A year ago this week we moved to London.

As they say, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

We went to (the) Vatican City on Monday, April 23. Despite getting there around 9AM, the line to get in was still all the way around St. Peter's Square. It moved surprisingly quickly, and we eventually figured out why. First of all, there is no entrance fee to the basilica or to the papal tombs, so there's no lag there. But the big reason was the security. All though there were several guards and metal detectors and x-ray machines... pretty much whatever you had with you was okay. I immediately beeped going through the metal detectors and I was told to move along. It was a strange trust that nothing would happen in the holiest of holies... despite the fact that they had the metal detectors there in the first place. It's kind of like the bulletproof Pope-mobile. Nothing is going to happen, but just in case.



When we finally made it inside the world's largest basilica and the Mecca of Catholicism, I couldn't help but feel blasé about the whole thing. It was definitely impressive but after our year long tour of Europe's greatest cathedrals and basilicas, it's hard to get excited about a 25% bigger, 30% golder, and 50% more marbley church. My favorite part of the interior was Michelangelo's "Pieta." But it is now standing 20 feet back behind bulletproof glass after some nutjob tried to go at it with a hammer a few years back. Even in its protective cage it was still one of the most impressive sculptures I have ever seen.





After getting a tour of the basilica, we exited and did the walkthrough of the tombs. This was not all that exciting given our combined lack of knowledge about previous Popes, but John Paul II's was there and it was intriguing to see the followers surrounding it and praying. Maybe he'll get canonized after all. Then we left St. Peter's and walked down the street (stopping along the way for some 6 euro sandwiches with 4 euro Cokes) to the Vatican Museums. Even though this is one of the largest museums and collections of art work and artifacts in the world, most people visit these museums for one reason and one reason alone: The Sistine Chapel. This is made abundantly clear by all of the signs pointing you from the Entrance to the Exit, where the Sistine Chapel is located. I find it kind of cheap and demeaning of everything else that is there, but at the same time it does seem to take at least an hour just to walk straight through to the chapel, so I can understand it, too. We probably took the medium length tour, going in most of the rooms but not lingering anywhere for very long. Still took a good 4 hours or so, not including the 2 hours in line around the block, down the street, around another block, etc.




Finally, the Sistine Chapel. It was one of those things where it was great to have seen, but the general experience was dampened by the circumstances. The room was packed full of people, the security guards were constantly yelling at people to stop using flash photography, to stop talking, to stop sitting on the ground. I found it to be much more impressive in person than in close up photographs, despite the fact that it was straight up and a 100 feet away. You get to appreciate the work it took when your neck starts hurting after minutes of looking at it.



After that we got ripped off on another Roman dining experience: two plates of pasta and some water comes out to be almost 30 euro after taxes, cover charges, mandatory tip, patio charge, tourist charge, just for fun fee. And then we spent the last night in Rome in our hostel. The next morning, bright and early as usual, we went to catch a train back up the western coast for Pisa. This was only to be a lunch stop after we were told by numerous people that it took some imagination to make a trip to Pisa last more than 2 hours. And everyone was right. It was good to see the Leaning Tower, and the accompanying church and baptistery, but that is pretty much it. We had some pizza, walked through the tower square, then made our way back to the train station, and caught a 14:12 train to our next destination.



-BCV

Well. It's been a bit delayed around here. We've been back and forth between family and friends, between Louisville and Lexington, between decent health and illness. But I'm going to try to finish this Italy section of the journal as soon as possible. I'll continue on for this bit with Rome.

We left early on Saturday morning from Certaldo and caught the train back to Florence. From there it was possible to catch the Eurostar train that is supposed to be high-speed direct to Rome. It did only take 1.5 hours instead of the possible 3 for a different train, but I think that was more due to the 'direct' part and less due to the 'high-speed' bit. I was expecting one of those bullet trains, but that was not to be. Anyway, we got there sometime mid-morning. We were braced with this hyper-reality that Rome was over run with sneaky and genius mastermind pickpockets that could swipe your wallet without you noticing, steal your lunch before you buy it or take your childhood memories right out of your brain and make them their own. Everyone that we had met along the way said to beware of the crazy Roman thieves. So for a while we were scared straight and walked around with our pockets empty and our backpacks on our fronts. This all changed after we didn't even get a wayward glance from any hoodies the entire time. I felt slighted. Didn't we look good enough to steal from?

Colosseum




We found the hostel, which was more like some people's apartment with a ton of bunk beds in it, and started out our sight seeing in Rome. We hit up the Colosseo first as it was just down the road from our accommodation. We followed this up with the Roman forums and ruins that are pretty much in the same area. It was here that we first witnessed what would be Rome's biggest fault to us: the street buskers. That phrase doesn't really even encompass what they were. Ranging from the Indian guys shoving cheap toys or flowers in your face at Trevi fountain, to the Africans hounding you to buy stolen Prada purses at the Vatican, or these people dressed up like Roman soldiers around the Colosseum. Their trick was to goad foreigners into posing for photos with them, oh it'll be so great to get your photo with a gladiator in front of some ruins, and then, after the fact, ask for some ridiculous amount of compensation like 10 Euro per photo. It could be argued that you could just not pay them, but that's hard to back up when there's a big gladiator holding a (fake) sword while towering over a group of tiny Asian women demanding money. It's not cool and it happened all the time. That was one of two big beefs we had with the city and now I'm moving on.

Trevi Fountain

Statuary



My memory is starting to slip me on this already. Let's see... After this we walked around a lot more, saw the Trevi Fountain for the first time, and decided to sit down to a nice meal. It seemed like everything was going to be expensive anyway, we might as well go for something good and do the real Italian dining experience. The place was called Il Chianti and it was nice. Our antipasta was a plate of thinly sliced wild boar loin with some sort of fruit jelly and bread. Our first course was a three meat ravioli, and our second course was a plate of hare with a salad. It was all tasty. After this 3 our experience we made our way to sleeptown.

Pantheon


The second day was filled with more wondering around, seeing the Pantheon, several churches, statues, etc. We stopped in a coffee bar or two. We saw the outside of the Vatican City but it was Sunday evening by the time we made it there so needless to say the inside was postponed until Monday. I'll just post some more photos for now and try to finish up this whole thing in due time.

Statuary

Day 3, We leave Florence bright and early to catch a train to Certaldo. The train is late. This will be the norm. But this train ride is only about an hour so it doesn't affect our day too much. Certaldo is a small town located in Tuscany, somewhere in the middle of the triangle created by Florence, Pisa, and Siena. There's not much there, which is why we wanted to go. Just countryside and maybe some wine tasting and relaxing, we thought. The directions for finding our booked accommodation were as follows: "Leave the train station and take a right. Walk about 1.5 km, through the big intersection. We're on the left behind the trees up on the hill." Needless to say, we didn't bring our odometer with us and there are a lot of hills and trees in Tuscany. But we found it eventually.

Driveway



The Villa


The place we stayed at was formerly a convent of Benedictine monks. Being the kind of cross roads that it is, these monks let pilgrims that were passing through rest here for the night. After the convent, the site became home to a family farm that produced wine and olive oil. About 10 years ago this family reopened the villa as a guest house for travelers. And it is now a wicked place to stay. They have a couple of ancient dogs that mostly played dead all day long, and some cats that seemed to follow me everywhere I went. We shared a room with a couple from New Jersey, and down the hall there was a girl from Germany. For the first couple of days no one else was really in the place at all.

We made our way down to the local shop back in town to find some food for lunch and dinner. With a little bit of Italian and a lot of sign language, we managed to buy some food including the fillings of the best salami sandwiches that I've ever had. After returning back to our then current residence, we logged some quality time of R&R. We read in a hammock and, at least I, promptly fell asleep. After living in London for so long and mostly visiting other European cities or going with tour groups to the places we ventured to, this was truly the most peaceful place and time we had been to in a long, long, long time.



The next day we went horseback riding in the morning. Or as I would later call it, "almost dying." No, no, it was fun. My horse just threw me into some olive trees. Twice. But we went all through the countryside, through some olive tree orchards, through some vineyards, hills, streams, etc. Our instructor spoke next to no english, so taught me how to ride an English saddle with mostly sign language. But I learned more from those instructions than I had riding ever before.



The same morning we attempted to go to Siena but after missing a train (the platform displayed on the monitor turned out to be wrong) and then seeing that the next train was delayed by an hour, we decided to skip it. More food and ice cream replaced Siena. It wasn't a bad trade. After that we went to a cooking class. An Italian lady, again little English, taught us how to make some tomato bruschetta, artichoke risotto, and tiramisu. We went through a bunch of bottles of her homemade wine in the process and burned through over 3 hours cooking and eating and hanging out. After the lesson we stayed up a while with Anita (from Germany) and this older couple from Phoenix. More wine. More cheese. More stories. Emails exchanged and all of that.

I like cooking!



So does Anita!



Robin with Chef Giuseppina



The next morning we slowly made our way up and out to catch the train to Rome. I'll start writing about that soon. -bcv

So, here we are.

On Friday the 13th, Robin and I punched in and out of our respective jobs for the final time. In my case that meant that we went to a 3 hour lunch at the Easton Pub, and then I went home early because I no longer had a single piece of work to do. That night we went out to SoHo and had a going away dinner for Robin with her work mates. After several good byes and hugs and email exchanges we made it back to our apartment. The weekend was spent shoving our lives back into our Army-issue duffel bags and cleaning our flat. We learned on the Monday at our official checkout that our cleaning was not up to professional standards, as there was dust inside the dresser drawers. Whatever. We eventually got our deposit back.

Monday afternoon we finished tying up loose ends and made our way to Gatwick Airport. From there we flew out of London and down to Venice to start our whirlwind Italy tour. It was dark, and late by the time we touched down in Italy, so the first night was just spent trying to locate our hostel in the dark on the mainland just outside the city, in Mestre. In the morning we got the bus again and made our way into the city proper. Our day began with a water bus from the north all the way down the Grand Canal to San Marco square.

View from the waterbus




Piazza di San Marco




After venturing inside the cathedral and wandering around the square we wandered around to some different art museums. After a couple of hours of nothing but Italian Catholic art... whew... we continued to wander, this time aimlessly, through the back alleys and sidewalks. It is fairly futile to plan to go somewhere, as the streets are difficult to decipher and the maps do not really explain which streets dead end into a canal and where the bridges are that cross these canals. But our first gelati helped to ease the confusion. If I could pay to have that Nutella flavored ice cream imported from Venice, I would. Anyway, we napped on a gondola dock, we had some pannini, and we shopped for carnival masks.

Carnival




Gondole




Spaghetti and maccheroni were had for dinner with our first Italian wine in Italy. It was a very relaxing time in Venice, with probably the best weather we would see for the whole trip. At the train station that evening we went to buy our Eurail Italy passes. I had been researching these passes for about 3 months, and after having the price and the details confirmed even by Tren Italia representatives over the phone, we were sure we knew what we wanted. It was only then, at the train station, that we discovered that those passes had been discontinued. As of the previous week. But it worked out for the best because we got the attendant to sell us the European-resident passes instead. Which was good because the next morning we were off to Florence...

Florence/Firenze




David




Florence was our second shortest stop on the trip; we were only there for part of a day, after the train ride in the morning. We went to the Galleria d'Accademia to see David. There wasn't much else in that gallery. We also went down to see the Duomo and went inside. It was alarming at how empty it was. I think it was probably the first cathedral (of many, many cathedrals) that we've visited that had no seats, no choir stalls, no anything. The dome was, of course, being cleaned which meant that half of it was covered with scaffolding. But that's okay.

We had more ice cream, more pizza, more pannini. This will be a reoccurring theme. We went to the Palazzo Vecchio and saw the several statues out front and sandwiched between it and the Uffizi gallery. These statues included the one of Perseus with Medusa below. We climbed a bit up to a look out across from the River Arno to catch the sights, and take the above photo. Here there is a replica of David in bronze, and several vendors selling overpriced drinks and souvenirs. It was a nice vantage point at dusk, however.

Perseus




Duomo Clock Tower




As a whole I don't think either of us were that impressed with Florence. I blame this on our exhaustion from the day before... but also on Florence. We couldn't even go to the Uffizi gallery because they said the wait would be 3 hours, despite the fact that we went 30 minutes before it opened and there were only maybe 50 people in front of us. That is, unless we bought the special tickets for more than twice the price, and then the wait time would be 2 hours. Right. The city just seemed more dirty than rustic, and much more packed together than most of the places we had been before that. And the gelato was just not quite as good.

More Italy coming soon. If you couldn't tell, we're back in KY. And if we haven't seen you yet, we hope to soon.

-BCV

We went on a 4 day trip to Amsterdam with the BUNAC people. Starting bright and early on Friday morning we coached it down to the coast and caught a ferry to Calais, France. After a couple of more hours on the bus we stopped in Brussels for the afternoon. It was during this time that we learned about Belgium's ATMs and how they don't accept British bank card. This is also where we learned that most places in Brussles don't accept credit cards. Fast food it is then. We left Brussels and made our way to Amsterdam by early Friday evening. We checked into our accomodations that we assumed would be a building but that in reality was a barge on a canal. It turned out to be pretty good; just a Dutch couple that owns a "boatel" that had about 30 2-person rooms. And they made breakfast for us every morning.

Yada yada yada, we spent the next few days in Amsterdam. With the tour we went on a canal boat tour and we also went to visit a cheese and clog makers. We had a lot of free time to explore the city away from our group. We went to the Van Gogh museum and had some pancakes (pankooken?). The most interesting section of the city has a strict no-camera policy that we saw enforced a few times by big bouncer dudes. You don't want to mess with a 300 pound guy when you are standing next to a canal. All in all it is a very beautiful city with what seems to be 10 times as many bikes as people. I've never seen anything like it.

Amsterdam sign



Windmill



Bikes



Clogs



Our Hostel/Barge



Us In Brussels



Un Canal







This may be my last update before we are back in the states. I don't think we're going to have a lot of computer access during our time in Italy, and if we do I doubt we'll have the energy. So it looks like I'll be giving a big wrap up when I'm back in Kentucky. It's hard to believe that this journal and trip is coming to an end. I guess even when we return I'll try to keep using it for all our travels and adventures, not just the European ones. I guess it was an unfortunate name to the journal in hindsight...

If I don't talk to anyone before then... See you soon.

-BCV

Tower Guard



Tower Raven



Tower Armoury. Or... Bad Lion!



Crown Jewels. No Cameras!



The Horse Room, or something like that...



Knight's Armour




-bcv

Giraffe.



Zebra.



Monkey.



Sweet African Hunting Dogs



Pile of Meerkats.



Gorilla.



Squirrel in the warthog pen, eating a coconut.

We’re really counting down the days now… After today there are only 6 more days at our respective jobs, 12 more days before we move out of our flat and head down to Italy, and less than 30 days before we’re back in Kentucky. It’s hard to articulate the passage of time in a normal situation, but it’s especially difficult now. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been gone forever, been gone for decades, been gone for our whole lives. And other times, like writing this now, it seems like we just arrived in Europe. It was supposed to be such a long trip, and it’s already just about over. That must mean it’s been just a small amount of time. I still refer to the things that happened in June-August 2005 as “last summer.” I have to remind myself that I’m 23 because my birthday came and went while over here. Coming back to college graduations of a lot of my friends won’t help the space-time confusion, especially when some of those people are the same age as me. And coming back at virtually the same time of year as we left, won’t help my head. Anyway, the count is on.

We’ve spent the past couple of weekends finally getting some of our London tourist activities in. We went to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, and the London Zoo. There are some photos from all of these, but I’ve been too busy at work to deal with the photos right now. Training my replacement is taking up all of my day. It’s like I have a real job or something.

So we should have a fun 4 day Easter weekend, post some photos of that next week, and then make some last-minute comments before checking out and heading to Italia. I doubt that we’ll be updating much from there, but a full wrap-up should follow when we get back to Louisville.

I’ll write more when I can,
BCV.

I share this for two reasons:
1) Awesome
2) You'll notice that this is the longest/tallest escalator in (Western) Europe. This is significant because this is the station that I 'alight' for work; Angel Station. Why is that significant? Well, because the damn thing breaks down at least once a week and I get the pleasure of walking up the 9+ stories of stairs.

"An escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. You would never see an "Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order" sign, just "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience." -Mitch Hedberg

-BCV

A couple of weeks ago there was a double protest against renewing the Trident nuclear program here in Britain and against the Iraq war. The fact that you have to combine to protests just to get people out is one of many things I found funny about this demonstration. We didn't come out to attend this protest. Fact is, we went to the National Gallery to see the Manet to Picasso exhibit. But the National Gallery is one fourth of Trafalgar Square, which is where everything is held here. The Russian Festival, St. Patrick's Day festivals, Chinese New Year's... Everything. So we walked through the protest and, at least, I was pretty amused/disgusted.

Our first sight: Children cheering for a free Palestine. Wow. I wonder what education these grade schoolers have to know what Palestine is, let alone why it should be 'Free.' These parents should be loaded onto a rocket and shot into the sun.



Hippies' clothes are hilarious.



We'll just save this up for the Anti-Pollution rally next week.



Oh My! An Anti-Consumerism t-shirt sale! Only £5!!!



The crowds:




Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protesting. And living in this country there are a million things to protest against (green taxes, mandatory polical correctness, Celebrity Big Brother). But there are correct ways to do it. It felt like people were out and about just to protest, and to protest anything related to war or the Middle East. There's no focus. And when you have people selling merchandise at your anti-establishment rally you lose some serious credibility as well. (People selling 'food': A big blue cooler filled with some sort of rice thing) It just makes your argument look bad when you have 5 year-olds arguing it for you.

Short video. You get the gist.

-bcv

It's snowing.

Okay. I lied. I'm skipping the Scotland updates, at least for now. Basically on the last day we saw Loch Ness in it's entirety (all 800 trillion gallons) and then went through Inverness. We saw the Culloden battlefield, which Robin might write about? And we saw the Clava Cairns stone circles, another set of stones that were older than Stone Henge. The rest of the day was spent in the rain in the bus on the way back to Edinburgh. We also got yelled at by some girls for "stealing seats" on the bus. It was amusing for all involved except them. You should check out the rest of the Scotland photos at the new and improved zoto site: http://www.zoto.com/eurotrippin/ With photo albums and pink text and better navigation and cool stuff.

This past weekend we went on a day tour with BUNAC to Avebury Circle, Lacock Abbey, and Salisbury. The first is a very large stone circle, again likened to Stone Henge. The second is a small abbey in a small town that was basically used for a lot of movies (Harry Potter, Jane Austen, etc.) If it weren't for those reminders everywhere, it was a really nice place. Tiny town with people selling stuff from their front doors (Notes saying: Please put money in the mail slot for our goods). And a bakery with some good carrot cake. And finally we went to Salisbury, a slightly bigger town that's near Stone Henge. Most famous for it's cathedral that houses Britain's tallest spire and oldest working clock. I know!

Short and sweet since I'm having less time for writing. I'm currently working on finding my replacement at work and sorting out things before we have to move out next month. Here are some photos... Maybe more next week. Depends on if my bracket improves or not.


The Circle




Lacock Abbey




Room in abbey's brewery




Lacock Church




Bakery




Salisbury Cathedral monument




Salisbury Cathedral




-bcv

Saturday morning we set out bright and early (although we left a little later than scheduled due to Martin the guide oversleeping). We made our way from the foot of Loch Ness towards the Isle of Skye, an island off the northwest coast. One of our first stops was Eilann Dolin Castle, the famous castle from movies and previous livejournal posts.





Hop, skip, jump… and then we were on Skye. We drove through a lot of area that seemed so similar to Arizona, except for the slight difference that there was water every where. Everywhere. One of our first stops was at the River of Eternal Beauty (can’t remember the real name, gah!). The story goes that two rival clans lived on opposite side of the river, and they were finally going to be at peace when a man from one clan was to marry a woman from the other. But as she was fording the river (Oregon trail style) her cart collapsed and she smashed her face open on a rock and became deformed and wretchedly ugly. When the husband-to-be saw her he thought the woman’s clan was trying to send a message, so he replied. He mutilated the face of her brother, and her horse, and her puppy dog. That’ll tell em. So she goes to seek the help of a witch who tells her to look into the river for answers, and when she does the witch shoves her face in. Voila! She’s beautiful again! And this time she’s beautiful forever. I don’t remember if she went back with the puppy-mutilator or not… But then we all put our faces in the icy cold river. No photos for proof because we were taking video instead, but we promise we did. We’ll have the video when we come back.




So we drove on from there up along the coast of the island and saw some sheep.





Another great Scottish story involved the rock formation below. There was once a Scottish couple who used to go up into the mountains for hiking, and they came across a group of fairies. The fairies really liked the couple, and the couple thought the fairies were okay. Not great, but kind of fun to hang out with if you were in the mountains by yourself for an extended amount of time. Well this continued for many years until the couple got very old. They got tired of hiking the same mountain and their Scottish arthritis was acting up real bad. So they tried to tell the fairies that this was the last time they would see them up in the mountains. The fairies were none too pleased. They tried to convince the couple to stay, but their pleads fell on deaf ears. This left the fairies only one option: Turn the old people into stone and stick them on the mountain. And then later, the woman crumbled but the guy is still there. The end.



After this we went to this cliff and got some nice photos.



We got some fish and chips in a little town and drove aorund the island for the rest of the day. Back at the hostel we watched Highlander (there can be only blah blah blah). Also, there was a lunar eclipse that we watched for a while outside with the rest of the group before we got tired of their singing (there was also karaoke at the hostel that night). Then off to bed.

I need to speed this up because I still have Sunday of the Scotland trip to get to plus this past weekend in Salisbury. The good news is that it looks like Zotos is finally coming around. All of the old photos are now back on Zoto, but the links are still mostly dead on here. Hopefully they will be fixing that soon so I don’t have to go back and reconfigure a year’s worth of journal entries.
Til then... – 3<V

Martin, one of our two tour guides/bus drivers, started the 3 day tour jokingly describing the high street of Edinburgh, “And to your left there’s a Vodaphone shop, and an O2 shop, and a Carphone Warehouse. Just in case you need to buy any mobile phones while staying here in the city. And to your left, there’s another Vodaphone shop.” Thus began my limited views and thoughts of the city. After having not slept the night before and only finding breakfast in the form of an almond croissant care of Starbucks, my opinion may have been slightly skewed. But apart from the castle perched high on the hill in the center of the city, there didn’t seem to be much offered by the capital. But it wasn’t long before we were clear of the city limits.

After preliminary warm-up tour talks, and get-to-know-your-fellow-adventurers games that harkened back to middle school orientations, we were out in the country side. The lowlands of Scotland are fairly non-descript, with farms and “cloud-factory” smoke stacks in abundance. Indiana springs to mind. But slowly, surely, the landscape improves and the industrialization subsides. Our first official stop was at the William Wallace monument near Stirling. Although the monument itself was built by Scots in the 19th century, a recent edition statue from 1999 resembles Mel Gibson more than anything. The shield even reads “Braveheart.” A cutting jibe from the tour guide at this point marks the beginning of the constant barrage of comments stemming from Scottish pride and aimed at non-Scots. The rest of the comments would be focused almost entirely on the English.






Driving away from this area there was another first of what would be a repeated phenomenon. The sun was gone, until we drove away and got a good view of the monument sitting on top of the hill, and then it came out in all of its glory. Too late for another stop, and too fast for a photo out the window. Oh well.

More jokes and more get-to-know-you tales were told on our way north. Gruesome stories of how Wallace was actually tortured and killed that didn’t make the Disney version that was Braveheart. The landscape slowly grew more and more rugged as the towns grew smaller and quainter. Eventually some smaller mountains emerged and our first loch was in sight.






Onward and upward. We eventually stopped at this river overlook just as the sun was making its 14th disappearance of the morning. There was an old bridge with the rushing waters flowing underneath, a small pub with smoke bellowing from the chimney top, and a nearby burial ground for a certain Scotch clan. Walking out onto the rocks in the river reminded me of the Smokey Mountains, as did the peak in the background. Only one person managed to fall into the water, and it wasn’t Robin or myself.







The area from here through the entrance to the Highlands and up to Loch Ness was all very similar. Vast expanses of rocky valleys containing nothing but grass, the occasional deer and the ever-present sheep, and water, water everywhere. On this journey staring out at the mountains (Bens) and the valleys (Glens) we were told yet another horrible and sad yarn of Scottish history: The massacre of Glencoe. Long story short, William of Orange wanted all Scottish clans to pledge allegiance to him as their new king. The inhabitants of Glencoe, mostly of the clan MacDonald, walked all over Scotland to find someone in power that was willing to accept their oath. Having given said oath (they thought) they returned home. Eventually Captain Robert Campbell and his men visited the MacDonald’s and stayed in their homes for a few nights. Then, one morning, they got word that these crazy MacDonald’s never pledged themselves to William and that they were to massacre the lot of them (all under 70 years old). And so that’s what they did and the MacDonald’s never woke up for their morning haggis. As the Scots would say at this point: They all lived happily ever after.






We eventually landed in our hostel near Loch Ness and had a walk around. We caught a clansman talk (I guess as close to a lecture as you can get) where a Scottish bloke taught us about the real kilt and the real Highland way of life and the real way that they used to mutilate English soldiers. It was highly informative and entertaining. There was a long moment of awkwardness when he asked for a male volunteer to put on the kilt. One of the San Jose State guys jumped up. “Okay, take off your trousers then.” “Haha, that’s a joke, right!” “No, not really, you can’t wear jeans and a kilt. You have on boxers right?” “Haha, this guy is playin’ around with me! Haha! … I can’t tell if he’s joking… But I’m not gonna…” “C’mon!” “But… Haha! Wait! Is he serious…?” “…” Awkwardness ensues for a good 10 minutes before Todd our Perth friend steps up and takes one for the team. Real kilts are cool.

Loch Ness at dusk





After the several stories and visual demonstrations of how to balance an Englishman's groin on your broadsword, we made our way back to the hostel. There was a singer in the bar that night that did some Scottish songs and some requests (which basically meant he played some Paul Simon and Van Morrison songs). It was nice and relaxing. The clansman guy from above showed up and brought his giant mangy Irish setter. And pints were had by all. We didn't last long into the night before heading back to the room and passing out from exhaustion, with two more days to go.

Tomorrow we are off for more English adventures but hopefully I’ll be adding the rest of the Scottish trip journaling next week. That depends on whether or not my boss comes to work next week, unlike this one…

-BCV

We kicked off March (our last full month abroad, AHH!) by going on a tour of Scotland. Its strange living abroad in hopes of traveling because, just like living back in Kentucky, your home base becomes a jumping off point and not a place of travel itself. We combated that some in Ireland by visiting New Grange and Galway, but we never did make it up to Northern Ireland. And here in Britain we haven't so much as been out of London other than to go down to Dover to take a ferry to France, and up to Oxford for a gig. But we decided to break out of that and head north, and then continue on with this idea by heading west this coming weekend.

Anyway, Thursday night after an Indian dinner with people from Robin's work we boarded an overnight bus headed for Edinburgh. Leaving at 23:00 and arriving at 7:30, it was the best option for us as far as missing the least amount of work. We had planned on getting some sleep on the bus but we ended up getting the last two seats, which meant aisle seats with strangers, on a bus with seats that seemed to be coated with Teflon; i.e. no sleep. It was a little rough, to put it mildly, but we arrived in the Scottish capital on time and ready to check in for our tour.

We loaded onto another bus, this one a lot more comfortable and a lot more yellow. As we rode out of the city and started to talk with the other tour-ees, we saw that we were on a bus that was almost entirely populated with American college students. Not cool. This included the "fashion major that was accepted to med school but decided she didn't really want to be a doctor but instead wanted to be a buyer for a department store." And the eighth-year senior from San Jose State. And the girl from California who couldn't say, like, one sentence, like, without using, like, the word 'like', like, 800 times. But there were some interesting people. We met a girl from San Francisco that used to spend a lot of time at the Marine Mammal Center in Marin. And her friend that was doing work abroad in London, but with a real job as a social worker. But far and away the coolest people we met were Todd and Marlaina, the Aussie couple from Perth. They were on week 5 of their six week tour of Europe and were a great pair to spend the weekend with. We started talking to them on Friday afternoon and then later found out that we were pre-arranged to share a room in the hostel with them for the weekend. The four of us shared traveling stories (and nightmares) and were equally wowed and appalled by the behaviour of a lot of the others on the trip. They are now down in London and we may see them again before they head on, but you never can have concrete plans with travelers. I hope they can make their last week a good one before they have to go back to their day jobs.

Anyway, the trip took us from Edinburgh, up through Stirling, Fort William, Glencoe, and Fort Augustus. On Saturday we traveled up to Skye and all around the island. And then on the third day we visited Loch Ness, Inverness, and on through some small towns to Perth and then back to Edinburgh. It was nice to see some nature for a change, as most of our travels are to big cities. The Highlands were not really what I had pictured, but far better. There were enormous mountain ranges, the obvious abundance of lochs, the ocean, rivers, animals, snow, and cliffs. There were a handful of castles on the trip including the most famous of Scotland, pictured below, Eilann Donan, which has been used in such films as Highlander!, The World is Not Enough, and my personal favourite, Entrapment.
I will try to write some more about the trip specifics later, but I just want to get this posted now. Our photo-hosting site Zoto has decided to upgrade to Pay-Only accounts as of this week, without previously notifying any of the users. That’s why all of the other photos on the journal are now missing. I’m looking into rectifying that situation, but for now these photos come from a back-up hosting site.

Eilann Donan Castle



Deers



Sheep



Motorcycling in the Mountains



Mountain and Bridge



Loch Ness



BEASTIE




All for now,
BCV

We are right in the middle of a very busy couple of weeks.

This coming weekend, we are taking a day off from work, a 9 hour bus ride, and a tour named after a particularly undesirable sausage to see the Highlands of Scotland. I am very excited about this trip as I've wanted to see Scotland for a long time. I am told it will be very cold, and I'm even prepared for it to be not as pretty as I was expecting since the leaves are not on the trees yet and the days here are very grey and dreary. In spite of this, I think it will be a lot of fun. I would rather be going in these conditions than not at all, and believe it or not, this was about the only weekend we could squeeze it in before we leave.
How time flies...
Last weekend we went to the National Gallery and added to our list of famous artworks seen. I kind of surprised myself the other day thinking about how many masterpieces we've stood in front of on this trip. Sunday we hoped a bus to Oxford. The Hold Steady was giving a show - one of the few in Britain which wasn't sold out. We walked around the university briefly. The bells were tolling for Sunday mass and the streets were almost empty. After a little Thai, we found our way to the venue (which was surprising similar to the Dame) and enjoyed the show. It would take way too much time to try to describe how it was, so I'll just say that we both had a lot of fun and it was one of the better concerts for me. Getting home wasn't too much of a hassle either, 2:00am and very little inconvenience. 5 Stars and a happy Valentine's.
I'm going to try this new thing were I actually write in here. More to come soon.
-Robin

To the south of the city is Montjuic, a small mountain full of parks and site of the Olympic stadium. The stadium itself is pretty run down at this point, home now to a lower level professional football team. But the surrounding grounds are still a popular place to lounge around, even in February. With artificial waterways and fountains, large grass pitches to kick around the ball, and a giant looming pointy thing, it's an ideal place to spend an afternoon. I like this one:



Olympic Stadium surroundings on Montjuic



How did I take that?!?!



It's so sad to be in Barcelona



Gaudi strikes again.



Deciding on turtles or gerbils



Dog is decided on rabbits. La Rambla is full of florists and pet sellers. Pets being a broad term encompassing €800 turtles, giant roosters, gerbils, rabbits, and pigeons among other things. One night we passed the market again and saw two dogs (only one is really visible) set on this cage of rabbits. People waved their hands in front of their face: nothing. If a rabbit moved to fast the dogs would shift, but that was all. The kid was also staring, but I don't think for the same reasons.



Obligatory

Buildings, view from roof of La Pedrera.



Chimney pots on the roof.



Some more.



Us.



Etc.



Million Man Arch. We waited for almost an hour for this photograph. You'll notice that there aren't any people. This is why we waited. It was like these people were like playing a game with me, to see how many times a single person could stand in the way, and just as they begin to leave another person comes out of nowhere to assume their place in their in-my-way-ness.



Sagrada Familia. Look at that photographic transition. This is a big cathedral, started and worked on for 40-something years by Gaudi, the same guy that built the above apartment complex with the crazy roof. It's been under construction for more than 100 years and there are still 10 of the planned 18 steeples yet to be built.



Check out those guards. The statuary on this church is very modern and very interesting. I took photos of most of the work on the buidling but haven't put them on here yet. This is the central work directly above the door to this wing.



( Click for fish. )

-BCV