barryg23's VirtualTourist Home Page

Welcome to my travels!

Update We started our year long trip to Latin America in Buenos Aires in September 2007. IŽll be trying to post as much about our trip on both VT and Travelblog over the next 12 months.

Latest blogs:
Buenos Aires
Colonia del Sacremento

Latest pages:
Buenos Aires, Colonia del Sacremento, Salto

Previous Trips 2007
In May we had a fantastic week of hiking in the Lake District.

In April we spent two weeks in Morocco. This was my second time in Morocco, and this time we concentrated more on the country's natural attractions, such as the Todra Gorde, Dades Valley, Erg Chebbi dunes and Meski Valley, rather than the big cities. The highlight of the trip was climbing Jebel Toubkal, Morocco's highest mountain. It'll take me a while to build all my Morocco pages, but so far I've completed Azrou, Asni, Imlil and Ait Ben Haddou and updated my Marrakech page.

Before Morocco, apart from a couple of trips home to Ireland, my last trip abroad was to Lisbon, one of my favourite cities. My girlfriend had a work conference there for a week in October, and I came out to see her at the end and we stayed on for 4 days.

Our big trip in 2006 was to Poland and Slovakia.

We started off in Krakow, ended in Bratislava and in between spent most of our days hiking in both the Polish and Slovak High Tatras, and most of our evenings enjoying excellent and very cheap Slovak beer. The highlight of this trip was Slovensky Raj national park in Slovakia.

Other 2006 trips include a weekend break in Copenhagen, a short-break in Andalucia, where we visited Granada and Ronda, and, slightly closer to home, a trip to Wimbledon for the tennis.

In September I'll be leaving work and home to go travelling for a year in South and Central America. I've been waiting many years to do such a trip and am counting the days until September 5th.

We'll be starting in Buenos Aires, ending in Mexico City a year later, and hopefully seeing everything else in between.

We have a couple of smaller trips coming up before that. In June we're spending a weekend in Lille. One last chance to visit my favourite country before we head off to South America!

In August we plan to hike for a week in Snowdonia in Wales and for another week in Co. Kerry back home in Ireland. If all goes to plan we'll climb these trips will include climbs of the highest mountains in both Ireland and Wales.

My favourite city. I think this will never be topped.

Nil aon tinteain mar do thinteain fein - this is an old Irish saying which sums up how I feel about my real home.

My most memorable trip so far. Very difficult choice this one.

A fantastic year living in New York when I studied at NYU.

My first taste of Africa

Exploring Berlin, one of the great European cities.

Working in an Irish pub in Angouleme, France for a summer during the 1998 World Cup.

My two years studying and working in Oxford.

I've been living away from Ireland since I left after I graduated in the summer of 2000. After studying in New York and Oxford I moved down to London in August 2003 to start my first proper job.

Living in London has certainly been an experience. It's certainly a good place to live if you like travel - it must be the cheap flights capital of the world - as there are so many options just not enough time for them all. Also, it's only a short hop home to Ireland whenever I get homesick!

We've moved a few times since we started in London. First we lived in Islington, them moved east to King's Cross. Now we live in Tower Hamlets, probably the most ethnically diverse places in the country. It's a great place to live - we have the curry houses of Brick Lane nearby plus my work is only a short distance away in the city. One of the things I dislike about London is the tube so I'm lucky I can walk to work every day.

One day back in 2002, I was aimlessly surfing the web one day when I came across a link to VT on someone's web page, and since then I've been logging in here almost daily (apart from a year's break when I moved to London and had no internet access from home!). It does get pretty addictive...