberry Fields
- Making sure someone had dollar bills so we could tip someone
- Being sickened (apparently, I was a bit drunk so I was somewhere else) by a stand up comedian (?) at a comedy club - we left during the show and they didn’t get a tip!
- Walked chinatown, Greenwich Village, Wall Street
- Buying stuff so that we got dollars to tip someone

In the end… NYC is a place that I strongly recommend everyone try to get to. I will definitely be going back. but in the meantime check out some of my photos!

Cheers
Ian

The purpose for the trip was to watch the Wallabies play Scotland at Murrayfield. Thankfully we won the game (44-15) and finished the season on a high. But they better pull their finger out if they want to be there at crunch time at next years world cup!

I also did a tour of part of the underground city of Edinburgh… This is an amazing story… Parts of Edinburgh actually are built on 5 layers. They think. Not really sure but they know of a couple. I will write at some stage about the history of it all but I will just say that the short trip we did was pretty creepy. No lights, paranormal activity and images of torture tools…

Anyway… on a brighter note I will put some photos up soon so don’t forget to come back for a look!

Well I am in Frankfurt and having a great time with my course.  The team that I am with is fantastic and love to tell it how it is!  Something I really enjoy hearing.  It is so refreshing to be in a work environment where people enjoy receiving feedback from others and more importantly, feel comfortable enough to give feedback…  Mostly people are too scared to say what they think and are too afraid they will offend someone.

Well enough of that…

 Frankfurt is lovely, as usual, but it is wet, windy and FREEZING!!!! We did not get the snow I was hoping for but they are now saying that it is going to be one of the warmest weeks in November on record.   

 I WANT SNOW DAMMIT!!!!! 

I am going on a night tour on thursday so hopefull i shall have a few photos to post here soon…  Well there will be some as I am off the Dublin on friday with Drew to watch the Wallabies take on the Irish…  GO WALLABIES!

 Talk soon and keep warm and well.

 Cheers

Wardy

Ciao!