St. Patrick's Day a wee bit late in San Diego

I managed to make it to San Diego too late to celebrate St. Patrick's Day on the 17th, but luckily my tardy college friends have their festivities a week later. June organised a splendid boozy bus tour which did a scenic trip of San Diego taking in a diverse range of pubs and bars. Everyone was marvellously decked out in green with a wonderful range of amn't-I-so-Irish hats. June, looking ever-festive in a green hula skirt, coordinated the days proceedings with her wee whistle which signalled that we should skull out beers or at least think about skulling them.

The tour was only great. After the first pub or two, we were treated to a ride on a very rickety rollercoaster (well planned for the start of the pubcrawl). Then after a couple more pubs, it was on to some nice park with a lovely view where a Mexican lad and his family served us tasty tacos (very Irish, that). Then a couple more pubs, then a boat ride across the harbour and then it gets hazy. I wasn't even drinking the designated one-drink-per-pub as a trip to the bar or the bathroom normally took up a good chunk of time. That, and the fact that were was a keg of tasty pale ale on the bus, meant that I was quite beerful but too beery that I couldn't dance in the bus.

After the last pub, we headed back to June and Steve's were we had a couple more drinks and gorged ourselves on June's Mum's stew. Delicious. Surprisingly my head wasn't too bad the next day but poor wee Stefan, unused to the pace of the drinking Irish, suffered lots. It was a great St. Patrick's day altogether - good work Spoonog.

Old but yet still childish - My 30th Birthday

Here's Stefan with my birthday cake in the morning - then the same cake, 400km later. It didn't look quite as nice but was pretty goddam delicious.

Well after being a good bit homesick the day before my birthday, I celebrated my birthday breakfast eating a tasty tasty birthday cake, complete with candles, that Stefan had ordered especially and surprised me with at 8 in the morning (we were on Nancy-time - this withered auld one, Nancy, who owned the cabin we were staying in, informed us that daylight savings took effect, though they didn't - so we got up one whole hour early by mistake. I'll be double checking that the next time).

We had planned to go see the whales further north, so officially my birthday was being suspended to the next day as we had over 400km to drive that day. So I headed to the internet where I got the most lovely birthday card from my Australian mates -

Click here to see the lovely photos and an awful one of me looking rotten

And then after a lengthy phone conversation with Mum and reading lots of other Happy Birthday emails (thank you everyone), we headed off on a beautiful drive though a mountainy coast with deep deep blue sea. I was allowed to choose the accommodation, seeing as it was my birthday, so I chose the El Dorado Motel, a classy little place (where the owner presented me with a birthday rice pudding). We had a hearty birthday meal consisting of hamburgers and green salad with a most dodgy mayonaise/ketchup 'dressing' before I was treated to a massage and allowed to pick a birthday film to watch. '28 Days Later' is only great, though fierce scary especially if your boy is snoring gently next to you. It was a marvelous 30th Birthday.