And this is it...the final travel blog entry! The flight from London stopped in Reykjavik, Iceland for a couple hours. So I was really excited about seeing Iceland, from the air if nothing else! One caution: Iceland Air doesn't necessarily market itself as a discount airline, but it *is* - imagine a trans-atlantic flight (London-Iceland-NYC) without any food! Well, unless you want to pay for it... In any case, by the time I landed in NYC, went through customs, took the C train all the way to Penn Station, walked all the way to my hotel with my pack, and found [View Full Entry]

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And now we find ourselves reflecting on Paris. I was able to make the EasyJet from Glasgow to Luton easily, then a coach straight to Oxford where I met up with Lara and Jacob. Oxford, again - easily one of my favourite places, though this visit was to be quite short. I snuck in maybe an hour of sleep before we took off for a (very) early-morning delirium filled bus trip to London then the taxi to St Pancras for the EuroStar to Paris Gare de Nord. We basically decided, with 2 days in this incredible destination, to forego that biological [View Full Entry]

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Do you find something funny/ironic about welcoming someone back to the "real" world, after they've just spent the last six weeks exploring the...well, "real" world? So now I can properly update you! And it helps to put my own recollections down. So here we go. Scotland was quick. Scotland was amazing. It was nothing short of a homecoming, of sorts, to be back in Glasgow. Just hearing the thick accents on the RyanAir flight from Oslo (which, of course, RyanAir flies out of Torp, which is over 100 km south of Oslo! Just FYI.) made me smile. Stayed at the Bunkum, [View Full Entry]

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Back in the States! Yesterday started in a Paris hotel room, then a train, London's Underground, a flight to Iceland then NYC, then a subway ride, then a 2-mile hike through the grid that is midtown Manhattan. I was a little tired after that. Anyways, I have *so* many pictures to share! The crack in the laptop screen is symbolic of my regret over not being able to share them with you for another couple days... But my promise is, they'll be here! And they'll be worth it. For now, off to see sunset @ Central Park. -steve g [View Full Entry]

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Well, they finally did it...they killed my laptop. Actually, the laptop works fine...it's the screen that has the giant crack in the corner. So the 200+ pictures I have yet to download and prepare for distribution to the privleged masses will need to wait until I'm back in the States and can hook my poor crushed laptop into another monitor. I know, I've let you, the interested follower, down...I promise the latest pictures will make it up to you!!! So check back Monday...and hopefully I'll have plenty of new pictures for you! And this is what happens when you use internet [View Full Entry]

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Aye ah' morning ta yah. So Scotland has been an absolute whirlwind...though, of course, amazing. Perfect temps here as well. Glasgow's treating me proper - went for a run in the park on Sunday (after being kept up in Oslo again then night before...by the same snorer! Fate has a sense of irony, to be sure.), then yesterday rented a car and drove up to Glen Coe for some amazing hiking. I had rented a tiny little car (the "4 wheels w/optional transmission option"), but as they were slammed and couldn't be bothered they gave me a 4-WD Nissan instead! Driving [View Full Entry]

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Those 120 degree days and 85 degree nights seem a long way from where I am now. At 62 degrees north, I'm the same latitude as a point between Anchorange and Denali Nat'l Park in Alaska. Ironically enough, 62 degrees also happens to be the temperature up here as well - awesomely comfortable. My first day in Oslo, the 14th, I got a card from the tourist office which you can use to rent a bike. There are racks all over town, so when you get somewhere you just put the bike back, then get another one when you're ready to [View Full Entry]

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So...Copenhagen has quickly risen in the ranks to one of my favourite places! First, the train from Munich to Hamburg took most of the day, and the German announcer was greatly apologetic that the train was running 3 minutes late. Such is German punctuality...but, considering I had only 5 minutes to make my train from Hamburg to Copenhagen, much appreciated. What no one told me when I booked the train, of course, is that the train boards a ferry for the final leg between Germany and Denmark. So we all got out and shuffled into the ferry, where they were more [View Full Entry]

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Internet of sorts...though still paying by the minute, sadly...the router gods have yet to smile upon the rest of the world with abundant free wi-fi. Go USA! :-) The last few days have been an absolute blur. The 7th I spent the day exploring Istanbul, then took the sleeper train overnight to Bucharest, Romania, passing thru Bulgaria. I shared the room with a Denver-ite, of all people, though he hadn't lived there in some time. The train was vintage Soviet sleeper, hardly the standard of comfort. We were awoke at 3 am when we pulled into the Turkish/Bulgarian border...so we all [View Full Entry]

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This will be another quick one... I'm facing my 3rd night in a sleeper train - which is saving me money on hostels, but I'm slowly crossing the border from smelly and oily to really quite rancid. I may be forced to use the train shower...shudder with me now. The train from Istanbul to Bucharest was pretty ghetto and hot, but definitely way better than toughing it out in a hard seat for 20 hours. I'll have to save my stories for another time, but hilarity ensues when the train staff speak Russian...only. My 1 year of Russian didn't quite prepare [View Full Entry]

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