Looking back at my posts, I neglected to post anything in April and that was probably because I was travelling between London and Hamburg for a project. It was only a short project lasting about seven weeks and in between doing three talks for a Quarterly Technology Briefing in London, Manchester and Hamburg I think I lost a bit of time.

Hamburg is a port city town and has one of the largest harbours I have ever seen. Although we never really had a warm day during this period due to Europe’s eternally long winter, we did have some sunny days and the harbour is a popular place packed with (mostly) German tourists on these days. You can do a boat trip that takes you and shows you interesting places like the massive dry-docking stations used for cruise ships, or just sailing past the massive cruise ships and the even bigger containing shipping vessels.

One of the most iconic buildings in the harbour is the unfinished Elbe Philharmonic Hall. Like Berlin’s new Brandenburg airport, this building causes controversy because it is an overrun, perceivably expensive building. It’s running three years late and, at the current time, not planned for finishing until 2015.

Being located on the harbour, Hamburg is known for its seafood, so there are many great fish restaurants to try although steer clear of most of the Japanese sushi places as the fish they catch in this area isn’t really the type for making sushi. Thinking that for a love of fish and having a taste for a certain quality I tried quite a number of sushi places but they were both rather expensive and disappointing in quality.

Speaking of food, one of the interesting things to try is the Franzbrötchen bread pictured above. Halfway between a croissant and a bread, it is a decadent pastry layered with cinnamon and sugar. It’s sort of the local version of the cinnamon roll and popular with many variants such as topped with streusel, chocolate bits or pumpkin seeds.

I had a great time in Hamburg with some new friends (Birgitta, Christian and Chris above) exploring a lot of what Hamburg has to offer. The city is significantly smaller than Berlin, and noticeably more German. The U-Bahn and S-Bahn trains still work like clockwork and it’s pretty easy to get around. People in Hamburg are also significantly taller than in other parts of Germany – to me, the average height of people seemed to clock in at around 6 feet with many people often much taller than that. It was a good place to practice my German.

The reeperbahn is the tourist ghetto of Hamburg. Feeling very much like the very seedy side to Surfers’ Paradise back in Australia, it has a huge number of bars, strip clubs and dodgy looking pubs that are frequented by stag parties and the like – none of which is really my thing.

Fortunately it’s a short walk to the increasingly hipster-like area of Sternschanze (or schanze for short) that is full of nice little cafes, restaurants and bars such as the Drei Zimmer Wohnung (3 room apartment) that is a combination of a live music venue in the basement and a comfy lounge-room like bar upstairs.

There’s even the Medienbunker that turns a former bunker into a club, popular by locals.

Some other interesting places worth checking out if you’re in town include:

• The portugese quarter – An area just down from the river filled with latino restaurants, cafes and bars
• Hafencity – The new harbour city. Home to new architecture and slowly building up as a community. Busy during the week but a bit dead on weekends other than for tourists
• Winterhüde – I only visited here once to check out the Elbgold coffee roastery, but this neighbour seemed like quite a very well off area with a combination between residential bars, cafes and restaurants.
• Alster – The two lakes that sit inside the city centre that is worth walking around. Bring a coat as it gets quite windy here

I have been located in a project in Dublin for the last couple of weeks. The last time I was in Dublin was in 2007 and the city has certainly moved on since then. A modern transportation system (called the Luas) is now complete and although it doesn’t comprehensively take you all over the sprawling city, it’s reasonably priced, frequent during rush hours, modern and clean.

I tend to measure a city by the variety and quality of its restaurants. One theory I have is that a wide variety of restaurants demonstrates a certain acknowledgement of other cultures (people are willing to try food other than their own), and any natives that are actually running the restaurant only serve to add to the city’s atmosphere.

What is heavily noticeable is the large population of continental Europeans (particularly Italians and Spanish) helping boost the workforce and the culture. At the same time, you can find a (decent) burrito place, there’s Malaysian (nonya) cuisine and a fine number of gastropub and fine dining restaurants. Have no fear though because the city is still unmistakably Irish. Full of pubs. And churches. You can also easily find a few people swaying around on their feet as early as 8pm on a Friday… maybe because they started their drinking as early as 11am (spotted on a Saturday *and* Sunday).

There’s even an explosion of small non-chain cafes. Three places do a decent flat white (3FE, CoffeeAngel and The Bald Barista) with many places serving up a decent brunch at reasonable prices. Speaking of which, it’s easy to spend a bit here, but you can also get by with reasonable prices. Many places do an early bird menu, or a two or three course offer for €20-€30. All of it very quality food.

Other than the given with the wet weather, cold temperatures and other weather-related complaints, you can see why it’s changing and growing as a hub of business in the European Union.

For the past eight weeks, I have been working in Hamburg, Germany on a near-shored project to Geneva. As a result, I lost a bit of time commuting and haven’t found the time to really catch up on blogging.

In April, I took the yearly weekend trip to Rome to watch Italy play in the Six Nations rugby challenge. This year, they were up against the Irish, and amazingly won. I think it’s only England and Wales that they are left to beat and I’m sure it won’t be too long now.

Luca and I flew into Rome on a Friday night. Toni was supposed to come along, but ditched us along the way due to other committments. He did book our accomodation which was a nice enough bed and breakfast but was a little bit further away from town than what we really should have been. Fortunately the weather that weekend was grand – enough for a light coat in the evenings, blue sky and warm sunshine.

As these weekends tended to go, we got up for a rather lazy breakfast, walked around town for a bit with lots of great photo opportunities around The Vatican. It was particulary busy that weekend because not only had the new pope been voted in, but there was also the Rome Marathon on the Sunday when we left.

We walked around all day, heading out to the stadium. This year’s trek was much nicer in the sunshine compared to last year’s tromping around in freezing snow. We had the perfect seats as well – very close and fortunately in the sunny side of the stadium where I think I even got a little sunburned sitting there all afternoon.

We had a late dinner booked at the wonderful La Carbonara which did not disappoint. It’s the one further away from the centre and you definitely need reservations. We saw numerous people turned away.

When I booked the flights, I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to be yet, so I had an early flight back on Sunday. It was a good thing too since I needed to get home, repack before organising my things for the early flight out the next morning.

A lovely weekend all around.

We stayed at the Quintinha São João Hotel nestled just a short walk away from the old town. My sister did the research and booked a deal with one of the travel websites to get us the deal. It probably took us about a 10 minute walk to get to the old town, although the walk back was often much longer because the hotel is up a reasonably steep hill.

The room that we had was absolutely massive. It had enough space for two beds, a comfortable sitting lounge, a very large bathroom and it also came with a balcony. Free wi-fi (important for us!) was available although the signal was pretty weak from our room. They could use a repeater to get the signal stronger in all the different rooms. Fortunately it worked quite well if you’re sitting in the sitting rooms on either of the two floors, or the lounge room on the main floor that also hosts some evening happy hour drinks.

We played a number of games of pool and table tennis in their games room and they also had a reasonably sized gym that we never really took advantage of. They had both an outdoor and a covered pool but I guess the weather wasn’t warm enough for anyone to use it.

Breakfast was a great spread of lots of different things, and they even do a cooked breakfast with whatever you want as well. I stopped after our second day because there are only so many cooked breakfasts you can have. I’d certainly recommend the hotel although if you want something without a hike up big hill, you may want to look for something further downtown.

After the Christmas break, my sister and I took our holidays to somewhere warmer than the frosty shores of England. This time, to Funchal, the capital of the Madeira Islands. Technically owned by the Portugese, the Islands remain largely autonomous although they use the Euro and you can see some of the influences such as the native language. Fortunately they receive a lot of tourism so most people speak English exceptionally well (I think almost better than some Portugese I’ve met) and a lot of the menus and signs also come in a variety of languages. Funnily enough I was able to practice reading quite a lot of German at the same time.

Most of Funchal is nestled on a mountainous island. This means some beautiful hilly views, winding roads and a fascinating set of bridges that connect the island. They also have two of the longest tunnels (as of our visit) in all of Portugal, enabling faster access between different sides of the mountain.

Being an island, the citizens have large access to seafood and strangely steak (which I’m guessing is imported but probably an inherited trait from the Portugese). The local fish to eat is the ugly Scabbard Fish. Long and black like an eel, the white-fleshed fish is often served battered, fried and then accompanied with a banana fritter and passionfruit sauce. It surprisingly works as a good combination.

The other local delicacy is the Bolo do Caco, a heavy dense bread cooked on a flat griddle and often served smothered in garlic butter. Probably very bad for you if you have a lot, but I have to say that it tastes pretty good. They also often sell a smaller, rolled up flat version filled with chorizo or bacon.

In terms of sights to see in Funchal, there’s a district in the downtown area where they are encouraging more artists to demonstrate their skills. The result is an interesting roadside gallery of doors painted, decorated and covered in a multitude of manners, many of them surprisingly intricate and beautiful. Nestled in between the doors, you’ll find some decent restaurants, cafes and other art galleries where you can support the local community. Here’s some of my favourite ones.

The downtown area has a great local market where you can see the fresh seafood, and the multitude of tropical fruits made available. It’s the first time that I had seen so many varieties of passionfruit, and so many other strange looking fruit and vegetables. I liked the fact that you see the results in the juices they served on the street and also reflected the strong fruit-infused rum they sold in the shops and restaurants.

I highly recommend taking at least one bus tour of the island. We took two of these bus tours, one coasting along the east coast, and the other along the west coast. Both were reasonably great value considering it took all day and you got driven around in a small mini-bus with about 8 other people. You get some spectacular scenery, along the coastline and the sea. Lunch wasn’t included (most offer an optional cheap three course lunch with wine).

I wouldn’t say that there was a ton of things to do on the island. Being a mountainous island, there are actually no beaches on Funchal (an expensive ferry ride takes you to an island with a beach), but most of the hotels and resorts offer pools and lounge areas to soak up the sun. We visited the Botanical Gardens, and walked around a lot just to explore the different buildings and city, appreciating the warmth, sun and views in the fresh air.

Funchal is the sort of place you could spend a few days at. You want to spend more than a weekend because it’s quite a long flight away from England but unless you just want to lie around, four days is probably just enough to appreciate all the island has to offer.