http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Damocles/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Damocles en-us Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:48:08 +0000 Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:48:08 +0000 The train ride from Porto was delayed by laundry. The hostel would wash for you but the dryers in much of Europe suck. We gave our dirty stuff to the desk the night before we were to head for LisbonMadreadBarcelona feeling safe because we didn't have to leave the hostel for our train until 4 pm. After much prodding Wednesday afternoon we finally got a folded load of wet laundry back and misse http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Provence-Alpes-C-te-d--Azur/Nice/blog-307292.html After finally escaping the fiendish clutches of Lagos and our own demented devices we landed in Porto Porgual's secondlargest city. It lies in the north of the country on the Douro River near the Atlantic Ocean. It's an ancient city set on a number of hills overlooking its river. Most famously the city is home to a number of port wine cellars notably Sandeman's. Not particularly a fan o http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Portugal/Northern/Porto/blog-291518.html The beach is a mat of pebbles spreading for two miles in a grand broad arc Nice's stony embrace of the Mediterranean. The sea fondled the shore with gentle sloshing caresses under a gray early morning sky.No one was on the beach save one man in a white tshirt and brown shorts fishing off the end of a curved jumbled jetty. I crept out onto the jetty and found a flat rock facing east toward blue http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Provence-Alpes-C-te-d--Azur/Nice/blog-294175.html Yeah so much for staying here for three or four days. We've been here for almost three weeks now but after some serious beach serious sun and serious partying it's time to move on. Jay and I were very close to finding jobs here and staying until the middle of July. Eventually though we decided to keep moving see most of what we came here to see and come back next May for jobs.Lagos is a sm http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Portugal/Algarve/Lagos/blog-290738.html Following our disasters in Madrid Jay and I fled to Salamanca Thursday to get the earliest train to Lisbon. We thought an overnight train from Madrid would cost more so we took the free ride to Salamanca stayed in the train station after having the great fortune of replacing Pacman the Sacman and grabbed a 5 am train to Lisboa.The train was one of the shadiest shitboxes I have ever seen i http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Portugal/Lisbon-and-Tagus-Valley/Lisbon/blog-290023.html By the way check back on previous entries for pictures when I get them developed. If they'll put them on CD instead of prints I'll add them to the right blog.We had a great time in Barcelona. The hostel despite the initial boar encounter was great set in what I think was a wildlife reserve on the edge of the city. It was a threebuilding compound on the top of the hill in the woods. They serv http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Spain/Castile---Leon/Salamanca/blog-281737.html We got the 4 p.m. high speed train called a TGV train out of Brussels to Lyon Wednesday. I didn't think our pass would cover the entire cost of the high speed trains but luckily I was wrong. Don't mind making a happy mistake once in a while. The only thing we had to pay was a euro3 reservation fee for each ticket. It was overbooked though and only one ticket had a seat number. The other was http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Spain/Catalonia/Barcelona/blog-279601.html So far the itinerary is holding up. After a night in Cork Ireland Jay and I headed back to Dublin Monday evening. Cork is a nice little city also building and feeling the boost of the recent boom. As a result of the newfound prosperity the island is also experiencing a tourism boom. When we got off the train late Sunday afternoon Jay and I met five raucous Welshmen who sang an impressive ve http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Belgium/Brussels-Capital-Region/Brussels/blog-279150.html After a long but uneventful flight Jay and I landed in Dublin Thursday morning on schedule. Neither of us slept much so we were exhausted.We took a bus from the airport to the city and wandered around for a couple hours looking for a hostel Jay stayed in several years ago. After asking directions and walking a few miles don't ask how many kilometres that is because I don't know we found it. T http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ireland/County-Dublin/Dublin/blog-277235.html I skipped out of Huntingdon early Saturday afternoon for Martinsburg WV. My apartment is clean and shut down I saw most of the people I had on my list of course it was a last minute whirlwind tour and PanThar is carefully stowed with Mom for the summer.Jay's parents gave us their beautiful house to have a going away party. I wouldn't have recommended that but they're generous people. They mad http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/West-Virginia/blog-275826.html Huntingdon is my hometown I was born and raised here. I graduated from Huntingdon High School in 1996 in a class of 148. I left to go to school at Lebanon Valley College a private liberal arts college about 120 miles east of Huntingdon in Annville PA. After living there for seven years I moved to Boston in 2003 waited tables bartended and wrote for a couple newspapers outside the city. I swe http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/Pennsylvania/blog-263030.html