At the end of November until the first week of January, Tom and I travelled home to Melbourne. For two wonderful weeks, although we have been gone almost 4 years, it was like we had never left: pubs, friends, family and inhaling the smell of gumtrees.
After the conference finished, we flew west to Bilbao. Our flight was super-early which sucked, but we took a taxi through the suburbs of Vienna while the sun rose which was pretty spectacular.
After arriving, we went for a walk along the river while we waited for the apartment to be readied and the rest of our friends to arrive (they had spent a couple of days in Madrid on the way…). It was as hot in Bilbao as it had been in Vienna, but we were looking forward to some seabreezes later.
After our friends arrived, we walked across the city to see the Guggenheim, but planned to visit the following day. We had a few drinks and were joined by Roger, a local friend from my Ironhack course. It was so nice to see him and have a catch-up!
In July, the 2015 conference for SMBE (Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution) was held at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Austria. Normally, such a conference would have little impact on me, but several of our friends from Tom’s Melbourne Uni days were going to be attending so he signed up as well. In the end, we had a mini-reunion with two friends who’ve been living in Vienna for almost 8 years and are about to move back home to Melbourne with their infant daughter; another couple who are now living in Leipzig, Germany; and another friend who is now based in Sydney.
It was a spectacular treat to have the seven of us together for a huge catch up, particularly in such a beautiful city. The weather, unfortunately, was beastly hot which made sightseeing and exploring really difficult, and sleeping almost impossible.
Nevertheless, while Tom and the others attended the conference talks, I was out and about finding cafés and wandering around museums and galleries. Some of the highlights included: Continue reading Vienna Report
It’s been a busy few weeks with lots of travelling (in fact, I’m away right now as well!), but they have all been really exciting trips to see places we’ve never been to before. I was excited to visit Stockholm to compare it to other Scandinavian cities we’ve visited (Oslo, Copenhagen).
While I really liked the city and there were lots of fun things to do, I didn’t really find it that beautiful, so the camera stayed in my bag most of the time! Nevertheless, we packed a lot into a short trip.
After an amazing cycling trip through the Pyrénées, we had a couple of weeks to recover then it was straight out west to Porto, Portugal for NOS Primavera Sound festival. We had initially toyed with the idea of attending the Barcelona event, but settled on Porto for two reasons: one, we had never been to Porto; and two, the festival was slightly more intimate with fewer stages and bands.
Porto is beautiful; full of beautiful tiled buildings, great food and a really weird public transport ticketing system…