At the end of the last update I told you all I was going to Spain with Bob.  We meet Kat Sykes and Sarah Rees there and I thought Spain was great!  We stayed in Taragonna which is about an hour south of Barcelona, doing a day trip to Barcelona.  I thought Barcelona was fab and would love to go back at some point!  Taragonna was cool and I am pleased we went there, but I think it is safe to say the group consensus was that we wouldn't rush back.  

While in Spain we spent time looking at the ruins and (the highlight for me) time on the beach.  When you see the beach you will see why this is a highlight for me - not the kind of beach I have seen in England that's for sure!  And it was so warm....

I was particularly excited about being in taragonna when I heard about the seafood they had (being a port town).  The girls and I immediately agreed that we would head to a seafood restaurant one night while we were there so we could enjoy some good seafood again cos very few places in London actually know what real seafood is...Man, were we disappointed when we saw our meals!  I nearly dry reached when i saw Bob's meal (sorry bob) but it didn't look that nice and it smelt even worse, although i understand it tasted ok.  Then Kat has this dish which had several types of seafood, there was fish, mussels, cockels and various other bits...the mussels and cockels were tiny, the fish looked like it had more bones than anything else and I recall Kat saying it was a bit bland!  My meal was fine cos I had taken the safe option of cod with a potato side (hard to go wrong really).  It tasted nice, but was not something that would cause me to rave about the restaurant.  All in all, that experience made us realise how lucky we are in NZ with the seafood we have.

However, when we were in Barcelona, we had lunch at this really cool restaurant on a yacht.  I had a prawn dish and that was fantastic!  It almost made up for the experiece in Taragonna!  

The next trip was to Edinbrgh for my 30th birthday.  Edinburgh was great!  I could actually see myself living there for a bit if I get tired of London.  Unfortunately, my time there was somewhat overshadowed by the stuff that was going on at work so I intend to go back to create some different memories of the place.  On the upside though, it was great to have Greg, Kylie, Catherine, Jess, Dave, Jules, Kat and Bob there to celebrate with me!  We had a wander through the Christmas Markets and round some of the shops, we went up to the castle and then back to our hostel to watch the rugby before having drinks and then heading off to dinner! The trip was made extra special by a surprise that Mum, Dad, Julian, Tanya and Jules had been working on...Mum, Dad, Julian and Tanya made a dvd of my life so far and then worked with jules for it to be shown while we were in Edinburgh.  It was the coolest thing and was the icing on the cake to having some good friends away with me for the weekend.

My parting memory of Edinburgh stems from me thinking it would be a good idea to mix my drinks the night before (I had bicardi breezers, red wine, white wine, bubbles and cider....you know..as you do..).  Without going into all the detail, lets just say that when the others headed back into town I decided I needed to get a room at the hostel for another few hours so i could 'sleep it off'.  they had no spare rooms.  I then figured I would just go to the airport and wait for my flight -  I had to get the taxi driver to stop on the way to the airport for me to throw up and then when I got to the airport, I spent my time lying across several seats telling myself I felt fine, then running (with all my bags) to the bathroom - cos actually I wasn't fine! My flight was delayed so all up I spent about 5hours at the airport in that state!  When I finally arrived back in London at about 8pm that night (having been at the airport since 11am), I started to come right.  What a relief!  nonetheless an enjoyable trip, made that much better by the fact that I was surrounded by some great people!

That's all for now from me!

A

xx