ADog
Alex R Joined: May 16th 2007
Logged in: November 12th 2011
Logged in: November 12th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Edinburgh Castle at Night
After a business trip for the week to Copenhagen (didn't see much more than our hotel and convention center there unfortunately), I decided to make a detour on the way back to the States to visit my friend Nina in Edinburgh. Nina has been in Scotland, working on a project for some months now. After a late arrival and a few last hours of work before putting the laptop down, I was off to explore the city. : Edinburgh Castle: First stop was Edinburgh Castle. The city was somewhat windy across the board, and as I started making may way up to where the castle was, the wind grew stronger and stronger. The castle is situated on top of a tall, sheer rock face that is randomly in the middle of the city. I can see ... read more
Motorbikes clogging up the Hanoi sidewalks
We left our hotel in Ho Chi Minh city before the sun had come up, stepping over the hotel staff sleeping (erm, guarding) the door in. After an uneventful flight (aside from the Vietnamese people who took Pablo's Economists out of the seat pocket in front of his seat and started to page through despite the fact they probably didn't speak English), we landed and were picked up by a partner firm to our client. First stop, Hoa Binh - a small rural and manufacturing town in the valley of some mountains 100 km or so away from Hanoi. We toured some factories, and the next morning, saw a thick fog had set in, and it was starting to drizzle. Little did we know that this was to be the start of a nearly 6 consecutive ... read more
Traffic
The flow of cars, motorbikes, bicycles, cars, women pushing food carts, and other unidentified vehicles seems never-ending. After 5 minutes, you're wondering when the traffic light is going to finally change to red so you can cross... That's when you realize there is no traffic light! You see the locals walking through zipping traffic unconcerned and it dawns on you that you have no other choice, but to cross. With a deep breath, you set out on to a busy street, slowly but surely, letting the motos dart around you, and not letting the cab beeping unnerve you. Like a real-life game of frogger , you painstakingly make it to the other side of the street without a game over... Then you realize you'll have to repeat this again nearly every block! Ho Chi Minh City ... read more
Bairro Alto
The weather is perfect - sunlight with a light breeze, and just looking around, you think you might have walked into a period film as your feet traipse on the uneven cobblestone. Some classmates and I decided to jet on to Lisbon for a long weekend, and were very impressed. Lisbon is beautiful and very affordable. Almost the entire city seems virtually unaltered from when it was constructed centuries ago... they just ran some electricity and plumbing through the walls. It's amazing that cars drive down some of the very narrow cobblestone streets that would have been narrow even for horse-drawn carts. Even the trolleys in the tram system look like they're straight out of the 1920s, and they might well be. We rented some apartments in the Bairro Alto district, and spent the days exploring ... read more
People Enjoying
Salut! Comme talle vous? We're in North America, just an hour away from the US... Americans joke about Canada being "America's Hat", or "America Junior", but at least in Montreal, it feels worlds away. Everything's in French, everyone seems to be out on the street taking leisurely brunch-dinner-drinks (bars and restaurants seemed full at all hours of the day), and people prefer to greet you with bonjour, only grudgingly switching to English if there's no alternative (they're not mean-hearted about it though like in my experiences in France). In short, this feels like Europe, and it's right here, in my backyard so to say. One of the most interesting things we noticed was the freeness of spirit of of the Quebecois. It seemed like half of the population between 18-30 was somewhat "alterna". A lot of ... read more
The Rio Beach from above
You can easily tell that "H-io" (as the locals pronounce Rio) is a beach town. Even if you're not strolling across the miles of beach-side promenade in neighborhoods like Copacabana and Ipanema that are nearly synonymous with exotic locale, people take their time making it from point A to B, and there is a hint of sea air across the city. In general, the city's vibe can be summed up as "why rush, why worry?" Rio was actually a pleasant surprise for me in many ways. I'd been told that the city was dirty and extremely unsafe, and movies like City of G-d had fed into that preconception. Although we were mostly in touristy areas, the city appeared very clean and actually quite safe. We did drive by many favelas, the Brazilian slums, and they are ... read more
Reykjavic
Despite three tough grad-level midterms looming in the coming week, 31 classmates and I decided to take advantage of a three day Columbus Day weekend and trek to Iceland for a much needed break. After landing at 6:30AM and making the 45 minutes drive from Keflavik airport to Reykjavík amidst a cloudy sunrise, we were greeted in our hotel lobby with what we were to find out was a ubiquitous odor of rotten egg in many buildings. Referred to as “Iceland perfume”, the sulfur in the pipes keeps the briny hot water pulled from hot springs and pumped into buildings across the island from oxidizing. Day 1: Welcome to Iceland Driving Tour Less than an hour after checking in, we were on our tour bus, driving around Reykjavík, which is actually quite small. We stopped off ... read more
Big Ben and Parliament
We had gotten up really early in Amsterdam to make it to our EasyJet flight to London on time. The clientele on the airplane were quite varied, some were still drunk from a night out partying. I was sitting right behind a guy that had "Made in England" tattooed on the back of his neck. It reminded me of one of those "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas" commercials with the glum or worn out-looking people on the airplane back home. We changed all of the remaining money from the several currencies we had into pounds and got used to the sticker shock of how little our cash was worth in the isles. In fact, our train from Gatwick to downtown London cost more than our flight from Amsterdam! On getting to central London, we ... read more
Canals at Night
Dave and I were regretting not having payed a few more Euros and upgrading to the first class sleeper train cabin. Things had seemed fine when we had started out in Munich with a pair of Irish schoolteachers - these guys looked and acted more like frat boys than teachers. But, the cabin was small and crowded, and we had people come in from random stops to take up their beds. Aside from that, the loudspeakers would blare every half hour announcing each stop 4 times, and some parts of the room were ice cold, while others were really warm, which makes for a really weird feeling when you sleep. I daresay, that some of the sleeper trains in China were more comfortable. We were feeling pretty disoriented when we finally made it into Centraal Station, ... read more
Ahh, the masses!
We travelled much of the day, on three separate trains, and finally made it to Munich in the early evening. Our hostel was next to the train station in what turned out to be the "hostel district". After touring our surroundings and getting lost, and met some very fun Canadian girls who were some of our roommates at the hostel. We all made plans to meet up at a jazz bar with an open mic night later that night. Dave and I headed out that way, and after again getting lost, found the hidden away basement bar. Dave had brought his harmonica, hoping to jump in on the open mic. Unfortunately, all of the musicians were friends with each other, and meanly didn't let him join in. Still, they sounded good, and the atmosphere was very ... read more
