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The New York trip has been a memory for quite a while - Colm and I have done plenty of travel, mostly back and forth between Dublin and Munich, although he’s gotten as far afield as San Diego. And now it’s time to start planning the next big adventure :)

We’re planning a trip through Italy, topped off with a Biggish Train Adventure (I refuse to call it a Great Train Adventure however - I have one of those planned, and it’s truly a behemoth. Ask me if you’re curious). Colm’s gotten the time off work, which makes the dates relatively set at this point, and we’ll start booking stuff Real Soon Now.

Those of you who’ve noticed the new theme for the blog may (not?) be surprised to hear that it’s actually done by the same guy who did last year’s theme :) I was quite impressed anyway - it wasn’t intentional, and in fact, I only noticed after I’d installed the theme! Consistency in a world gone mad, huh? :D

So far, the itinerary is almost two weeks long, whirling up through Italy from Naples, finishing with a sleeper-train from Rome to Paris, and then the Eurostar through the Channel Tunnel to London, before a much less exciting flight home.

On our list for Italy are Naples, Pompeii, Pisa, Florence, Venice and Rome. The inital research is well underway - we’ve chosen accommodation for all the Italian stops, but have yet to book it. The only hiccup is, that we’ll have two or three nights in Paris at the end of it all, and have thus far been unable to find somewhere nice - mainly due to not really knowing Paris - so if you have any suggestions on a place to stay there, we’d be most grateful!

Look out for more life in this blog, coming soon :)

Well - I can’t believe it’s so *soon* to New York! Just watching the Phantom of the Opera (I’m a not-very-secret Lloyd-Webber junkie) to test the iBook’s battery, in anticipation of movie-watching on the plane… Everything’s scattered around my room, getting ready to get ready to pack =) Colm’s gone home to do his own packing, and I just know I’m forgetting half a dozen things at least!

In any case, I have almost all the important things, and beyond that, I’m sure there’ll be shops in New York (!) I’ve read the guide book, the websites, the blogs… We have so much to do, so much to see, so much to just *experience* =) Mmm, yay, and other good things!

So the blog is finally (I hope!) in a state that both of us can cope with =) It’s been an interesting weekend, with lots of “but you said you liked it!”, and “I didn’t want it that way, I thought you wanted it that way” - “No, I thought you wanted it that way!”, but I think it’s usable now…

The plan for New York is much less finalised - there’s a rough outline on the day pages, but there’s also a walking tour we want to try for, that will take most of a day, but take in almost five half-day plans! So expect the usual chaos to continue for the foreseeable!

When the United States brought in the requirement for fingerprinting all non-nationals, I thought I’d never go to the US until they’d wised-up. Why be made feel like a criminal? Why have your fingerprints at the mercy of the US government forever?

However, due to New York just generally being a cool place I’ve always wanted to visit, it having a smoking ban (the hotel we’re staying in is also the only hotel in New York with a blanket non-smoking policy) and it being one of the places Noirin and I could agree on wanting to go to, that’s turned me around.

I hope it’s worth it.

Myself and Noirin are off to New York, for a week, and this travel-blog will hopefully record our experiences and opinions of it all. We’re planning a hectic trip, all of the major sites and more. Well actually Noirin is doing all of the planning - but she’s far better at organising things than I am!

We’ll be staying in Midtown, about 5 minutes’ walk from Times Square. On our itinerary we’ve got such things as: Central Park, Liberty/Ellis Islands, HEAnet’s New York PoP, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, The SoHo Apple store, Broadway, a night in Carnegie Hall (seeing Bela Fleck!), NYPL, The Rockefeller, shopping and much much more.

Well, here goes with yet another blog… Please excuse the mess while we get things set up and working - there’s plenty of playing around to be done, and who knows when we’ll find a theme we both like! So just sit tight, and take it easy :-)