Pictures that I can't figure out how to label! Palace of Versailles, Scuba Diving, French Bistro, The Great Pyramid, Me looking tough in SharmElSheik

After the airport, where I last posted, we bussed to the capital of Northern Ireland: Belfast. I expected people to be asking me whether I was Protestant or Catholic at every streetcorner, half drunk and looking for a fight. Instead, everyone was friendly and helpful, if at times completely unintelligable.

On the second day in Belfast we went to watch the Super Special stage of Rally Ireland. What this means is we saw world-class racing drivers try to get the fastest time around a track centered at Stormont Castle. It was a pretty good evening, but not as exciting as the Rally stage we saw out in the country, next to the much smaller town of Eniskillen. We were hopping farmers' fences and running through their fields to get a better view of the track, and at times we were within arm's reach of the cars that were whizzing by at 100kmph.

The other worthwhile thing we did in Belfast was take a bus tour out to the Giant's Causeway. We drove along the Northeastern coast, some of it known as the 'Causeway Coast.' The scenery was picturesque, as were the towns.

So we've landed in our final home away from home, a sheep farm and wonderful house east of Eniscorthy. We're in perhaps the southeastern-most county of Ireland, save a couple between here and the coast. It is Lukas' aunt's home, and we'll be doing some sheepwork quite soon.

We've arrived successfully in Dublin; I'm writing this from the airport as we wait for the bus.

Paris was a definate success.

The bus will be taking us to Belfast, and there we'll bed down for the night. Then it's World Rally Championship Ireland! It'll be a good way to see the Irish countryside, as we'll be around remote towns in northern and southern Ireland.

Got to go!

-fin

Sharm El Sheik

So instead of Croatia, we ended up taking an all-inclusive six day trip to the Egyptian city of Sharm El Sheik, located in the Sinai desert, technically part of Asia.

It was a fun experience, but totally bizarre. I was thoroughly molested by mosquitos, but we got to enjoy a week of 30+ degree weather.

We signed up for a 3 day SCUBA certification program called PADI, where we received our Open Water Diver 1 license. The scuba diving there was fantastic. We saw, among other things, a blue-spotted sting ray and a gigantic great morray eel. The eel had to have been at least 7 feet long, and its head was about two feet from top to bottom.

Now we've returned to Horni Valdorf, and we had one casualty on the trip home: the Trabant died about 3 towns away from Valdorf, and our neighbor Tomash, who found the Trabant for us, towed us home. The alternator is kaput, so we're handing the keys over to Tomash for good.

Tomorrow we'll be bussing to Paris, where we will stay for a couple of days. We'll catch our flight to Dublin on the 13th, and the final chapter of our journey shall begin.

Best regards to those back home!