Reasonably Logical

Yeah, its been a couple of days since I’ve been able to update this blog. Sorry! I tried posting from an internet cafe in Germany, but they use a different keyboard layout. Made it very difficult to type at a decent speed. I’m in London now and am heading up to Scotland today. Unfortunately, I’m having to head home earlier than expected. (Move complications) I’ll be going home on the 29th versus the 1st like I expected. Oh well. Honestly, I’m about ready to go home anyways.

Now for a rough outline of what I’ve been up to.

Monday
- Met Evan (the guy I met in Paris) for boat cruise around Amsterdam. I had to catch up with him, which took a while. We went to Anne Frank’s House and eat lunch in that area. After that, we walked over to the Red Light district where I gave him a summary of my tour the previous night.
- Went on a pub crawl some guys from the hostel had told me about. Had fun, but honestly it ran a little long for me. And would you believe they won’t give tap water here? I had to pay for my water. (I always drink a lot of water when I’m out drinking. It keeps me a lot more sober and makes the next morning a lot more fun.) I made it back to the hostel at about 2am. Had a really interesting conversation with this dutch guy on the way back. He was a *lot* more drunk than I was, but seemed to think I needed help getting back. (I didn’t.) Rather amusing actually.

To be continued … (Have to go throw my laundry in the dryer)

— London, 9:02 local time

I’ve got a long post coming up, but since I’m currently typing on a European keyboard with all the keys in the wrong place it’ll be waiting a day of two. Typing on this thing is hard!

— Freiburg, Germany, 6:55 pm local time

Just been offline for a couple of days. Well, this post is going to have to be briefer than the last couple. I don’t have a day to kill writing. So an outline it is.

Thursday (after previous post)
- Went to Eiffel Tower. Tried waiting for it to be dark before going up, but they closed it. Met several internation high school students who showed me the quick way to the tower from the metro. The offical stop is not the right one. Had a nice dinner, but totally blew budget at place near tower.

Friday (6-15)
- Went to Luavre Musuem. Walked around for 6+ hours. Saw Mona Lisa. Spent a lot of time in Greek and Roman scuplture. (Statues of naked guys, what can I say?) Walked through the rest pretty fast. The place is bloody huge!
- Went to Napolean’s Arch of Victory. Also monument to unamed soldier (WW1). So so. Nothing that special.
- Went back to Eiffel Tower and actually went up this time. What a view. Very worth doing once, but I don’t think I’d ever do it again. VERY touristy. (What else would you expect?)

Saturday
- Went to Catacombs. Spoky, but cool. Mile of so walk underground through caverns with bones litterly stacked besides you. Thoughout, I kept flashing back to every horror movie I’ve ever seen. And asking, what do we do if the lights go out?
- Took train to Versialle Palace. (Or however you spell that.) Took the whole tour, but honestly, wasn’t that impressed by the building. The gardens on the other hand… WOW. Spent several hours in the gardens with a group of foriegn student travelers like myself. Amusingly enough, one of them went to the Naval Academy and knows a good friend of mine. (John) Small world aint it?
- Changed from hostel to a hotel in hopes of some privacy and a better place. Utter mistake. I would not wish the Rivoli Hotel on my worst enemy. Yuck!

Sunday
- Took train to Amsterdam transfering at Brussels. Met traveler (Evan) at Paris station and talked for a while. Also American and traveling. Nice guy. We’re probably going to do something today (Monday) in Amsterdam.
- Checked into hostel. Kind of crappy place, but its cheap. It’ll do for a couple days.
- Walked around for a while. Amsterdam is weird. I have never been to a place where the gay community is so intergrated. There are gay bars/cafes all over the city. Very visible and accepted too. Amsterdam is beautiful, though I don’t think I’d actually want to live here. One thing I don’t like is how many “coffeeshops” there are. I swear I’m gettting high just walking down the street. Mind you, I have no problem with other people partaking if that is their choice, but damn it I don’t want to!
- Took a walking tour of the red light district. 2 hours. Very interesting with lots of history and factoids about the sex industry here in Amsterdam.
- Got back to hostel late. Sat in downstairs cafe talking with other tourists for an hour or so. (Sam and Ried?) Nice guys and very good looking. They’re staying in a different room than I am. Crashed around 1am.

Monday
- Woke up around 7:40 am or so (well before my alarm) for some reason. Eat breakfast and then walked around for a while. Not really planning on doing much here, just want to relax some. Going to take a boat tour in a few minutes.

BTW, thanks for the comments!

— Amsterdam, 10:41 am local time

I’ve had a couple of folks ask why I was using a seperate email account for the trip, so I thought I’d answer here. For those who haven’t noticed, I’m using eurotrip@p..r..com rather than my usual philip@p..r..com.

There were two real reasons:

1. I need to be able to login from public terminals here and I didn’t want to have to change my password on the main account.
2. This way if the account gets hacked due to someone stealing my password, I don’t loose anything. (Everything is being copied and forwarded from my standard account. So worse comes to worse, I still have a copy.)

Well, after yesterday you’d think today would have had to have started off better right? Nope. I got up on time, paid for my room (I couldn’t last night since it was so late) and had breakfast. The problem came with my morning antibiotic. I must not have used enough water or something swallowing it. I burbed and got a mouthful of (very caustic) antibiotic (once out of the pill case) and stomach acid. Suffice to say that was _not_ pleasant. Thankfully, I had this happen once before, so at least I knew what was happening. After wasting an hour drinking anything and everything I could, I continued on with my morning.

First stop for the day was just wandering through some local streets. Entirely by accident, I stumbled across Notre-Dame and did the tour there. After that, I went back to the hostel, got my laundry and went to the laundry mat/internet cafe. (That’s where my earlier post came from.) After doing all my laundry, I walked to the Bastille Plaza (where the french revolution started with the storming of the Bastille prison.) There isn’t anything there anymore (it was dimolished by the mob), but still I was there! On the way over, I stopped in a sidewalk cafe and had a great lunch.

After that, I took the tube down to the Invalides (Nepolean’s Tomb) and the Rodin(sp) Musuem. Both were fairly interesting, but I won’t bore you with a listing of the exhibts. I didn’t finish up there until around 5:30, then I headed back to hostel, folded my clothes, relaxed for a few minutes and got ready to go back out. Next, I’m heading to the Eiffel tower and dinner.

As a sidenote, I’ve been really suprised how little difficulty I’m having getting around without knowing any french. A lot of people know (and are willing to speak) English which makes this a breeze compared to Japan. The only time I’ve had issues was trying to get a taxi last night. (And there I’m fairly sure they understood me just fine and didn’t want to leave the expensive/profitable area of the city.)

— Paris, 7:30 pm local time

Well, lets continue now. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah.

Anyways, after it finally stopped raining more-or-less I went back to the hostel, grabbed my stuff, and walked up to O’Conner St to catch the bus to the airport. (It was about a 15 minute walk.) On the bus to the airport (40 minutes), I went over some basic French. (And boy do I mean basic. My entire vocabulary is “Yes”, “No”, “Thank you” and “Hello”.) Once I got to the airport, I checked in with Ryan Air. Despite what I’d been warned, I had no problems with the weight of my bag and everything went very smoothly.

The actual travel was pretty uneventful. Left 40 minutes late, but no problem with imigration or luggage or anything. However, it turned out I had overlooked something. The flight went into a regional airport which was an hour away by bus from Paris. On arrival, I had 12 Euros to my name. The bus fair was 13. You can see the problem. Thankfully, there was an ATM nearby.

I finally made it into Paris at about 1:00am. Unfortunately, all the subways/buses stop running at 12:30. So I ended up having to get a taxi to take me to the approiate area of the city. (Have you ever tried getting a taxi at one in the morning, in an unfamiliar city, where you don’t speak the language, and have only the vagest idea where you’re going? Suffice to say it was quite the adventure.) When I finally made it to the Marias (the gay district of the city), I found a hostel and got a room for the night. By this point it was 2am. As you can imagine, all the travel problems did not make for a great end of the day.

So, to summarize, Wednesday morning/night sucked, the middle of the day was just fine.

Well, yesterday and this morning were _not_ fun. Before I get into that though, let me continue my evening from Tuesday. After writting my Tuesday post, I went back to my room and started talking with one of my roommates. We chatted for the entire evening and even though I had already eaten, I went with her to eat dinner. We talked about our travel experiences, and basically just had fun. I ended up not going out at all, but it was a very fun evening none-the-less.

The next morning was no fun at all. I had fallen asleep on my bed while talking with Alice, but I had not set my alarm. I woke up at 10:29am. Check out was 10:30. I went from sound asleep to downstairs checking out in less than 5 minutes. No shower or shave of course.

After dropping off my gear, I wandered around town. In the process I discovered the Irish Film Center Cafe I was looking for the day before. It must have moved; its now off Eustace Street. Very nice place. Since it was too early for lunch, I continued on acrosss the river to find out what time the airport buses ran. (A very nice wander by the way.) I got back to the cafe around 12:15 and had tea and lunch.

Unfortunately, by the time I finished lunch it had started raining. I spent most of the next 3 hours at the cafe drinking tea and reading guide books. I did wander over to the Photographic musuem on the same street during one of the dry spells. The exhibt wasn’t that interesting, but the books for sale were facinating. Unfortunately, I couldn’t buy any ’cause I’d have to carry them for the rest of the trip.

Err, I need to stop now. My laundry should be almost dry. Will continue with the rest of the saga latter.

— Paris, France, 12:36 local time

Well, after this morning’s post I wandered down to Trinity College with the intent of seeing the so called “Books of Kell”, some very early Christian manuscripts held there. Instead, I ended up joining a tour group that was doing a historical foot tour of the city. It was extremely facinating.

After the tour, I eat lunch at a local restruant. I tried finding one my guide recommended, but as best I can tell it doesn’t exist any more. Instead, I stopped a cafe and had a pretty decent lasagna.

After lunch, I jumped on a city bus tour that went around the entire city. It gave me a good overview of the city. I saw pretty much everything else I wanted to. I though about seeing a few more spots and musuems, but I think I’ll just skip them. I got off the bus at St. Stephen Green and lay down in the park for 1/2 an hour. After that, I walked through the shopping district and bought myself a local prepaid cell phone. I’ve been trying to find something similar for a few days and haven’t been able to.

For dinner, I went to O’Connor’s Pub and had an Irish Stew. Very good, if a tad expensive. I’m looking forward to getting out of Dublin because being here is utterly killing my budget.

As for leaving, I’m heading out tomorrow evening via air for Paris. I decided that was the best option overall. Maybe slightly more expensive, but it saved me time and wasn’t that much more. Not sure where I’m staying yet, but I have my flight reservations now.

— Dublin, 7:40 pm local time

Well, it turned out I didn’t make it to Dublin quite when I expected. I left London two days ago, but ended up having to stop in a small town in Wales to wait for the ferry. I could have taken the 2:30 am ferry, but I decided just to stay over and take the afternoon one. As it happened, I’m very glad I did.

I just loved Hollyhead. Its a small town of maybe ten thousand people which is set in some beautiful hills on the coast of Wales. I stayed at this lovely Bed & Breakfast (The Witchingham) just off the main street. I had a great dinner at the Harborview restruant(sp). I had baked salmon with a side of vegies (which was fantastic!) for under $20 usd. I would expect to pay 30-40 for the same quality meal back in the states. Yesterday morning, I got up, had breakfast at the B&B, and then spent 3 hours walking through town.

The town was just picture perfect. It was obviously pretty prosperous because everything was in great repair and there was maintance work taking place all over. I walked through streets lined with beautiful townhouses and then got out into single family homes and even small farms. I could have walked all the way to Hollyhead Mountian, but decided not to since I’d left my real hiking gear at the B&B. After that, I stopped for a drink and then wondered down another trail that led out by an old castle and onto the breakwater. Another beautiful walk, but this time through nature not town.

For lunch, I stopped at the Boathouse (which is right by the road I walked for the second part of my morning) and had a delicous Italian Salami sandwidch. I was pretty much the only person in the place, so I spent most my time talking with the barmaid about the town.

After that, I stopped in the Maritime musuem to kill a few minutes before going to pickup my luggage from the B&B. It was a fairly small musuem, so I hadn’t expected in to be that interesting, but it turned out to be quite facinating. It was all local history with the storied of ships that sank nearby and the lifeboats that attempted to rescue their crews. I’d recommend it to anyone who needs to kill 1/2 an hour.

After picking up my gear, I ran to the ferry dock to get on board. The actual ferryride was uneventful and very smooth. I spent the later half of the journey talking with a (very cute) Irish college student who was heading home to visit his family. (Have I mentioned that I find an Irish accent very hot?!)

On arrival in Dublin, I caught a bus to downtown and then walked to my hostel in Temple Bar (a region of Dublin). After checking in and dumping my gear, I eat dinner at a bar down the street. (Bergens or something) Wasn’t all that great, but it was cheaper than anything else I could find.

After dinner, I stopped in the Temple Bar. (The entire district was named after it.) I had a great time talking with a number of folks including some American and Austrian tourists. I stayed for about 3 1/2 hours.

I moved on to another gay bar later on, but this one was a bit better than the one in London. A much more friendly (and mixed) crowd. I’m pretty sure most people there thought I was the oblivious straight guy who’d wondered in (the bar wasn’t well marked), but hey I still had fun talking with folks. (This time two flatmates who live near Temple Bar.)

Finally, I stumpled back to my hostel at about midnight. Amusingly enough, I was the 3rd person back and the 3rd person up this morning. (Out of 6 total in the room.)

Well, now off to tour Dublin. Oh yeah, if you’re actually reading this could you post a comment? I’d like to see how many folks are following these posts.

— Dublin, 9:39 am local time

Well, in an effort to get some sleep for tomorrow, I’m going to bed somewhat earlier tonight. To facilitate this, I’ll only be mentioning the highlights of my day.

To start the day off I had to move my gear to another room (since I had extended my stay by one night.) After doing so, I went down to Westminister Abby. Very impressive. I wish pictures had been allowed. You don’t realise just how *big* the place is until you actually get inside. I especially liked the WW2 monument and token to Churchill. (For the monument, they buired an unidentified Brtish soldier with the kings to recognize all those who had died.)

After that, I went to see the practice for the Trooping of the Colours (a big ceremony with the queen and everything). I was running late and this was only the practice so the queen wasn’t actually there, but I do have some good pictures of the guard though. Didn’t get the actual changing of the guard though. Have to do that before I fly out.

Following lunch (and a conversation with a native Brit by the name of Tom), I walked down through Hyde Park. It was about a two mile walk, so I took my time and rested periodically. (I’m still really worn out and sore from the last two days.)

Around 3:30, I went down to St. Pauls to make sure I had plenty of time to see it. Well, I’d guess there is someone up there who doesn’t want to let me in. They closed at 4pm,. right as I got there. Two days in a row now!

Finally, I went offer to the rail station to find out about tomorrow. Glad I did because I need to go to a different station and everything. After that, I came back to the hotel and crashed for a hour or so. (Relax, plan, etc…)

For dinner, I went to Soho. I’d planned on eating at a gay pub, but it turned out they didn’t serve food. Instead I eat at this decent but not great italian place and then went back to the pub for an after dinner drink. Honestly, I think I should have just stayed home and eaten something close to the hotel. (It took me almost 30 minutes to get there due to some subway closures.)

Well, that ended up not being quite as short as I intended. Oh well. Good night. I’m going to bed so I can get up in the morning.

— London, 9:55 pm local time