Back in Paris

So me and Dev moved back to Paris last night, the night train was cool even if it was not as good of a night as we would have had in a hostel. We got off the train early at around 7am and then hopped on the metro and went down to our Hostel which is nearby Sacre Cour and is very nice, it is kinda spendy (25 Euros a night) but tehy place is very nice and is probably at the level of a hotel. We started the day at the Eiffel Tower after a quick breakfast. We paid the high fee and went up to the top of teh Eiffel Tower which was covered by a nice cloud and VERY cold at around 9 am, after the Tower we went wandered our way to the Rodin Museum and then from there we headed back to the neighborhood of our Hostel to find a lunch. We had a nice if spendy lunch of pasta and then walked around a bit more before heading back to the Hostel at around 4pm to get our rooms. We then crashed (I took a 3 hour nap) and then had a quick dinner from our groceries and some desserts we had picked up. It was a nice day but it kind of highlights that its almost over.
Expect more posts (1 maybe 2) and then a final post when I get home as a retrospective of my entire trip.

Moving back to Paris

So my time recently has gone from very chill and laid back to a somewhat faster paced orientation, I have one again left many days un written in my blog and I must rectify the situation immediatly.

11/6
So this day was spent at Conches which is one of the prettiest towns in France (a distinction is shares with many other villages in France). Still the town was very nice, it had a small church in th center of the town and a lot of cute little houses. The houses were split at maybe 50/50 that were really cute and then those that were diplapidated. Overall though the place was very nice, it was on a nice hill and I could totally see having a nice little house there. After the town we ate a lunch we had packed, salami, cheese, bread and apples before we drove the hour or so back.

11/7
This was the ultimate down day for me, I slept in in the morning and after a slow breakfast I played some games and watched a bit of TV online, I spent the whole day lazing and had a nice dinner. It was a great day.

11/8
So this day was spent at another of Frances many prettiest villages, the town was pretty small and had some nice winding streets in it, the highlight of the town was a castle at the highest point of the village which was supposed to be open but ws closed the day we went. This was unortuante since the church in the town was also closed and thus there was noting to do. We ended up going to a small restuarant in the village center and having some hot drinks before walking around a bit more and then leaving.
This was the same day we left Decazville for Tolouse, we headed out to catch our bus at around 6:40 or something and then from the bus we took a train to Tolouse. When we got to Tolouse we hopped on the metro for one stop and then got off. We were looking for out Hostel and we could not find it so we set our along the road we knew it was on. After getting to the next Metro stop (i.e. too far) we turned around and went back only to realize that the Hostel was literaly next to the Metro and we had missed it, we checked in no probs and that was that.

11/9
So I dont want to make this too long so I may skip some details, we started the day off with a breakfast at a nice resturant on the main square (the Hostel did not serve a breakfast), it was very well priced, you get a chocolate or coffee, orange juice, bread and a croissant for 5.5 Euro, we then headed out to visit a church which had an small museum of anicent Roman statues since it was part of the Roman empire at a point. After the museums we wandered around and found a nice Tea shop where we spent several hours drinking some very nice tea and doing crossword puzzles. After passing the time we met up with a freind of Devs friend (my sister also knew but not quite as well) for dinner, we went to a great crepe shp where I had a nice crepe that was very much like a crepe omelette and thena orange chocolate crepe for dessert. After that we visited the friends apartment in Tolouse, which was very nice, cozy with some nice quirks. After that it was somewhat late so we went back to the Hostel and after a bit of reading turned in for the night.

11/10

So today was a dissappointment, we started the day the same as the last with the ame good breakfast and then moved on. We had intended to visit a museum which housed modern art in a old slaughterhouse but it turned out to be closed, after that we ended up wandering around the neighborhood before slowly heading to another church. We were trying to find a resurant from my travel book that promised 9 Euros for a two course pasta meal, we could not find the place and had to settle on another that had meals for 11 Euro. The food turned out to be great, the deal was you could get a Appetizer and Entree or Entree and Dessert so we got one of each picking a Spaggheti carbonara and a Steak with a cheese and tomato appetizer and a tart for dessert. Both the entrees were great, the pasta was very good and it came with an egg yolk in a half egg shell to be put into the pasta which made me pause for a mintue before dumping the egg all over that pasta. The steak was also great and we split both the Entrees so we both got some of each.
After the meal we went to the nearby church and then found another Tea shop where we once again spent several hours before reutnring to the Hostel. As of now of the plan is to take a night train to Paris where we stay for our last three days before parting to go our seperate ways with me returnign home.

Revisting the Past

So I am very unhappy to announce that my computer decided to give up the ghost last night, the first the screen stopped displaying an image and then the whole computer stopped turning on. I believe the computer is completly broken and since it is old and was never a very high end laptop I am just going to ditch it and keep my hard drive. Unfortunatly this means that I cannot blog from my laptop any more. I am going to do my best to keep up the blog for the last week of my trip but it will be a bit harder so dont be suprised if there is only 1 or 2 more posts. That being said I should be posting my last few days sometime later today.

Apologies for the Delays

So I fell behind on the blogging, the past few days in France have been very fun though.

11/1
So I arrived in Paris on the 31st late in the evening so the 1st was my first day in Paris for real. Me and my sister decided that we would hit the Louvre out first day in Paris and get it out of the way. We first ran quickly through a part of the Museum to get the Mona Lisa ( not as impressive as you wold think it is) which seems to be obligatory. After the Mona Lisa we moved on to several other sections of the Museum including one section which was full of furniture and full rooms things like the old rooms of the royal palace and how they looked. We also looked at several collections of paintings around the Louvre. After the Louvre we wandered around the nearby shopping district where my sister suggested that we get me a coat for the colder temperatures that were hitting Paris, it was around 10 C (about 50) with some heavy wind chill so it felt a lot colder. I posted some photos of me in the coat on my Flickr account so you can check it out and see how I look. After the coat we went back and hung at the Hostel for the afternoon before popping out for groceries later in the evening and then eating in at the Hostel.

11/2
We decided for the day we would go to churches for the day and so we headed out to start at Saint Chapelle which is a small church that is almost entirely stained glass. The walls have large windows of stained glass and I have some photos on the Flickr account so you can get an idea of the place. Unfortunately the front of the church was having work done and so it was covered and thus one of the best views of the church was hidden. It was very impressive but not quite worth even the discounted price of 5 Euros. After Saint Chapelle we continued on to Notre Dame which was pretty empty since it was still in the morning. We went straight into the Cathedral and looked around, you get to walk around the base level and explore the Cathedral. After the exploration we went back outside to go onto the upper level tour of Notre Dame only to find that there was a very large, slow moving line now. We had made plans to meet one of Dev's friends for lunch and we decided that we would join the line and see if we could make it to the front before we had to go to lunch. Well we did not make it to the front of the line, we didn't even quite make it to the halfway point before it was time for lunch, we decided that we would come back another day earlier in the morning so there would not be as much of a wait. We met with Devs friend and went to lunch at a small nearby cafe that we had found in our guide book. The food at the cafe was good and the location was decorated with lots of books to be like a cozy little library. The food tasted good but the service was somewhat lacking and our server was somewhat rude to us. So after our quick lunch we went back to the Hostel to recuperate before we met another one of Devs friends and after meeting up we went back to her boyfriends apartment and cooked a nice dinner with them. We had chicken, zucchini, and an apple crumble for dessert. We ended up leaving at around 11:15 so we would not be caught by the closing Metro. We hopped two trains back to the Hostel and made it back around 12 and fell into bed.

11/3
The majority of the day was spent at the Rodin Museum which is housed inside of an old train station and houses Monet's Water Lilies which are some of his most famous painting. We met with Devs friend again outside the museum and we spent the rest of the day together. we looked at a good portion of the paintings in the main exhibit and then we visited the Art Nouveau exhibit that was also in the same location. The paintings were cool and the building was very impressive, we spent several hours here before heading to our planned lunch. We decided to have out lunch at Angelina which is a restaurant if Paris that we had been recommended as it serves the best hot chocolate in the city. We ordered a double serving of the chocolate to spit between the three of us and we all ordered a dessert. I chose to get a Mont Blanc which had no description but from what I could tell it was a meringue topped with a whipped cream like topping with the whole thing covered in a sugary smooth hazelnut paste. It was great but a little to rich to go with the chocolate. The chocolate itself was very rich and thick, I would say it was about the thickness of heavy whipping cream, maybe a bit thicker. The whole meal was great and very filling but on the expensive side (what do you expect I Paris though). After the chocolate I went back to the Hostel to take a nap while Dev and her friend went off to shop.

11/4
Our planned movement took place on the 4th, we went from Paris to Decaze where Devs friend works and has a apartment she shares with several other people. The town is rather small but is in a great location near some of the nicest towns in France. The trip was pretty easy, we hopped up earlier and grabbed our bags, we had a quick breakfast at the Hostel before getting onto the Metro to get to one of the larger stations to get out train. We made it the large station with plenty of time and found our train easy enough. The first train ride was around 3 hours long and from there we transferred to another train for around 2 hours. When we arrived at the station we were picked up and driven back to the apartment. We went shopping and cooked a nice meal for dinner, chicken, carrots, rice, and a mango salsa with cake for dessert. We are planning on staying here and leaving on Sunday to go to Tullues then leaving Tullues on Wednesday and going back to Paris to finish up there and be ready for our flights.

11/5
Devs friend had work today so she was up early in the morning to be ready for her early class and she was back very soon after I got up at around 9 or so. Me and Dev had a nice breakfast of some Nutella toast and yogurt, I also had a piece of cake. The breakfast was good and we decided we would go down to a town nearby where the guy who translated the Rosetta stone was born. There was a small museum there with artifacts about both ancient Egypt and how the stone was finally figured out. After he Museum we returned to the apartment and had a nice cal afternoon lounging before cooking up a nice dinner of Mac and Cheese

Paris

Well my blog has not been updated in a while somewhat due to the fact that I have been having some slower days. So I will begin with my time on Olympia the home city of the Olympics. I explored the city for most of a day and the city was not too great. It was not to pretty but it was kind of a cool place to say you have been. The city was not too awesome and I soon found myself once again in Athens to be ready for my flight. I spent an enjoyable night near the Acropolis and I found a nice little cafe to print out my boarding pass and the next morning I went to the airport and got to my gate nice and easy and for maybe the first time flying in Europe. The plane was very nice, I had Aegean Airlines again and the plane ride was great. Unfortunately the plane was about an hour late and I was forced to wait at the gate before we boarded and the plane seemed to take longer then it should have. I got into Charles De Gaul airport at around 7:30ish and I grabbed a train into Paris and then walked from a stop to my Hostel near the Louvre. I found the place nice and easy and when I got in I found my sister waiting for me at the Hostel just as planned. This was my first time that a planned meeting worked out for me. We went out for a nice dinner where I had a duck dish that was a nice dish with a sort of mashed potatoes that had pieces of duck in it. It was great and we had a nice glass of wine with the meal. It was really good to see my sister after such a long time and we got a great chance to discuss our respective lives and what had been happening. Today we went to the Louvre which was a short walk from the Hostel and it was good luck since the Louvre is free on the first Sunday of the month so we were able to avoid the 9 Euro entrance fee. The museum was cool, we went through several exhibits as well as seeing the Mona Lisa which was packed. After the Louvre we wandered through the neighborhood before finding a small Asian restaurant that was decently priced for lunch. After the quick lunch we hopped over to the grocery store to grab some stuff to take back to the Hostel and then walked through a light rain to the Hostel.

Getting wrapped up in things

Well as you may have noticed I have not blogged in a while, I fell of the wagon when I arrived in Athens and I spent several days in a city that really should be 2 days at the max. I have to say I am much more inclined to blog on days that I have spent a bunch of time exploring a city, I guess I have more stories that I want to write down after days like that.
In the interest of sanity I am going to cut down what I write here so I do not end up with another 3 page blog entry.
Athens
I spent the first day exploring the ruins around the city, my Hostel (Athens Backpackers) is a five minute walk from the Acropolis and most of the ruins centred around there. I started the day at the Acropolis and moved onto several nearby temples. This took about half the day and provided great photos of Athens although my camera was not really good enough to do the view justice. In the afternoon I visited the Acropolis Museum where most of the artefacts from the Acropolis are housed. Not surprisingly they had tons of sculptures in varying levels of completeness as well a lots of carved walls and roof pieces that were the remains of several temples that existed on top of the Acropolis.
The second day was spent at the other varying museums of Athens the most notable being the Architecture Museum, the museum was within walking distance of the Hostel as well and contained some really amazing pieces. Mostly what you would expect from the place though, pretty extensive collection of statues. Very good, easily a must see if you visit Athens.

So I spent he next two days in Athens, the first day being planned and the second being me trying to plan what to do in Greece since my original plan fell though as did my second plan. I had wanted to visit the islands but was warned against it and the ferries to Crete which I wanted to visit were at prohibitive times (I would arrive at like 3 am) so I had to scrap that plan.
Anyway I finaly got a plan together that looked to work, I would spend two days in Delphi and two day in Olympia then return to Athens on the 31st for my flight to Paris.

Anyway I spent yesterday going from Athens to Delphi where I checked into my new Hostel, The place is fantastic and so is my room....which it should be I had to get a Private Single for 40 Euros. My usual accommodation is a shared room with up to 11 other people and they cost around 16-24 Euros a night. The costs for Olympia are going to be about the same so I am dropping a bit more cash then I would like to in these cities.I spent today seeing the famous site of Delphi which was somewhat of a let down. The hazards of off season traveling struck when about half the site was closed for some sort of renovation or something. What I saw of the site was fantastic though,once omiting detail for the sake of space, I have been really impressed by what the ancient people could build, between Greece and Italy it has been crazy to see all these old structures and how amazing they look even in there dilapidated state.

Tomorrow I make the move to Olympia and then spend the next day there before heading back to Athens to be ready for my flight. Also keep an eye on the Flick account since I am putting up new photos soon.

Wraping Up Italy

Well I have made my way safely to Greece and found my new Hostel in Athens almost completely hassle free thanks to the great instructions they had on there web site. The Hostel is superbly located a 2 minute walk from The Acropolis and in a small, more residential block. More on the Hostel later, for now lets talk abut Italy, I did not blog for the last 2 days so to remedy that here I go. The first day I missed was my trip to Pompeii. I had held out not visiting the site in the hopes that the weather which had bee cloudy with a little rain would improve, boy did I make the right decision, the weather cleared up beautifully, sunny and much warmer for my trip to Pompeii. Unfortunatly, the Gods of technology were not smiling upon me as bright as the sun since along the way to Pompeii my cameras batteries died, while not completely unforeseen I had yet to purchase new batteries so I was stuck camera less for my trip to Pompeii, so no photoos for the trip. The visit was interesting though, the ruins are very impressive even without a guide to tell you what they all are in detail. This is as good a place to go off into my tangent as any so why the hell am I charged for tours and audio guides. I mean cmon, I just paid like 10 Euros to get in to see the ruins and now you want me to pay another 4 or 5 to explain what they all are, shouldn't that be covered in my entry price. This problem is most notable at places like ruins where without a guide they can be completely incomprehensible, I flatly refuse to pay for the audio guides since I feel that they are a complete rip off and taking advantage of tourists.
Anywho, were back on topic, Pompeii was an amazing place to visit, its one of those sites that you hear about so often and see all this stuff about and then it was like, hey I'm here, this is the real thing. The detail to which the plaster duplicates could be made was amazing, they even had roots of plants they had done.
After the day at Pompeii I headed back to the Hostel to meet back up with my Hostel mates, we decided that since the Pizza we had was such a good deal and delicious that we would go back with 2 new people who wanted to go so we could also show them the way since the place is kinda off the beaten track. We had another great dinner and I went back to the Hostel and crashed.
The next day I did not blog was a very calm day, I woke up late and the plan was to head out to Rome so I would be there for my plane the next morning to Athens. It turned out that the one of the girls who was in my room at the Hostel was also headed to Rome so we decided to go together both for the company and since I knew at least to a small degree my way around the city. We got into Rome at around 3pm and headed to our Hostel a few blocks away from the Train Station, it was a different Hostel then the one I stayed in when I spent my time in Rome but it was very nice. We went shopping at a grocery store which are very few in Rome, that city seems to have the fewest and hardest to find grocery stores of any place I have been. We ended up with a variety of vegetables and we made a stir fry in the kitchen that the Hostel had for guests to use. I went to bed early, like 10 pm so I would be able to make my 8:30 train to the airport, I missed the train but was able to the 9:00 train and made it to the airport and around 9:20, with plenty of time to check my bag and get to gate. The flight was fantastic, I would like to give major props to Aegian Airlines, the flight was schduled to be a short 2 hour thing and they served a meal that was included in the cost, full meal with drinks, I was shocked and the flight went very quickly. Athens airport was also a fantastic experiance, I made my way easily to the train station and got the train into town. Just as a side not my opinion here may be jaded since I had great instructions from the Hostels web site. The place was nice and easy to find and is very good looking with nice bathrooms and all the rooms have a nice little outdoor patio thing, the place is great and the weather here is good too, its nice and warm which is a nice change from the colder temps that I had for most of my past days. I am hoping the weather will stay fair for my time in Greece. Well that is all that gas happened to me, I have plans to visit the main buildings of Athens one day, then the museums another and probably Delphi another day.

Why Linux is the Best

So my laptop was Bricked and I spent a good amount of time trying to fix it. I am happy to announce that the laptop has been fixed through my tireless efforts and with a good dash of help from the Ubuntu Support pages and natural ease of Ubuntu. So my efforts were centred around creating a Ubuntu Live CD which allows you to run Ubuntu from the CD without actually installing it on your machine. Its general uses are to let users try out Ubuntu without making a commitment immediately and also to help you fix your computer. I was hoping to get Ubuntu running again so I could at least use the web and basic functions then from there I could try to fix the computer and if that failed I could install Ubuntu again on the free space in my Hard Drive and then wait until I got home to recover my old files. Turns out Ubuntu is very smart. I got the disk running and made it to the Desktop, I noticed a link to my hard drive and used to to find that I could access my old documents. After this I restarted the computer to find that my problem was solved. As far as I can tell the computer had lost its way when it tried to access my Hard Drive and it did not know where to look, when I accessed the documents when I loaded up through the CD it reconstructed the computers path to the Hard Drive thus allowing me to boot up normally.
So enough tech talk, I actually did things today. The big draw for today was visiting the Archaeological Museum which contained most of the best pieces from Pompeii, things like frescos, it really whetted my appetite for seeing Pompeii tomorrow but I think that if I had to choose now I would go to Pompeii since it would give you a better idea about some of the things in the Museum. After the Museum I also visited the Castle nearby, not as interesting as I wished, it was a castle and the view was good. After exploring the attractions I went back to the Hostel and thats when I fixed the laptop. While finishing up the laptop I met with the new Hostel mate who had just come from Athens and we decided with 2 other people to go to dinner at Sorbillo, one of the top pizza places in the city. I had a really simple Pizza the Margherita, it was just tomato sauce, mozzarella and Basil, its was amazing and the pizza was huge, it was maybe 7 inch diameter and the pizza only costed 3.3 Euro. The thing was amazing, the pizza was super flavorful and very filling, I actually finished the whole thing and it did not need anything more. I would say it was easily the best pizza I have EVER had. Tomorrow the weather should hold fair and I plan on going out to Pompeii so I should have photos and a blog for that tomorrow.

The Hazards of Computers

So as you know I brought my computer with me on the trip(wel duh ive been blogging and using the internet). So th hostel I am at has unlimited internet and after taking advanage of it last night to update all my podcasts adn chat wih my mom I put the computer into Hiberntion, when I got up this morning I turned the laptp on to find myself face to face with th Linux (opn source OS i use) eqievalant of the blu screen of death. Now for Linux this looks less like a blue screen and more like a wall of text, imagine your computer got stuck on all he stuff tha appears when it first stated up, all the letters and numbers that you have absolutly no idea what hey mean. So to begin with I did not panic, Ubuntu is very good about having built in help functions that will vluate and fix the problems for you, I started i up and much to my chagrin it gave me the same error. Now I strted to panic, I didn't realize until just then how much I use my laptop, it charges my Ipod which is a sourc of entertainmnt and helps to kep me calm when I think things are going wrong, I store my photos on it, use it to update my blog an get podcasts, stay up to date with news. The single biggest thing that occurd to me was that I have a spreadsheet have been using to kep trac of my money and that is a vry important thing that I was losing. The Hostel has free computers with internet so I immdiatly hopped onto the Ubuntu support forums )one of the best resources for fixing and broken computer runnig Ubuntu). I locateed the problem pretty quick and found that it was that the OS no longer found the hard drive and you could fix it but you needed a Ubuntu install CD, of which I have none, after poking around I found you could do it with a USB drive and went to the nearest electronics store. Now if you know me you may know I LOVE video games, and what do you expect to find at an electronics store...video games, I had to walk through a large selection of everything I ws missing including games that I had missed the realease of and all I could do was drool knowing it was not possible t bu them for a multitude of reasons. I got eh USB drive and I am trying to put on the installer but for now my laptop is Bricked.
Since i'm still in the process of tryng to fix this I wil update the blog whn things change, if they do...fingers crossed.

Edit
So the update is that I tried to make a USB install of Ubuntu and that failed so tomorrow I have to go and buy a disk so I can do a Ubuntu LiveCD adn that should at least give me back the internet and basic computer functions, from there I may have to just leave the other files alone unti I get home or try to find a work around.

Internet: How I have missed thee

Okay to be fair to the title I have had internet but it has been limited to 30 minutes a day so here is another big blog to encompass the past few missing days.
The first day I met with the people from my new Hostel, they are pretty cool people, actually they are all from Australia and two of them are from the same town. The group that came from the same town is two girls (Rebecca and Brigget) and a guy(Jack), Jack and Brigget are engaged, they just got engaged and Jack flew out from Australia as a surprise( they are around 21). The other people are a also engaged and they are also from Australia and they are have been engaged for around 6 months (they are around 26). This first day was really the evening that I arrived in Rome, I went for a walk with my new Hostel mates, we walked down to the Colosseum and the Roman Forum but didn't enter either since the price was expensive and it was the end of the day. The forum had actually closed so we wandered through the streets until we found a small restaurant where we had a drink. I had a Nectarine Juice it was very thick and tasted wonderful. After the drinks e headed back to the Hostel for dinner since the served a free pizza dinner every night at 8:30. After the pizza I went back to my bed and fell asleep since I was tired. Its been weird walking everywhere since I have not wanted to spend money on trains and buses unless I need to and most of the cities have had things close enough that you can walk to the attractions (the exception has been Rom, walking to the Vatican from where I was staying would have been murder). The few times I have taken the buses and metro its usually been cheap(1 or 2 Euros) but if I did that to get everywhere it would add up. As a result my legs have been constantly tired since about a week into the trip, the 30 lb backpack doesn't help either.
So I got up the next morning and ate breakfast with my new set friends before we split off and went our ways for the day, they had decided to visit the Vatican while I decided that I would solo all the big sites in downtown Rome( Pantheon, Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Roman Forum). I arrived at the Pantheon after wandering around the area for about an hour looking for the building, I eventually found a sign and then followed the line on tourists to the building. The Pantheon was free top enter the building itself was cool but I found that most of my interest went not into the main building but into the walls and decorations that adorned them. After the Pantheon I headed to the lines at the Roman forum and waited to get my ticket, the whole price was 12.5 Euro and includes the Roman Forum, Colosseum and Palatine Hill. It's a good deal if you make it to them all which you should. I walked through the Forum first which was not as impressive as one might hope, without the 4 Euro guide its just some interesting rocks with some VERY cool structures as well. Palatine Hill was much more interesting to me, it has been converted into a garden now, but in Roman times it was the most prestigious place for your home to be. The word Palace actually stems from there. The gardens were very pretty and it was easy to tell how the place was the best real estate, you would be right next to the Forum and you had an amazing view of the city, especially without all the high rise buildings that are there now. After the gardens I headed over and entered the Colosseum, it was very cool but it is so run down, you can just imagine how amazing it would have been when it was first built, it has a bunch of holes where there used to be statues and adornments and they ripped all that out to re use the building materials. The place is Huge though and even falling apart you can almost see the spectacle of 50,000 people watching gladiator fight at the center of the Colosseum. After the museums I headed back to the Hostel for the free pizza (hey free dinner, its a great money saver) and then crashed into bed again.
The next morning I decided to go with the rest of my roommates since they were once again going to the Vatican, they had tried to get in the day before but the place had been swamped since the Pope was in town, apparently they saw him do a service and then drive off in the pope mobile. We all went back and to the Vatican and we saw the Vatican, not much to say really it had lots of paintings and it was amazingly designed, I also managed to snap a photo of the Sistine Chapel even though your not supposed too. After the Chapel I went for a wonderful walk with three of my Hostel Mates (Rebecca, Brigget and Jack plus Briggets friend from Rome), anyway long story short we ended up having a meal at a nicer restaurant, I had a bowl of Spaghetti Alla Carbonnara which my dad made (and still makes) often for dinner. I wanted to be able to make a comparison. So dad, you do a pretty good job, the noodles were much more aldanate( under cooked) then I expected and the sauce was much richer then I am used to, it was a smaller bowl of pasta and t really filled me up, it tasted fantastic so it was worth the spendy pricetag. My share of the meal came out to be 18 Euros which is a huge price for me to pay for one meal, much higher then normal but you gotta treat yourself every once in a while right?
Anyway that day also went fast and then I went to bed again.
Today I moved cities and to sum things up quickly I grabbed a train, got off at the wrong stop, got back on again after waiting an hour and a half for the next train. When got to Naples I checked into the Hostel and had no problems. The crime here though is crazy, when you first exit the train station all along the street are people selling things and I reckon that 30% are easily noticeable as stolen goods as as high as 50% are actually stolen, I held onto my bag very tight, I even used the stomach strap though it was not needed.

Barcelona and Italy

So today I moved from Madrid to Barcelona and the shift could have goon smoother, I started out early hoping to make the 10:30 direct from Madrid to Barcelona and was disappointed to find that train was full and the only other one was at 12:30. Ouch I had to wait for another 2 hours at the train station and the kicker was that they only had first class seats left for the 12:30, and since the 12:30 was the last train from that location, I would have had to go and find the other train station to depart from or I would have to wait till tomorrow and lose one of my two full days in Barcelona. I went with the extra money, a decision that I am kinda mad at but I did it and I cant take it back. The extra service you get for your money really is not worth it, more leg room, a movie and radio, and a meal, its was interesting to see what the first class is but it is definitely not worth the cost of the ticket. I'm gong to post a photo of the olive oil that came with the meal since it was a hilarious little oil bottle and looked really cute. Anyway I made it to Barcelona and I was immediately confused as I left the building. I ran into two guys who asked if I spoke English and then asked me for directions, I told them I didn't really know and went to go find my way about 5 minutes later the same guys approached me and gave me a sob story about how one of them had lost his passport and they were only like 6 Euros short and if I gave them some money, I stopped him right there saying I could not give away money. I might have come off kind of mean since I just spit it out but especially in retrospect it seems like a con. If you lost your passport you go report it to a consulate you don't try and get money so one of you can go home and get copies of the other guys passport. Also I'm a poor traveler, even if I was fooled by the story I don't have extra money to give away. Back to me navigating the rails, I was super confused by the maps of the rail system and I told myself as I entered the station, “this is gonna be just like Germany” where if you will recall I boarded a train in the wrong direction....well I was right, having misread the map I took a train away from my hostel and when the line ended and I found a map I realized that I had to take the same line the opposite direction to get to my stop. I re boarded the train and I made it to the Hostel no problems from there. The Hostel itself is nice, its in a slightly low end area (lots of graffiti everywhere) but the place itself is very nice. It has a full bar, TV area, Wi-Fi as well as computers for guests to use, nice big rooms and even a Gym for guests. The location is pretty good too, its very near a busy street lined with restaurants and about 10 minutes walk from the cities central street. It certainly feels like a good place to explore Barcelona from and its near to the airport as well. So Barcelona and then onto Italy.
So this blog was written in two parts, this first part came when I had just gotten to the Hostel, the second one I am writing on Sunday morning so I ca complete the story of what happened. So after I logged off the Hostel room totally filled up, we had a group of 3 Greek guys enter as well as another guy from California and the 3 girls who had been in the room before I showed up. The Greeks were doing a small tour of Spain and weirdly enough the 3 girls were from UW (university of Washington, it was great when I told them I was thinking about going to WSU, the schools are rivals) and were doing a study abroad program, two of them are spending a year and one is spending a half year, they had come up from Cadis (where there school was) since they had a longer break from school and wanted to explore Barcelona. We had a great time as a group in the room and at around 1:30 we decided to go to this local bar we were told about( the Greeks unfortunately stayed behind), we spent around 2 hours there and met a friend of the girls who was also in there study abroad program and his buddy. We decided to change bars and find some food along the way to the next bar. We had been told that the next bar was a really chill place that was a hidden treasure but when we got there it was PACKED, we spent all of 15 minutes inside before deciding to go back to the Hostel. We walked back to the Hostel and found some food before deciding that at around 5 or 5:30 we should go to bed, we just got up around 11 so we missed the breakfast at the Hostel but the night was super enjoyable. This Hostel is definitely the best I have stayed at both thanks to a good facilities and for sure the best roommates I have had my whole trip
.
We woke up in the morning around 11 and started to get ready for the day, we had all planed to go hiking in a mountain range nearby, we had to take an 1.5 hour train to get the the location but it was definitely worth it. We actually missed the initial train we wanted at 12:30 and had to wait for the 1:30 train so we went and grabbed a bite at a small restaurant nearby, the food was really good and it was a good choice since we had gotten up to late to get breakfast at the Hostel. Once were there we had to take a smaller train up to the entrance, there was a monastery as well as the usual visitor attractions and we all took a little elevator like thing up to the top of the mountains (they were around 3000 feet above sea level). They had a variety of hikes to good viewpoints from half and hour to 2.5 hours long, we had arrived at like 1:30 and we needed to be back at the elevator thing around 5 and we did not want to miss the last lift since we would have to walk down if we did. The hike itself was very fun with a ton of great views and I was not very long, I was also surprised to see that many of the rock walls had rings in them for attaching a rope if you were rock climbing meaning that rock climbing was not only allowed but to some degree encouraged. After the hike (where I got a ton of pictures) we went back down the the lower level and spent some time exploring the monastery, it had a very cool entrance chamber and they had the usual place where you can light candles, however there were so many candles that when you walked into the candle room you could feel the heat hit you. After exploring the monastery we decided we should head back so we went to find the small tram to take us back to out train stop, we found that there was a HUGE line of people waiting to get onto the tram. We debated how long the line would take and settled on finding some food since it had been like 6 hours since we had eaten our lunch and we had had nothing since then. We walked along the street and looked at a small cafe but it appeared to be out of food so we had to continue on, we also passed a group of stalls that had been set up and we walked through them getting free samples of cheese at every stall, we eventually hit the restaurant and found that it had closed like 10 minutes ago, so we decided we would go back to the initial cafe and get some ice cream to tide us over until we made it back to the Hostel. By the time we had our ice cream the line for the train had decreased unbelievably, we grabbed a spot and ended up waiting probably 15 minutes before getting onto onto the train. The first train ride was short, just down the mountain to the nearby town, but the train was packed, when we got to the lower train station there was a ton of people there too and when the train arrived we could not manage to get seats. This meant we had to stand for the 1.5 hour trip back to Barcelona and since we could not take that after hours of hiking we all sat down around 10 minutes into the ride. After getting back into Barcelona we made our way back to the Hostel and scrounged up some dinner and al take showers (this was around 9:30-10). After that we went for a walk down the streets mainly to grab some simosas at a nearby store and then we continued to walk around for another 45 minutes or so and ended up back at the Hostel where we chilled until around 2 when everyone went to sleep. Unfortunately the girls had to leave to head back to school so they shipped out around 4 in the morning to catch there flight at around 7ands I leave tomorrow morning myself but the experience of Spain was really good. I think that having good roommates really helps to improve the experience, I definitely did not have this much fun when it was just a room full of people who sat there and said nothing.
My second day in Barcelona was spent at two places, the first was the Maritime Museum,a much older style museum with history of Barcelona as a port city and as a Spanish port overall, the museum highlighted the older ships, things like Royal Spanish ships from the 16th century as opposed to the maritime museum in Rotterdam which was more of a modern museum highlighting the development of the port into a modern day port. After the museum I wander all the down Las Rambles which is the biggest street in Barcelona, it had an amazing variety of things, street performers, gift shops, restaurants, flower shops, pet stores(like little stalls selling birds and fish, up to full chickens). It was pretty wild and the street was bustling with tourists. The street was really nice and a great adventure, after that I just went back and had to repack my bag to get ready for the flight to Italy.

The big day arrived and I ended up sleeping in late, I had not been able to fall asleep so I ended up falling asleep way to late and my roommate had to wake me up at around 8, about an hour after I had planned on getting up, I was going t grab a train to the Airport and arrive around hours early so that I would have a hard time missing the plane. After I was woken up I went into a panic mode, shoved everything I still had out into my bag and ran downstairs to check out, I got checked out and started planning. I realized right off the bat that the train was out of the equation, its takes around an hour by train to get to the airport so I had to make a tough choice. I ended up paying 20 Euros take a cab to the airport but it was either 20 Euros for the cab or go buy another plane ticket. I think I choose the cheaper alternative. I got to the airport and it only took around 20 minutes so I made it to the airport with what seemed like enough time to get through the security and check in. Getting my bag checked was easy and barely took 10 minutes, security was also a breeze and took probably the same, I found my way through the airport super easy and made it to the gate maybe an hour before the plane was supposed to leave, I was kinda pissed since I still had all that time and I worried myself through the airport and I still had to wait for the plane. NOT COOL. The plane ride to Italy was good, nice and short and, we got in 20 minutes early. I grabbed a train from the airport direct to down town Rome, the airport was probably the best place I have been so far, it must be all the tourists that come into it but it was easy to navigate and buy tickets. The city was a little harder, I made it out of the station easily enough but I could not find the Hostel I was looking for in the clutter of all the Hotels around the train station, I had to find an Internet cafe and Google the location. I got the directions and found the place, apparently its one of a group of famous Hostels, the place is more like a Hotel, it has free Internet, free breakfast, free pizza at dinner, and the place has a TV room and REALLY nice bathrooms. It is great, compared to some of the places have stayed this is fantastic. I have 3 days including today planned in Rome, then going to Naples/Pompeii, a single day in Pisa and then 2 days in Venice. I am really looking forward to the my time in Italy, its one of the places I have really been looking forward to. I also met my new roommates, I really like them, we went out and explored Rome with one of the girls (there are 3 girls and 2 boys excluding myself) being our tour guide since she has been to Rome around 6 times. It was really great, we didn't enter any of the places but we saw the Colosseum and parts of the Roman Forum, after the walk we all headed back to Hostel for the free pizza they provide as a dinner. All in all, good day.
Really sorry to delay this more but the new place has a time limit on your Internet (30 min) so I probably wont get chance to upload all the photos.

Not a Blog Post

So this isnt really a real post, I just wanted to tell everyone who is reading that there will be a small wait for the next few blogs, I have a mega blog*so far its looking to be around 2,5 pages maybe more) for all the days I have missed already written but the wireless here does not agree with my lapyop and wont let me connect so I will be posting the blogs when I arrive in Rome (hopefully) basically dont expect anything from me here until the 13th, so until then, bye bye

Museums

So today was definitely the museum day for Madrid, I checked out probably the two biggest in the city. I started at the Museuo Del Prado, it housed a ton of paintings (over 3000 the brochure said) and was fairly interesting, I say fairly because there are only so many paintings that one man wants to see. Anyway the paintings were fairly old, lots of paintings of old royal families and the likes. There were also paintings of scenery and some of animals, lots of dead animals heaped over tables. They were very interesting but I was struck by something while I was in the museum. The back of the brochure had all the paintings in the museum that were considered masterpieces and I noticed this about halfway through and I realized that without that piece of paper telling me they were masterpieces I would never have know. So then what makes them so amazing if they dont stand out to me, I just saw a painting, maybe a little better then most but I didn't see them and go "ohh thats a masterpiece". Just a thought.
After making my way through the Prado I went to the nearby Museo Reina Sopia, it was much more modern art and I though that I would really enjoy it but the art did not really resonate with me. I spent around an hour wandering through the museum before heading to the small garden they had in the middle and relaxing for another 15 minutes. I found that most of the art seemed very boring and I went through very quickly and did not care to much, there was the occasional piece that would catch my attention but for me at least it was not worth the cost.
The overall day was okay for me, I grabbed a snack before I went to walk around the town a little, its very nice, the streets look cool and there are a LOT of tapas places everywhere. Also during the day theree were fighter jets that flew over the city, I am fairly sure that they flew over the city like 4 times, it was cool.
So ends my time in another city im moving on to Barcelona tomorrow and then I spend saturday, sunday, and Monday there.

Madrids Royal Palace

SO my big draw for today was the Royal Palace of Madrid, the palace contains the main rooms for the old royal family, a reconstruction of the medicine house, and an armoury. I first visited the medicine house, it had been destroyed during a fire and had to e rebuilt. It contained all of the instruments and materials for creating medicine, it had reconstructions of all the glasses and pottery with labels for all of the medicinal supplies that it would have contained. The rooms displayed to some degree the changes of the medicine through the years. The rooms also contained all the tools used for the medicine. That was a pretty small part of the whole Palace area but interesting that it was contained within the walls of the Royal Palace, guess the kind gets the best healthcare. Next I hit up the main Palace, it was the residence of the old Royal family and as you might think it was crazy. The main entrance was this huge with the family crest right in front of you as you walked up the stairs and above on the ceiling was a huge painting. I got to see all the main roms, bedrooms, dining room, the parlour like area. They all had huge chandeliers that got more complex the closer you got to the living room. They also had a room filled with silver that the royal family had used or in that same style. The best room for me was the Porcelain room, its walls and ceiling were made completely of porcelain with intricate designs in porcelain done to cover the cracks where pieces met. The whole room was so amazing and felt really fragile.
After the main palace I went to the armoury, it was a mix of swords, lances, maces and various pieces of armour, mostly plate mail with some ornamental pieces. They also had early guns, they were mostly large pieces of wood with the firing mechanisms attached to the wood. The stuff was cool but not the bst ive seen and the whole collection was pretty small, speaking of small so was the price tag it was 3.5 Euros, very cheap. I think they may have given me the student discount which I do not qualify for, for those of you wondering why not you need an international student card to get those discounts and for that you must prove you are a full time student, which I no longer am.
So after the cheap royal palace I made my way over to the nearby church, literally right next to the palace and paid 6 Euros to see the churches museum, mostly old churcy stuff, lots of garments and ceremonial staffs with LOTS of gems in them and they were mostly made from silver. The church also offered a great view of the city from the top of its tower, I took some photos but two of the four sides lacked viewing posts and all the sides had a nice plexiglass divider so you could not get closer then 5 feet from the edge. This made getting the photos rather hard but I did try.
Unfortunately for you reading the blog both the inside of the royal palace and the chuch museum would not allow photos so I am afraid I cannot show you the very wonderful things I saw, safe to say though if you are in Madrid, the royal palace especially is a must see.

Traveling to Madrid

Blog for Wed 7
So today was my big move from England to Spain, it was......interesting.
So the day began a little later then expected, I woke up at 7:10 instead of my plan to get up at 6:30 and leave around 7. So I was given a ride by Lynn to the train station and she described how and what trains to take to get from New Malden (where her flat was) to Gatwick airport where m flight left at 10:25. The train was pretty easy and straight forward, hop on at New Malden and then ride to an intermediary point and switch trains to on that would end at Gatwick. This went fine and I made it to Gatwick with around an hour and 45 minutes (a little less then the 2 hours I wanted). So I went to check in with my printed receipt from Orbitz and when I got to the counter they said that Spain requires you to have a ticket out of the country when you enter on a Non-EU passport( might have just been non Spanish passport, cant quite remember). Point is I now had to have a means of proving that I was leaving the country and if you have been reading the blog you probably know that I don't really plan that far ahead. I was unable to get a train ticket at the airport so I was forced to go and buy a plane ticket from Barcelona to Rome, thank god I spent part of last night figuring out my path for Spain. The ticket set me back 130 Pounds which is roughly Euros and Dollars. I could not believe it, that is way more then I should have paid, I could have gotten way better deals online but I needed the ticket right then. So I get checked in and this whole affair took a half hour so now I have around an hour to get through security, and get to the get and on the plane. Security was actually a breeze, walked pretty much right through it with no hold ups and then I got to the waiting area, it was like a freaking shopping mall, stores everywhere. I checked the departure info and my plane did not yet have a gate so I had to wait for another 10 minutes before the gate shows up and then its at the other end of the place, after walking all the way I get to the gate and there is almost no line and they have already started boarding although I actually made it with a little time. After finding my seat at the back of the plane( of course its cheap, no wonder) I settled in and we waited for the plane to take off. The plane got closed up and it looked like we were going to leave but then the captain announced that the plane had to be delayed since someone had checked luggage but not arrived for the flight, they took a while getting that sorted and then told us that since that incident had occurred we had lost our spot in the departure line and had to wait more. The plane was eventually bumped up in the line so we could arrive closer to on time and we got to leave. The plane itself was probably the smallest plane I have been on and it was very empty, lost of seats open, I myself had two seats all to me and throughly enjoyed it, I spent most of the flight listening to podcasts. When we arrived in Madrid we where taken out of the plane via the tarmac (something I have always wanted to get to do) and bussed out to the entrance. We had to go through the passport check and sure enough the entry document I had to fill out stated both the entry date and plane and had a spot for departure info as well. After that I had to find my way to the underground system for Madrid which was by far the hardest rail system have yet encountered, I had to get help from the help desk asking what trains to take to get close to my hostel, the attendant was very helpful and gave me a map of the system with the trains and stops I needed highlighted. I successfully navigated the rails and made it to my hostel which is in a small side street, there were several other backpackers on their way to the hostel as well and I really feel like I am among peers. The place is really nice, it was an old Palace and is actually considered a Historic Monument by the Spanish government, it has a nice design although the rooms are somewhat packed together and the price is good. There is also a main area that has cushions to sit on, its a sort of common room and it looks fantastic I'll add some photos if I can.

Next up is me looking back on my time in London, I did somewhat want to visit places like Stratford Upon Avon (the birthplace of William Shakespeare), and some others cities but the cost of traveling and all the attractions that are available in the area really kept me in London, not to mention the fact that my accommodations were so nice, and now that I am on the subject.
I want to send out a HUGE thank you to Lynn who hosted me for all the time I was in London, she had a lovely little flat and was really generous and super helpful with my travel. She even went so far as to drive me to Kew when I went there, as well as feeding me really good home cooked meals (something that is really nice when you are traveling).
Back to my original topic though, I did contemplate going to Oxford since it was another large city and had a few things I was attracted to but after I looked at the costs for tickets (they are CrAzY in england) I decided that it was more cost effective to do more things in London as well as easier since London has easy access to international travel. As I said in the last post, Kew Gardens topped the list, very fun and I would suggest it to anyone who finds themselves in the area. Also the Tower of London is must and although I did not actually go up in it (due to prohibitively high prices like 12 pounds—$18??) the London Eye was very cool. I was thinking to myself as I left that its really weird to have England there in my trip since it was so different for me, I spoke the language and the culture was much closer to American culture but now I am going back out to places where I speak absolutely NONE of the language and the cultures can be vastly different. It really came to me as I saw someone reading a paper in Spanish and it occurred to me that England was really my last chance to do things like read the paper, or really watch TV. It also hit me that when I am done with Spain I will be halfway through my trip.
Anyway sorry for the monster post just so much to say, the next few legs of the trip have been planned, I have things to do for both Madrid and Barcelona planned and then its on to Rome.
Sorry No photos, I may try uploading later but the internet here kinda stinks, still keep an eye out.

My Stay In London

So I leave London tomorrow morning and since I have not blogged pretty much at all since I have been here this will cover most of my stay, please forgive any discrepancies.

I managed to visit quite a lot when I was in London, the list of places was,The London Eye, Tower Bridge, Hampton Courts, Tower of London, Globe Theatre, and Kew Gardens.
The tops of the list have to go to the things I was expecting, the Tower of London was super awsome, the Crown Jewels are on display here and looking at the jewels and thinking about there value was super fun. Some of the largest cut diamonds in the world are housed at the Tower of London so that was a treat.
Secondly, the Globe Theatre, its next to to the Tate Modern which really dwarfs it, it looks really funny but its cool to think that the reconstruction is so close to where the original stood. The plays had unfortunately ended so I was only able to take the standard tour, not see an actual play preformed. Still the theatre itself is col and pretty small especially when you think of how many people would have been cramed into it during Shakespears time.
The last is Kew Gardens, something I managed to put off until my final day in London. Don't get me wrong its not like I didn't want to go, as a matter of fact its what I was looking foreard to the most but I just kinda kept putting it off. Kew Gardens was something kinda special for me though, my family visited it both time we traveled to England and now I got to go on my own. When I first walked through the doors I almost immediatly noticed that I was having kinda crazy deja vu, I remembered the pathway to Kews most recognizable greenhouse and when I got to a certain had this crazy flashback to like an 8 year old me standing at the same spot under this giant bannanna plant and looking up into its giant leaves. It was really cool.
Alright, a little back story for those who dont know. Kew Gardens is the Royal Botanical Gardens of England, it was started over 250 years ago and holds 1 in 8 known plant species. Nowadays Kew is mostly a dedicated to preserving plant species as well as some research on plants.
For me the place was really nostalgic, I really enjoyed the walk around the gardens and I got a ton of great photos, I took around 150 shots all over the garden and they have all been uploaded to my Flickr account.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macandcheese240/
The day was not a perfect one since it was overcast the whole day and began to rain near when I left the gardens but I was used to it since Portland has much the same weather. I was also dissappointed to find that they did not have seeds of any cool plants for sale at any of the shops. On our first family trip to Kew my dad bought, Bannanna seeds and Bird of Paradise seeds. The Bannanna died and had to be replaced but the Bird of Paradise survived we have two plants and just got flowers from them for the first time. They have a seven year period where it grows before starting to flower yearly. Anyway got a little off topic but no exotic seeds this time, I had wanted to get some for my dad as a gift.
So that pretty much sums up my time in London, tomorrow I hop a plane from Gatwick airport to Madrid so my next posts will come direct from Spain.

London

So both today and yesterday were spent in London or at least nearby. Yesterday was spent walking around Downtown London at the suggestion of my host who was very kind and gave me several great suggestions for things to do in and Around London. I went around the Themes near Downtown London nearby Waterloo Station and the London Eye, no photos unfortunately since I forgot the camera. Looked nice and there were a lot of store and restaurants. Today was spent lounging around while I tended to my photos since the uploading takes a while and I had to remove some of the bad photos and I had to work on my money tracking since I am trying to keep track of my spending and I had 30 or so receipts that have been sitting in my wallet for a really long time. So not much to say for today but tomorrow should produce better writing as well as some good photos.

Also random but funny points, when I arrived in London at the International train station there were several business men in front of me buying train tickets and the first guy asked if he could pay with Euros (LOL) thanks to my parents I knew better and already had Pounds(the currency of England for those who dont know), also seemed like the teller kinda sighed as she said they got that all the time and were really tired of it.

Also I am VERY happy to announce that my photos are now viewable, I shelled out $25 to Yahoo to get a Flickr Pro account so I could get unlimited uploads and unlimited storage so my photos can now be seen by all.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macandcheese240/

The Trains

so today was the big move from the mainland out to England, for the most part it has gone well. I got my ticket in the morning and while the train was somewaht consufung and I made it on. I had a 2 hour layover in Brussels where I had a sandwich and a cup of coco. After that I hopped onto the second train from Brussels to London and was happy to find myself in a city where I felt equally lost as the others mbut could count on people to be speaking my language. At this point I did not know how I was meeting my contact in London. So at Waterloo station I asked where I could find a Cyber cafe and went in to find that the Email said if I arrived at Waterloo before 5:30 I should try and make it to New Maldan (the place I will be staying if you could not guess). So I hopped ona train that would get me there and I arrived 10 minutes too late since my host had to go to work. After that I made my way to the cyber cafe I am currently at and I am hoping to pass a little time before grabbing some dinner and meeting with my host at around 7:30 when she gets back from work.
It seems that I have really bad luck with trains and what not, I allways seem to manage to miss the train or not know where to go, like I said earlier its relief when you know everyone around you speaks the language you do. I really cant wait to get lost in somewhere like spain or Greece where I dont know ANYTHING about the language. Anyway I;m signing off for now but I will update later with how the meeting goes.

Wanderings

Well another day down, today I had intended to visit two locations somewhat near each other, the amsterdam history museum and the jewish history museum. Well I made it to one of the things, I made it to the amsterdam history museum which was surprisingly cheap (5E) and went about my buisness. The museum was pretty informative and efinitly had some very interesting pieces both that seemed to pertain to the histroy of the city and some that were less so. Also I cant remember if I put this in any blog post so its going in this one, apologies if this is a repeat. I have really stared to notice that most of the museums I have visited in Europe have the oddest pahways, you will very often find yourself going the wrong way through an exibit and even when you know youre going the right way its this kind of nagging feeling your doing it wrong.
So back to the point, after the museum which was kinda loud I made my way to the jewish histroy museum where I found another large group of kids ready to go into that museum, feeling that I just could just take it any longer I passed right by teh museum and continued my enjoyable walk through the city, losing myself among the streets before returning to a small grocery store and buying food for lunch and dinner. overall the walking took around 2 hours and that was pretty much my whole day.

Today and Yesterday

So I ahve a blog for today but unfortunaly the iternet at the hostel where I am staying is down (normaly it would be free), so I am going to blog todays events(froma cyber cafe) and then post up the blog I wrote yesterday when I get the chance (proably the 30)
So today was good for the most part, I visited two museums, the plan had been to go to the museum area of town since it was pretty far away and then visit teh two museums that I wanted to see there then abandon that area for the rest of my time in Amsterdam. My plan hit a snag when I found that the larger of the two museums was closed for remodling. Instead I went to museum number two, the Vicent van Gogh museum. It really chronicaled van Goghs life through his works, how he started and moved through what was really his best period and then began to wane before killing hiself. After the first museum I went and grabbed a quick lunch from a nearby store where I got 3 bananas,a 1.5 liter coke and cheese and meat for like 6 Euros. After the impromptu lunch I made my way to the Hash Museum which is what you would expect it too be, not quite worth te money you pay to get in if you ask me. Thats pretty much todays happenings, im writing this around 4 so I'm planning on reading some more then grabbing soem dinner and then back to reading. Tomorrows my last full day in Amsterdam and I am planning on visiting another museum or two and maybe a church as well.
I do have plans to use cyber cafe again tomorrow since it is my line of communication with the nxet leg of my trip but something could happe, anyway I do PLAN on blogging tomorrow but thats not a garuntee, the next blog should come at the latest by the 31st and moe likly tomorrow or the 30th.

Photo

Hey so a little extra here is the postcard of my favourite photo, it looks better in the museum and the photos also no the best.

Rotterdam Museums

So today was really my exploration day for me in Rotterdam, first I had a nice breakfast at the hostel which was great and I felt good even though they had music beating way into the night (dont get me wrong it was way better then the last place which was oppressivly quiet, it had a god atmosphere). After that I headed out to the Maritime Museum where they had a cool exhibit about how both the sipping industry and sailing industry have evolved as well as the evolution of Rotterdam as a port city, how it went from a strong port city and then began to dwindle after sand bars egan to form and then they created a channel to solve the problem. It really struck me how the Dutch people thought, when they had this problem of nature basically creating a wall of sand instead of giving in and letting the town sort of devolve they said "no well just move the giant sandbars and control the ocean.
Anyway after that I headed down to a art museum in the down town area along the museum park area which is just what it sounds like, a park with three or four museums along the length of the park. Anyway I visited the biggest art museum and I got a pleasant surprise, since I was 18 I got in for FREE, a very good price for a traveller on a budget. Anyway I explored that for another 3 hours or so, they had paintings, drawings, and prints ranging from the early renaissance through modern times, they also had some modern art things containing both older things like glass and silver cook and dish ware and moving all the way up to things like TVs and toasters. After the museum I had a nice coke and brownie in the small cafe at the museum and I picked up a post card for a really cool idea I had. I want to get postcards at all the places U visit and then when I get home I plan on glueing them to a piece of poster paper around the name of the country and maybe city they are from. Hopefully it will be a sort of overview of the sights I saw on my trip.

Anyway the day was good and I still need to go grab some dinner, tomorrow morning I plan on moving on to Amsterdam and then probably trying to visit the Ann Frank house after I arrive and then spend the next two days after that exploring Amsterdam.
I'm still working on getting all my photos up but here is a quick primer of a few of my photos.


One of the Canons from the museum ship at the maritime museum


My bed at the StayOkay Arnhem (the last place I stayed before Rotterdam)

Rotterdam

So I made my train after some help from the ticket agent and now I am in Rotterdam and staying at a wonderful little Hostel called the Room Hostel, its has themed rooms and has a great atmosphere, compared with the StayOkay hostel OI was just in this is wonderful. When I had first arrived there was a possibility that they were full up but I was told to come back in an hour so I walked around and found a little cafe and had a nice pizza and coke for lunch and then went back and the Hostel had an opening. Unfortunately all the places I planned on visiting close at 5 pm and it was already 3 so I just plan on kicking it at the Hostel and they are having a concert so I may go to that and they also have a happy hour around the same time. I also met a really cool guy at the last Hostel called Ben, he was a really cool dude and he originally came from SF (San Francisco) and he really travels a lot, he has been traveling for 2 months or so now and he had been all around the world. I was pretty surprised that he had even been to Mali, he had apparently came up from Africa to England before I met him in the Netherlands. He was really cool and apparently couch surfs a lot and really suggested it to me heartily.
Anyway tomorrow I'm gonna hit some of the museums around the area, mostly art and theres also a maritime museum.

Now a quick gripe at AAA
I brought along two travel books, well three but I had to send one home already not it seems I will be sending another back. The first book is really great, A Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget, it has been great for finding activities and for the most part useful at getting me to hostels. The second book is the AAA Travel book for Europe which I only brought along because my mom suggested it, turns out I was right. I have been recently trying to use it for cross reference to try and find any more activities I think I would enjoy. My first gripe is that it only lists several cities for each country (most likely done to keep the book smaller) and these are usually the I cities (for example London for Britain) and so far these have been somewhat incomplete as far as I am concerned. The book does not have Versailles for France nor does it have The Globe Theater for London. Anyway that book is probably going back to home soon.

The Last Few Days

So I haven't written anything for a while and i's really sorry since I said this would be a daily thing but anyway. Please excuse it if you notice anything that breaks the time-space continuum since its kind of blurring together in my head.

Roman Ruins-Day
So basically we all loaded into the car and we drove down to a set of roman ruins that were somewhat in the area. So we went down there and we looked around. There was a set of sort of pantheon like columns and after we walked around the area before going to the nearby museum that encompassed also an old roman bath along with descriptions in German and our hosts very thoughtfully translated the German for us. The remainder of the museum was about the area where the ruins where through time as well as some of the roman fashions, amour and such and currency and then moving into fashions as time moved on. After the museum we went back out and checked out the Colosseum they had built nearby. It was really cool and you could go inside and hear the echo and reverb as you spoke. It also seemed like the area for contenders was smaller when you were in the center of the area. It was really weird, after that we went back to the house.

Chilling-Day 2
Basically I chilled I the house for a day, I watched a lot of videos and planned some of my time and travel in The Netherlands.

Traveling-Day 3
This was when I hopped a train and split up with my aunt and uncle and left Sarah and Detlef's house and went into Arnhem, it's a small town near the the border with Germany. I basically got off the train and got kinda lost finding the train I needed to get on. Got on the right train and made it to the biggest landmark near my Youth hostel, a hospital and it was pretty easy to get to the hostel from there. Unfortunately it was 2ish and I only really had one thing planned and it required a full day so I ended up watching videos and reading at the hostel then going to bed early.
Also the StayOkay Hostels which tend to be the main hostels you find around the Netherlands are kind of bland and they don't really have anything super nice going on especially in the bedroom areas.

Going Biking-Day 4
So I got up around 8:30 and ate a nice breakfast (included in the hostels price) and by 9:30 I was out the door going to De Hoge VeLuwe National Park, basically its a really nice park where you pay 7 Euros or 14 for the park and museum. They had white bikes you could use for free so I grabbed one and biked for a few hours then went into the museum with a ton of cool paintings. They had a lot of Van Gogh's they said around 300. It was pretty amazing, they had two long halls of just Van Gogh's. I had a nice cup of hot chocolate and a piece of cake. Then I went back out and biked around for about another hour. Also I got lost both on the way to the park and on the way back. Since this was really the only thing I had to do around Arnhem I plan on moving on to Rotterdam next and then onto Amsterdam on either Saturday evening or more likely Sunday morning.

Also I am working on uploading photos right now so please bear with me, you should be able to see my 400ish photos soon

Thank Yous
So the whole Germany thing was really cool, I really need to send a BIG thank you to Sarah and Detlef for letting me stay in there house for so long, it was really enjoyable and they had a lovely house.
Also thank you to my aunt Carol and uncle Mike since they paid for me for the last week.

Guided Tours

So I missed a day or two so this blog is going to encompas two days of things.

Day 1
I started the day at my aunts friend sarahs house, she and her husband were kind enough to give us a tour of a somewhat nearby open air museum. The museum was of old houses and buildings from 1600-1800 that had been scheduled for demolition. This group had methodically taken apart the buildings and then transported them to the museum. Then they rebuilt the houses and whatnot at the museum and researched the history of the buildings before putting that history on little plaquerds in front of all the buildings. My favourite was either the windmill they had, the water mill for grinding grains (still fully functional too) or the old bakery they had.
After this we went out to a church, it was one of the oldest churches in the area, it was built around like 1200 or something. The church looked really cool, after exploring the church we went around the town looking in at some shops and walking around the small river in town. After that we went back to the house on the autobahn, we got up 220 kph.

Day 2
Me, my aunt and Sarah all hopped on a train together and went down to cologne to see the church in cologne. The church was really impressive with a ton of stained glass windows and a lot of reliquarys After the church we wandered down through the town looking for a set of ruins which when we found them were not very interesting. So we wandered down to the Rhine river where we walked along the banks until we found the chocolate museum. Sarah decided to stay out since she had already seen the museum so me and my aunt explored the chocolate museum for around 2 hours. At the end of the museum I finally bought my first beer in Germany. It was a chocolate beer that they sold at the gift shop. AFter meeting back up with Sarah we went back onto the train and went halfway back to Sarah's house where we stopped at Düsseldorf. WE had intended to go find and art exhibit in Düsseldorf but it turned out to be closed so we spent a good hour maybe more just wandering the town before return home.

Frankfurt

So last night I fell asleep like 6 maybe seven and I slept 12 hours round to 6 or seven in the morning. We had breakfast at the hostel which served a buffet style breakfast with fruit, meat, cheese, cereal, and drinks. The breakfast was actually better then I expected and after wards we went to a museum about the Jews that lived in Frankfurt, from the middle ages through the present with most of the stuff concentrated in the 1800-1900. It was pretty cool, they had lots of old documents, a couple Torahs and a ton of old menorahs including the place they came from, what they were made of and how old they were. The whole museum was in German so we had to read these booklets that had anywhere from a room to five rooms of information filling them and then we would go through the exhibit and see the pictures and what not. After that we went back and grabbed our bags we left at the hostel and went and got a train to Düsseldorf along with some sandwiches for lunch. After the train we arrived at carolyns(my aunt) friend's home where we were greeted by her son. After meeting with the son we went out to a nearby cafe and had coffee and Ice cream, I had an ice cream that was vanilla Ice cream with whipped cream and butterscotch topping with butterscotch pieces and maraschino cherries. After the ice cream we went back to the house and got a tour of the house and got to meet carolyns friend and we sat down and had a nice chat.

Planes and Airports

So I had to get up at 5:30 this morning to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare so there would be no chance of missing the plane and being in a bad situation, anyway I got to the airport and I spend around 25 minutes just hanging with my mom having a coffee so she could have some final time with me before I left the country for 2 months. So eventually its time for me to go through security and right after I go through the security I immediately manage to read my ticket wrong and ended up at the wrong gate. I was at the complete wrong side of the airport and it was like 5 minutes till my plane started to board. I'm still not quite sure how I managed to get lost in my home airport but I still made it to the plane and got there right as they started boarding my section. The plane trip itself wasn't that bad, there were several babies, seemed like 6 months maybe a year but they were mostly quite for the flight and even when they did start to cry I had my Ipod so I just cranked on some music and drowned them out. Flight didn't seem too long, I slept for maybe an hour and mostly just listened to music but I also read maybe 35 pages of my first book for the trip, Shantaram. So far I'm enjoying it, my mom suggested the book to me and its like 950 pages so it should keep me occupied for awhile. I have a 2 hour layover at Dulles so I'm just kicking it near my gate, might grab a bite to eat and I will write more when I get to Frankfurt.

P.S. I really could tell I was at the right gate since a lot of the people really look like mad German.

Mackenzie

Part 2: Frankfurt Airport

well I made it too the airport, my flight managed to get in like super early (I'm not sure about the actual numbers but I think it was like an hour early). Anyway my Aunt was supposed to meet me at the gate when I arrived but my plane beat hers in so I had to figure out her arrival time an now I'm waiting for like an hour until her flight gets a gate assigned, anyway figured it was a good time to blog about the plane trip. The overall trip was good except I fell asleep and no one woke me up for the meal service so I missed that, thankfully I had a ham and cheese sandwich in my bag so I ate that instead. The plane seemed to take forever (the planned time was around 8 hours I think), made me really think about how long a direct flight from Portland would have been (I think around 12 hours). Also the difference between economy, business and first class was huge, the dudes in first class had like giant bed like seats with tvs and remotes and all sort of goodies and I barely had room for my feet. They decided to put the electronics for the tvs under the window seats, they were packed inside of metal boxes that took up half of my foot space so plus my carry on I had almost no space, I had to put it next to my feet instead of underneath the seat in front so I could stretch a little.

Overall the flight was okay though, nice and quite, we arrived early and I was actually able to sleep.

Mackenzie

Part 3: Frankfurt

So me and my aunt had planed to meet at gates but as I said my plane got in early and I could not find the gate so I spent 2 hours moving around the various exits to the airport trying to find my aunt. After that I went onto plan B. I hopped on the train to Frankfurt, unfortunately I got on the train headed in the wrong direction and only realized after 3 stops. I had to hop out and immediately shift to a train going the back the other way. I eventually found my way into Frankfurt and was going to stay at a youth hostel, turns out there pretty hard to find without directions so I ended up wandering around Frankfurt for a good 45 minutes before finding a cyber cafe and finally being able to both email my aunt who said we would meet at a youth hostel and also get good directions to the youth hostel and thats pretty much what happened. We also ate a really good dinner at a restaurant near the hostel that served traditional Frankfurt food

Mackenzie