We arrived to sun. After the weather we had in London we were slightly relieved. Since we needed to take the bus into town from the airport, the first thing we did was stop at an ATM. The first one we tried wouldn’t give us any money. Luckily, I spotted another one which bestowed our money upon us without hesitation (thank you Hansapank!). Then, after breaking our large bills (I bought some postcards, and Alex accidentally bought a $2 pack of gum—she was a little confused on the exchange rate), we caught the #2 bus to the city center, and eventually found our way to the hostel. From there we wandered into old town, taking pictures along the way and stopping to look at the various merchant stands that were set up. Tallinn’s medieval old town, ... read more

The only way that I was able to get such a cheap train fare to Prague was if I took overnight trains. Therefore, I caught a 9:30 train to Frankfurt, and a bit after 11:00 got onto my train to Prague. I found my cabin and opened the door. It was already full except for my empty seat. There were four guys around my age and an older gentleman. Shortly before the train left the station, the older gentleman realized that he was in the wrong compartment and left. I asked the guys if they spoke English (they did) and where they were from (Portugal). We talked about various things for a while. They were very nice (thus further increasing my liking of the Portuguese people) and spoke excellent English. After the ticket guy came by, ... read more

After a week in Ireland with my parents and my aunt, I flew (along with my parents) to Switzerland. Switzerland was as beautiful as ever, and I had a great time exploring a new bit of it, as well as visiting with relatives and paragliding (which I have wanted to do since the last time I was there. By the way, it was totally worth it; absolutely amazing!). From there, we drove to Heidelberg where I will be calling my home for the next 7 weeks. The city is quite cute, especially the old part of town, and the view from the castle is incredible. After a few days, of exploring the city, my parents left to fly back to Colorado, and I moved into my new apartment (which I have to admit is a little ... read more

4/20/07 Lisbon--Porto After arriving in Porto via bus and obtaining a map from a nearby hotel, we then proceeded to stand around for a while trying to figure out which way we needed to go to get to or hostel. Eventually we managed to orientate ourselves and make our way to our hostel. After checking in and dropping off our bags we went out to see Porto. We only had the remainder of the day and therefore began by walking to one of the bridges that we had crossed while on the bus. The view from the bridge was beautiful. I ended up leaving Jenny and Sudie, who headed back to the hostel to make dinner, and attempted to find a cache (my last chance in Portugal). Once again I was unsuccessful; since the cache was ... read more

4/15/07 Faro--Lagos We caught the bus, and after about two hours and thirty minutes of beautiful scenery we were in Lagos where we were picked up (It was so nice not to have to walk all over the place with our bags (we would have been walking for a while too, because it was fairly hard to find)), by one of the owners of the place we were staying at, and driven to the guesthouse (which was basically just an apartment in which we had one of the rooms). We got ready (which included putting on as much sunscreen as possible) and headed straight for the closest beach. The weather was so nice (it was about time we had a little sun this trip). We just sat right in the sand. I lasted for as long ... read more