A highlight was my surprise tickets to a modern ballet called Kaguyahime at the Opéra Bastille on the Saturday night. It had an Asian influence with the movement similar to my martial art Sanjuro so I really enjoyed it. Niamh, just thought it was the best from the venue to the performance it was all spectacular. After the meal we went to a nice restaurant that had been recommended to us by friends. I ordered the house specialty the steak tartare not exactly knowing what it was. When it came out as a ball shaped lump of raw meat I was less than impressed. I did my best to get past the mental hurt of eating raw meat and ate nearly half and although it didn't taste too bad I didn't enjoy it. I guess it is going to be one of those "funny" stories which you do not enjoy at the time.On the Sunday night of returning from Paris I received news that my grandfather had passed away. Straight away I started planning my trip back and managed to be back home by Wednesday night. Although he was 90 and had lived a great life it was still difficult and I was grateful that I could be there with the rest of the family. I was even honored enough to read the eulogy for my grandfather at the funeral. I feel this to be a great privilege and hope I gave him a respectable farewell. My work was very good to me and with the few day of compassionate leave I was able to work a few days in Canada and got a chance to visit with some friends and family while being back for the better part of a week.
On July 29th Gord Dowhan my old mate from Canada came over for a visit. He was in between jobs and had mentioned for some time that he wanted to travel over for another visit. The first few days were all about the golf. I managed to make some purchases on E-bay before Gord arrived as I have never owned a decent set of clubs. So we managed to get out 3 times in three days and test out my new clubs as it was a long weekend. Gord put up some decent scores in the rounds and I was trying to get a feel for my clubs usually bettering my score on the back 9 holes. It was a good opportunity to catch up with Gord while on the course as we rarely get a chance to catch up. During the rest of the week I sent Gord out on his own to explore what Dublin has to offer while I worked. For the second weekend we then headed over to Belgium.
This was the highlight of the tour for Gord as we were able meet some of his distant relatives and also visit the Hoegaarden brewery which he had been longing over for a some time. The brewery was first and we traveled to the town of Hoegaarden via train and taxi (not exactly a major tourist attraction for Belgium). The tour was short but better than what I expected. We then proceeded to the courtyard where they had a cafe/bar set up where Gord and I sat for the afternoon. At one point the waitress asked "Are you going to drink all of the beers" to which Gord replied with an excited "Yes". Gord then proceeded to purchase anything with Hoegaarden on it and we headed back to Belgium to taste some more Belgium beers.The next day we went to visit Gord's relatives who live near Brugge. They picked us up at the station and basically acted as our tour guide for the day. They also took us out for lunch and back to where the live. Both Gord and I were amazed to find out that his ancestors had played a big role in this smaller community and there was even a life sized statue of his Great Great grand father. We both enjoyed Belgium spending most of the time tasting the local beers at the many pubs and eating cheese, salami and dijon mustard with celery salt as a seasoning, YUM!
That takes me up to the end of August.
