Memory Card screw-up:

Finally done with RA training so had time to try to get the pictures from our Euro Trip 05 posted.  Found out that for some reason the pictures cannot be retrieved onto the computer from the memory card.  I have to try and find someone with a memory card reader and see if that works, if not then hopefully someone will help me with getting the pictures with a recovery program.

--
oneninefive

Back in North America...

Sorry for the null in updates, but wanted to let you all know that I am back in North America... (I hope this is not great news for everyone)

I will be very busy for the next few days getting to see friends and of course, see my parents too, moving into my new place and getting ready for my job training as a resident advisor.

See all of you soon (and for those in Europe reading this, sure love Europe and promise I will be in Europe again in the future)!
--
oneninefive
http://oneninefive.blogspot.com

Day Seventy-Five

Day Seventy-Five - 08.08.05 - [London]

• TBA

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Seventy-Four - 07.08.05 - [London]
 

• Spent most of the day resting - had a small headache and our sleeping schedule was off by 5 hours so we slept for most of the day.

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Seventy-Three - 06.08.05 - [London]
 

• We spent our day mostly sleeping, doing laundry, filling Himel and his roommates in with our Europe experinces and being told about the bombings that happend while we were in Europe.
• I also learned a lot about cricket - Adam and Stephen were watching the match of Australia vs. England and as the game went on they explained what was going on and what happened, etc..
• At 18h30 we got ready and headed out to meet Himel at a bar near the church where the Deaf rave was happening and we had some drinks and headed to the rave.
• The church was packed with so many Deaf people, it was so dark and once you lost someone, it was literally impossible to find that person!  After a while, I got lost and could not find anyone I knew so after making three runs up the building, I gave up and decided that I was tired and looked for the bus that would take me back to Himel's place.  At the bus top where I was to transfer to another bus, luckyly I found Adam waiting for the bus too so we chatted and found that he also could not find anyone so he left, when I got back, Himel and FrecklesFly were not there so there was nothing we could so so we went to bed and woke up in the morning to find out that Himel and FrecklesFly came back, and they said they thought I was lost, and wondered how I got here, apparently Himel thought I was drunk, but apparently not because I knew how to get back!
• Overall, the rave was a good experince and it was interesting to go to a rave which I have never gone to before.

Amount Spent: TBA
--
oneninefive

Day Seventy-Two

Day Seventy-Two - 05.08.05 - [Dublin -> London]

• In the morning, I decided that I wanted to check out the Jameson Distillery so we went there at around 10 in the morning and found that they did not give any discounts, however they gave us a phamlet that explained every scene in the tour so we read the phamlet before taking the tour and told them we do not need to take the tour because we got all the information we wanted and left the distillery.
• We decided to walk along O'Connell Street to find souveniers and see if there were good things for gifts... Like usual, I never really find good gifts, everything looks too cheesy to give out.
• We went to our hostel, picked up our backpacks and decided to relax, but just as we were relaxed, I noticed that the time said 18:30, we thought it was 17:30 and planned to start getting to the airport at 18:00 and found out that it was indeed 18:30 so we hurried to find the bus stop, it took a while to wait for the bus and the bus was PACKED so it made it hard for us to move around and people were only allowed to exit the bus from the front door!
• After a long bus ride we got to the airport just 1 hour before our flight departed, we signed in and were disappointed to find out that there was no charge for excess baggage when there was from Brussels to Dublin!
• We got on the airplane and arrived in London approximately 45 minutes later, got off and found out that the airport we got to was way out of London so we had to take a train to the nearest tube station, then take a tube ride to the bus stop we needed to get to Himel's place.
• The train was expensive, but we used the train ticket to get on the tube and when we got off, we found out the ticket was not valid for the tube, however the tube workers let us get out for free and when we were looking for the bus we needed to catch, a nice friendly man tried to help us.
• FrecklesFly told him that we wanted bus 63 or 168 so he said the bus was that way and we kept on walking, walking, walking and walking until I realized something was not correct and finally forced the man to look at the bus map and told him we wanted that bus to get to that stop and he realized that he thought we wanted a house numbered 63 or 168 and apologized and took us back to the bus stop, paid for our fare and we finally got to Himel's at one in the morning!

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Seventy-One - 04.08.05 - [Dublin -> Drogheda -> Howth -> Dublin]

• We decided to take a day trip out of Dublin to two nearby towns, one north of Dublin, the other east of Dublin.
• The train ride to Drogheda was very expensive so we bought round trip tickets to Howth, but pretended we took the wrong train and got to Drogheda. :)
• Drogheda was an old town that used to be fortressed with a wall around it and two or three towers that overlooked the land around the town. All of what remained of the wall was the gatehouse and one tower, we took a tour in the tower and saw several hills where Cromwell laid seige against the town in 1610 and invaded the town on July 1st.
• We walked around town and looked in several shops before heading on the train to Howth.
• Lucky the train man checked our tickets and bought our story when we gestured that we went to the wrong place and wanted to get to Howth instead (they did not check tickets on the way to Drogheda).
• Upon our arrival in Howth, it started to rain and was very windy (the wind was expected because Howth is a coast town located right on a penisula edged with cliffs). We decided to get something to eat and the cheapest place we could find was an Indian resturant, but when we got inside it was obviously too fancy for us, but we still ate there by sharing one dish.
• After lunch, we walked along the coast for a while and it started to rain again and the winds were stronger so we decided that it was not worth walking any further and headed back to the train station, stopping for a few looks along the harbour.
• Got back on train and arrived in Dublin in time to go food shopping for stuff to have for dinner and stopped at internet cafe to check messages.
• Headed back to hostel, moved to our new room and had dinner, drank our 7.5% Guinness... It tasted strong, 4.2% defintely tastes better, but would say 5% Guinness in Canada tastes just correct!

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Seventy - 03.08.05 - [Dublin]

• Today, we decided to walk the walking route that Let's Go suggested, our first stop which was the beginning of the walk was at O'Mallory's pub where famous people, including JFK had drinks there.
• Since it was almost 11 in the morning, there were not many people there and we had enough money to buy one glass of Guinness, yes - our first taste of Irish Guinness was there. Tasted okay, kind of watery but good and while the barman was filling the glass, he warned us not to drink it, he filled it three-forth and let it sit for a while before continuing to fill it to get the correct amount of head.
• We headed to the Trinity College, where the book said the grass was supposed to be very green because people are banned from walking on the grass, we did not think the grass was green, but people are actually banned from walking on grass almost everywhere on campus!
• We headed towards a park (need to come back with the name of the park) where there was a statue of Oscar Wilde, the statue was interesting because it was painted, but looked like stone to me.
• We walked to another large park that used to be owned by the Guinness family and it was huge and had beautiful flowers and ponds with ducks swimming in it, it seemed like everyone in Dublin was there for their lunch break!
• Then we took a detour on our walking tour and walked through a small street that was lined up with market stands selling clothes and jewellery...
• We finally found the vegeterian resturant we wanted to try, it was very similar to the one we went to in Krakow, after eating, we started walking towards the Guinness Storehouse.
• There was no discount for the tour, but they gave us the student price (whatever!), the tour was okay and I would recommend the Heineken Experince tour instead of the Guinness Storehouse tour - but if you realy want a "free" pint of Guinness, take the tour but do not say you have been warned.
• After the tour, we went by the old Jameson Distillery hoping it would still be open, but it was closed so we headed back to our hostel.
• We finally cooked the vegeterian burger mix we bought in Budapest, however we could not understand the cooking instructions so we tried adding water, which did not seem to work, so we added lemon juice, salt, and pretty much everything we could find in the hostel kitchen to try and make it taste good. At the end we think we needed eggs to keep the mix together, but ate the food cooked and crumbled.

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Sixty-Nine - 02.08.05 - [Brussels ->; Dublin]

• Got up and packed up, ate our breakfast and went to the train station to catch a train to Charleroi to get to the airport to fly out to Dublin.
• The first train we got on said it was going to Charleroi, but it stopped at the next train station, we did not know that the train was not going anywhere so we missed the most recent train that went to Charleroi!
• However, missing that train - we managed to find another train that would go to Charleroi and get there before the train we missed would get there! Strange eh?!
• We were introduced to a city that was covered with an ugly black, yellow, and white sky, with barely some blue showing from all the factories around the train station!
• Got on the bus to get to the airport, signed in and found out that I had to pay extra baggage because my backpack was heavy, so I guess I gotta add some fee to the absinthe that I am carrying for some people! :)
• Arrived in Dublin, found the bus that would take us to O' Connell Street near our hostel. We started looking for Talbot Street to find our hostel, but the streets in Dublin are short and change frequent after every two or three blocks so we had a hard time finding our hostel.
• We decided to check the map on the internet and address again and found out we had the wrong information, we were looking for Talbot Place, not Street and immediately we found our hostel and signed in.
• After that, we headed to the food store and got food for dinner, had dinner and walked around for a short while before calling it a night.

Amount Spent: TBA
--
oneninefive

Post Cards...

To those who sent me their mailing addresses, there is a post card on
the way to you from Brussels {should have been from Berlin, but too
many delays prevented me from mailing them}!

Cheers!
--
Michael P. Laing
http://oneninefive.blogspot.com

Day Sixty-Seven

Day Sixty-Eight - 01.08.05 - [Brussels]

• Today we decided to explore the north part of Brussels by going to the Atom building first.
• We were disappointed to find the atom building closed for repairs. It seems like everywhere Europe is rebuilding itself, we feel like we have been seeing cranes everywhere this summer, we are starting to think that every five years, every place repairs everything!
• We headed to the Chinese and Japnese garden and then tried to get a trip up the Japanese tower, but it was closed.
• We also walked past the Royal Building on our way to the Japanese tower.
• We went back to the center of Brussels, found an internet cafe so FrecklesFly could check her apartment process, got some good strong beer, which ended up being a little bit too strong for the night.

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Sixty-Seven - 31.07.05 - [Brussels ->Luxembourg City -> Brussels]

• We got up early and had breakfast before catching the train to Luxembourg City.
• We arrived in Luxembourg City at around noon and figured we would be happy with approximately five hours of looking around, we started exploring the city by going down the road towards the old part of the city.
• We arrived in the center of the city and decided to look for something to eat while we could sit down and analyze the map we got from the tourist center in the train station.
• We never really found any place to sit down and eat, we found a nice part of the city where there were many stands that inimiated the Medival time, with people dressed in medival clothes, cooking medival food and serving beer in souvenier ceramic cups.
• We found a place that made good looking food that was made with torilla wraps, onion sauce, and some variety of vegetables. Very delicous, but we ended up with a strong onion afterbreath for the entire afternoon!
• We followed a walking trail along the old city walls that went through the Clausen area and went through a small area that was in the Grund area before heading back to the train station.
• On the train, we ended up talking to a "F in ear" girl who was learning French Sign Language in Brussels. She thought we were from around here, but it was interesting for her to try to figure out ASL and for us to figure out her FSL, she told us that she knew some Deaf people and said she would have one of her Deaf friends meet us at the train station.
• We met her friend, Reno at station and Reno took us to a local pub near the Grand Place to chat, he pointed out the popular local beer for us, and we sampled them - they tasted good.
• It was nice chatting with him and he told us he planned to go to WFD in Madrid - hopefully FrecklesFly and I can go to Madrid in 2007 and meet him again!
• Reno dropped us off at our hostel and we had to sign in since we needed to move to another room.
• On an additional sad note, our Eurail Passes expired today! :{

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Sixty-Six - 30.07.05 - [Brussels]

• We got up and had our breakfast, it was the first time we had a hostel serve hard boiled eggs for breakfast, that was not a bad change for the sore sight of wasted meat lying around every morning in other hostels.
• We planned our day by following one of the three suggested walking routes of Brussels, the route we took was the Comic route, which took us through the old part of Brussels.
• We walked past a church (need to get name later) and then along a street that was covered with glass roof with stores selling expensive chocolate and clothings towards the Grand Place, where there were beautiful buildings decorated with gold trimming, and along the walk we sampled a piece of Beligan waffle which was delicous, but messy and sticky.
• After the Grand Place, we stopped at several stores, got some gifts for our family members, picked up some Beligan chocolate to sample (while stopping in other stores to taste their samples) as we headed to the statue of the little boy pissing (need to look up the correct name later too).
• We found an interesting church that was filled with strange artwork - there were human faces that had cow tongues sticking out of their mouth and ears, hands that were made of different things that represented different things that related to the bible I think. I guess churches are getting less people attending so they have to add art to encourage more customers to come on Sundays.
• Then we headed down a nice small street that was lined up with many furniture stores that made us stop in and look around at their neat furniture and wood work until we reached a plaza that was supposed to have flea markets, but I guess we got there too late because there was nothing there.
• On the way back to our hostel, we walked along the Palais de Justice, which was a very huge, I mean HUGE building where the court was done in the city, it was very grey, depressing, and designed with Roman architecture fixtures.
• Our next stop was by the Royal Palace, we did not enter, just had a look at it - there was nothing really exciting or unique about the building for us to be shocked and awed by so we made headway through the Brussel Warande Park towards our hostel.
• Had our dinner, checked emails, and drank some Beligan beer before calling it a night.

Amount Spent: TBA