Quick picture update before I pass out

We flew to Dublin this morning after waking up at 3:15am after 3 lounge-club-music-thumping of non-sleep in our hostel room. It's quite an experience sleeping in a room with 11 other people that was designed to fit 2 people comfortably. We would like to especially thank the German girl for talking on her cell phone while 7 other people in the room were obviously sleeping. Her bed was kicked on the way out. As you may be able to glean so far, our accommodations are far less than luxurious.

In any case, here are some shots from don's busted camera and some from Trav's...



Canada Day in London



Ye Olde Pub Lunch



We flew all the way to London to check out the Star Wars exhibit. This guy also hit on the girls 1.2 seconds after the picture was taken.



Steak pie...food over here is good so far.

Off to the Guinness factory this afternoon. Maybe 3 pints of beer will improve my understanding of the otherwise unintelligible Irish folk.

I have terrible luck with cameras

The camera Don lent me has decided to stop working just like my broken camera stateside. Funny enough, it appears that they both have the same problem: a flickering and generally not-working LCD screen. I'll have pictures up from Travis' camera at some point.

English food is not as bad as reputed

Our Air New Zealand flight was the best flight I've been on in quite some time. TV screens on the back of each chair (got a chance to watch 300 and The Italian Job) and plenty of room even in coach; paying $1,000 for your ticket gets you some service I guess. The drink cart comes around (free booze!) and the flight attendant (or Inflight Service Coordinator) asks me what I'll have. I take a glass of red wine, cause you know, civilized people drink wine with dinner, even airplane dinner. Danette orders a gin and sprite and Nancy has Jim Beam and coke. I've never felt more emasculated in my life. I had no doubt at the time that the service guy thought we all were taking this trip to find hot British guys.

We met up with Travis at our hostel after making our way through the Underground. I guess you may hear soon enough that there was a bomb discovered outside Picadilly station this morning. Consequently, a significant part of the train service is down and we had to take a few detours on our way to our new hostel this morning. We also heard the following announcements in classic nonchalant, British tones explaining delays yesterday:

"The Jubilee line is delayed somewhat due to someone inexplicably hitting the emergency switch on a train."

"The Jubilee line is delayed due to a person caught under the train."

I didn't think those messages would be quite so direct.

Our hostel last night was in the East End, I now want to watch East Enders when I get back.

We checked out London bridge and the Tower Bridge yesterday and will continue seeing more touristy stuff later on today. Pictures to follow when I am slightly more competent with this computer...

T-Minus 24 Hours

So by now, in a perfect world, I would be all packed and ready to go. This is hardly the case, though I am likely much more organized than I care to admit. For you commonwealth folk out there, I am planning on keeping the correct spelling of words like organize and center no matter how many times I may see it otherwise.

It's amazing to me how much we have planned in advance and how little of it I am prepared for mentally. Here's a brief schedule of where we will be going:

Trip Dates:

JUNE 27 (THURS JUN 28 11am) – JULY 29 (4:15)

June 28-30 London

July 1 – fly to Dublin, spend night in Dublin.

July 2 – Go to Galway City

July 3 - back to Dublin, leave for Paris in the morning

July 4-7 - Travel to Paris, distribute freedom fries to locals

July 8- Paris in the am, travel to Lourdes at night

July 9- train to Pamplona, avoid getting gored by bull(s), back to Lourdes

July 10- Lourdes to Brussels

July 11- Brussels to Amsterdam

July 12-14 - Amsterdam, god help us.

July 15 - train to Berlin

July 16-17 Berlin

July 18- train to Geneva, train to Venice, sleeping on trains is fun.

July 19- Venice

July 20- Florence

July 21- train to Rome

July 22- Rome

and from there, we will be in Italy until July 28. We will then fly back to London that evening for our afternoon flight on July 29 back to Southern CA.

Pre-Flight Check

Hello family, friends, and interested observers, welcome to the Europe blog! In a scant 15 days, I'll be on a plane destined for London never to return again that will leave me in Europe for a large part of the summer.

Please stay tuned for updates more detailed than any cliche postcard of the Eiffel Tower could ever contain.