HaleYeah

We arrived in Amsterdam on Saturday. We really had no fixed plans... just a few ideas we extracted from Dan's "Let's go" Europe guide book. We took the tram from Amsterdam's central station to our hostel -- Inner Amsterdam Hostel -- located in the southwestern part of Amsteram. It was a reasonably nice place... like most hostels we've encountered to this point... with some kind of a bar, some kind of area for internet access, etc. We spent that first evening just wandering around trying to familarize ourselves with the city. Before arriving in Amsterdam we finally broke down and bought a compass... which helped greatly. I cannot tell you how many times we thought we were heading north when we were actually heading south. So if you're ever backpacking around Europe... useful tip #1: get ... read more

Finals finished up on Friday. It was two two-hour exams... nothing incredibly stressful. I was very happy to get the tests out of the way so that I could shift my complete attention to our european tour. After exams, I spend much of Friday afternoon simply getting things in order (packing, cleaning, trip planning, details, details, details, etc.). That night our group spent one last night together at the Molly Darvy's restaurant before we headed over to the Trinity Rooms club. Just drinking and dancing. It was funny... over the course of this trip we've made good friends with our bus driver, Paul (a former British soldier). He became especially close with Lisa from our group and he's actually bought a plane ticket and is heading over to the states (Nebraska and Kansas) in early September. ... read more

Life is back to normal in Ireland. I missed three days of classes vacationing in Spain… which gave me plenty of reading to do once I returned. So I’ve spent the bulk of the past week trying to… believe it or not… study. I’ve also tried to recoup my financial footing in anticipation of our trip this Thursday to Dublin (through Sunday), and my August post-course traveling. Speaking of which… my travel plans are basically finalized. Dan and I decided to drop Zurich for timing and cost reasons. So the official schedule is as follows: (1) Paris, July 30 - Aug. 3; (2) Brussels, Aug. 3 - Aug. 6; (3) Amsterdam, Aug. 6 - Aug. 10; (4) London, Aug. 10 - Aug. 14 It also appears like our London travel plans could be cut short. Dan ... read more

but our luck could have been much worse. A few quick words: My travel buddy, Dan Calderon, has started his own travel blog on travelblog.org… his can be found here. In case you couldn’t get enough info and pictures… there’s now more. As for our trip to Pamplona, Spain to run with the bulls?? In short… it didn’t happen… but we ARE lucky to be alive (see my parting words in my July 5 post). Dan and I were riding the London subway system at the exact moment it was bombed on Thursday, July 6. In fact, we just a few interchange stations away from the blast at Edgware Road station. Here’s a brief recap leading up to that point: Dan and I flew in to London’s Gatwick airport just after 10:00 PM…. I lost my ... read more