started out on Tuesday with the draining 4 am drive down to DIA, and on the ensuing flight i was reminded of my opinions on oversized people in the middle seats of the aircraft. no, i was not that oversized person. but, yes, i nevertheless suffered. by the time I got to LGA and caught the shuttle into the City, it was already 4 pm, and all i'd done was sit on a plane and cover in 4 hours what took pioneers of a few generations ago years to traverse. but they had more room in those wagons, i'd wager. on the shuttle, i met Stephanie, who turns out to be a Messianic Jew studying at Moody in Chicago. an old Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn had snagged her and insisted on helping her sharpen her Hebrew. ... read more

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 some dinner, I was fairly delusional. If you've ever had that feeling, the combination of jet lag, being up for over a day, travel fatigue, and general culture disorientation...it almost feels like floating on choppy ... read more

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, which is seriously one of the best independent hostels I've ever stayed at, pure dead brilliant. I never fail to meet amazing people there. My 1st night this time around, I ran into 2 German ... read more

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 at Heathrow waiting for your plane to Iceland...you pay by the second! So sadly I'm off (though I am about to get a cup of coffee, so it's not all bad!) Oh and Paris...yes, I ... read more

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 go. Only 3 gears, and not the fastest things on the road...but they definitely did the job! The main attraction here were the Edvard Munch collections, at the National Museum and the Munch Musset. Very, ... read more