Lee and Clare, The road home

The start of the long journey home.....

17^th September 2003

Hello there all!

You probably heard from us last around Christmas time 2002 when we'd just moved to live in Galway on the west coast of Ireland after an awesome few months having a look around some of the Middle Eastern countries and Egypt. Well we've now lived in Galway for 9 months and are only briefly back in London for a few days to tie up our loose ends before heading home. For those of you in London that we've just run out of time to catch up with before we go - sorry!! We've had such a manic time packing stuff and trying to see everyone and do everything, time has just run out!

We've enjoyed our time in Galway and the things we'll miss the most are the great pubs (which all have so much character), the live music, being close to the water and the close proximity of everything. Almost any place we'd want to go was within 10 minutes walk from our house. And of course all the friends we've made! It's been a good lifestyle.

Galway has been awesome over the summer even though we have had anything but the heat wave experienced by the rest of Europe. It's been really pumping, full of people and atmosphere. It's hosted one festival after another - the Galway Film Festival, the Arts Festival and the Galway Races - a completely manic week when half of Ireland seemed to descend on Galway. Over summer Galway has had a very 'European' feel to it with all the pubs, cafes and restaurants with tables out on the street and people spilling out of pubs onto the pedestrianised areas with pint in hand. Bit of rain never harmed anyone!

The Irish never complain about the weather and we're pretty much in that frame of mind now - it is what it is, but even so it's not something we'll particularly miss. Another thing we think we'll be able to live without is Irish television - anyone who's ever watched Fair City will attest to this.

We've both been doing day jobs in offices and Lee's had an evening job as a waiter in a popular restaurant attached to a busy pub. This has worked out quite well for the savings, as it seems that people there are pretty generous tippers. Good thing too, as the wages do leave a lot to be desired, especially after living in London.

Now the savings are paying off, as we are about to embark on our big trip home. Tomorrow we are finally off! We fly first to Sweden and plan to travel overland all the way from there to Singapore. Starting in Stockholm, this will involve a boat to Helsinki, another to Estonia; over the border to Russia where we'll get on the Trans-Siberian Railway. We'll be hopping on and off along the way, spending a good bit of time in Russia, a couple of weeks in Mongolia before ending up in Beijing. Then we'll have a month to look around China before heading over the border to Vietnam where we'll meet Clare's sister in Hanoi and spend about 6 weeks travelling around South East Asia, making our way down to Singapore where we'll ultimately take that final flight home. Very exciting, but it's also taken a good bit of planning as we're doing it all independently. Just getting the visas was very stressful!! So many hoops to jump through!!

So we plan to be home around Januray/February next year. For those of you there, we're really looking forward to catching up. We'll have been travelling for about four and a half years by the time we get home so will be happy to settle into a bit of routine for a little while at least!! The time feels right to return and we're looking forward to that next adventure of attempting to settling ourselves at home!! Scary!!

Lots of love
Clare and Lee