Dublin Day 1 - Trinity College

We landed in Dublin on Sunday, which meant I was out sight seeing first thing I could Monday. It just doesn't seem right that Brad had to go to work! I won't gush, but suffice to say, I think I have the best husband in the world :-)

I bought a hop on hop off two day dublin bus tour. I snapped pics as I went. 

One of the first places it stopped was at Trinity College. 

The college was founded in 1592 by letters of patent from Queen Elizabeth the first. Obviously she was protestant and wikipedia says that it was seen as the university of the protestant ascendancy. It was also establish to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy. For example, only from 1873 could Catholics or dissenters become professors or fellows or receive scholarships. Then again, the Catholic Church in Ireland forbade its members to attend the university without permission from the Bishop, until, get this...1970! Pretty crazy!

Main Square

Ireland via Frankfurt!

Some of our avid followers have been clamouring for more posts :-) Apologies for the long delay in posting pics from our current trip to Europe! It's just been such a joy of sight seeing and touring that I haven't made time to get to blogging. Let me remedy that now and start with our flight over. 

KLM basically closed their boarding gate too early in Hong Kong so even if our flight from Manila hadn't been delayed, we still would not have made the connection! Needless to say I've been on to KLM about it and hopefully some corrections to their published available connections will be forthcoming!

In any event, Cathay Pacific was really great and bumped us onto one of their flights via Frankfurt. This was perfect because it gave us a chance to get to see our very good friends from Germany! Thank goodness we'd made the effort to get Schengen visa's. It made it possible to just change plans like that! 

Our friends took us to a beautiful place about an hours drive from Frankfurt called Loreley. There is a legend about the sirens singing on the great rock and as a result causing many ship wrecks. Or something like that at least. We went to the top of the cliff/hill/mountain and had coffee at the top. The view of the Rhine was exceptional!

Barge on the Rhine

Anilao Diving Again!

Well, we have had the joy and privelage of another wonderful dive weekend here in the Philippines.

Although the diving was great, the weekend was rather sad.  It's was officially the last dive trip with Karin and Sadri, as they are heading to Vienna soon after their stint in the Philippines. We will really, really miss them!

Once thing is definitely certain, living as an expat means making great friendships, but also, saying many goodbyes.

All in fun was had by everyone.  The dive weekend started at 5.15am, getting up and doing the final packing.  Our pickup was at 5.45am.  The drive to Anilao was quicker than ususal, including the standard stop and McDonalds for a snack.

The accomodation was a little rougher than the previous places we had stayed, which added to the adventure (we stayed at ScubaBro, which used to be known as the Outrigger).  It was an adventure when everyone's gear was rearranged and/or missing the second morning of diving. We actually found mine on another boat. One of the other groups diving there had understood it to be theirs...hahaha.

Apo Reef Underwater Sights

At the end of April we went to an island just South of Luzon. Just off Mindoro is a reef called Apo Reef with an island in the middle. We didn't stay at the island, but rather slept overnight under the stars on an awesome house boat. The diving there was really spectacular and our Swiss guide Michael really knew the dive sites!

 We did our first night dive - quite an experience - a wreck dive, a deep dive and a bunch of other fun dives. 

Here's a few pics care of our friends the Knappets :-)

Barracuda...I sincerely hope I spelled that correctly!

Apo Reef 2

So our dive instructor gave us a bunch of photo and video from her camera. The video below is what I used to think were Angel fish, but discovered are actually Moorish Idols! Again, I'm still learning my sea creatures!

El Nido - Apulit 3

Meals at Apulit were wonderful! There was so much food and such tasty food too! I had prawns every meal almost and there was a chocolate fountain each meal too! Each night over the weekend we were at Apulit, a wonderful group of musicians and dancers from the university entertained us with traditional Filipino music. It was really interesting to watch and listen to! 

Traditional Artists

El Nido - Apulit Island 2

The one thing I was amazed to see swimming underneath our cabin, was baby black tip sharks. They would swim right up to the beach too. They were more scared of us, than we were of them! A few times we saw them when snorkelling.

Baby black tip shark

 The snorkelling was amazing and the pictures just can't do it justice, but hopefully they can give an idea.

El Nido - Apulit Island 1

This is just a little snapshot of our wonderful trip to Apulit Island.

View from our balcony! It was like being in a postcard!

El Nido - Apulit Island 4 - Underwater Shots

Thanks to our wonderful friends, the Isenhowers, we had the chance to take some shots underwater. Truly, Palawan has some stunning sea life!

Nemo's cousin

Boracay Baby!

We went to Boracay for the weekend with a wonderful bunch of friends. You can fly to Caticlan or Kalibo. Our flight was scheduled through Kalibo, which meant we had to take a bus ride from Kalibo to Caticlan boat station and from there we had to take a boat across the channel to Boracay. Kalibo is the bigger of the two airports. It's actually an international airport strangely enough. It really is a small airport, so it was surprising to find out it's an international airport. 

The crowd...or at least most of them.