Cairo is more hectic than Bangkok and possibly dirtier than Delhi but no one really goes to Egypt to visit Cairo...its Giza they want to see... My driver was a bohemith 6'5" 275lb boy of 20 years old who boasted that he had only been in as many accidents as his age. This was a fact that he was legitametely proud of which naturally scared the hell out of me. His car was something out of an Adam Sandler song with no radio, no working seat belts, no working windows, no rearview mirror or sideview mirrors, and the seat was pushed [View Full Entry]

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The Dignified Freak Show in Barcelona is known as the street of Las Ramblas. Its most definately a freak show, as evidenced by the thousands of tourists walking at a snails pace stopping every twenty feet to take picutures of the Living Statues that line the sides of Las Ramblas. The street runs from Plaza Catalunya all the way to the water but there is are distinct districts set up to keep the flow of traffic moving. Closer to the water, there is the art show and sale where you can watch artists create spray paint masterpieces of far away worlds [View Full Entry]

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There’s no good reason to have Run with the Bulls other than it seemed like a good idea at the time. Hemmingway must have seen something genius and manly about the festival of San Fermin and wasn’t old Ernest considered a Man among Men? Either way, it really wasn’t as scary as the Blooper reel you’ve seen on TV would indicate. Can you die while running with the Bulls? Yes. Can you get gored by an angry Bull and become paralyzed? Yes (and in fact someone did a few days prior to my run). But then again there’s an element of [View Full Entry]

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The Ferry to Ireland was completely unnecessary due to the fact that I had a plane ticket that would have taken flown me from Frankfurt to Dublin but the overwhelming novelty of it all made the sea voyage inescapable. For my first visit to Ireland I thought it’d be ironic to come by boat, even if it was from France. Winter-like weather in Dublin was a cold reminder that I hadn’t been anywhere, aside from Nepal and that’s a whole different ball of wax, which required multiple layers of clothing in the absence of precipitation. It was sooo cold I was [View Full Entry]

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As am Irish American, I could think of no better place to spend my 25th Birthday than Dublin. To be more specific, I spend a great deal of the day wandering around the Guinness Storehouse. For anyone who´s never been to the Guinness Storehouse, its the original Brewery that has been converted into a living museum and churns out the brews it did years ago. On short, its a Mecca for beer. The interior is shaped like a giant pint glass of Guinness and the self guided tour is supposed to take you from the bottom floor up to the sky [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so this one's for Papa John: Anyone who has been to the house I grew up in or for that matter, anywhere my father has lived since the 90s, are sure to recognize some of the artwork in this blog. Oddly enough, Papa John has never been to Willi's Wine Bar, and anyone who knows him is sure to immediately learn about his love of fine wine and upon getting to know him a little better, might learn that he may or may not value his Willi's Wine Bar Paintings more than some of his children...namely the weird one who's [View Full Entry]

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I broke two toes in a barefoot pick up soccer game on the lawn at the Museo Square. They're only toes, they'll grow back. Considering some of the other injuries I've had, and the amount of my own blood I've spilled accidentally, I was happy to learn that they were likely only cracked up a bit and not pointing in the wrong direction. There's a reason I took nearly 100 pictures of this soccer, excuse me, football game, I saw sitting in the grass watching my toes swell. No matter, I've past the point of perpetual sandal weather, shoes have become [View Full Entry]

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The calendar didn't exactly read 7/4 or even 12/25 but for what its worth, my return to land of sit down toilets was both all in one. I got a little bored hanging out with myself in the Philippines so I switched around my flights and headed to Germany where I knew the USA still hadn't been eliminated from the World Cup. (As I write this, we're halfway through the finals and its good to see the Italians have a good shot because, well, they are the other team I was rooting for even if they were the opposition in Kaiserslautern.) [View Full Entry]

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John Thomas Lynch, my grandfather, has been an enigma to me all my life, not only because he is the man I was named for yet never had the opportunity to meet, but because no one besides my Uncle Kevin ever had a conversation with him about his war experiences. It’s hard to write this particular blog without going into too much history about the U.S. military campaign in the Philippines, mainly involving their strategic withdrawal from Manila to the Bataan peninsula and the island of Corregidor and subsequent surrender of all U.S. & Filipino forces in the Philipines to the [View Full Entry]

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Vientiane was like a city on sedatives. Spending one afternoon drinking too much BeerLao while watching a monsoon rear its ugly head was relaxing enough but when I learned that the most exciting aspect of the city was the gun range in the center of town (that I most definitely visited), it was decidedly time to head to the hills. My new traveling partner Sean, good guy, its just a shame he went to Notre Dame, and I heard through the bamboo telegraph that the two hot spots in Northern Laos to see are Luang Prabang and Vien Viang (VV). We [View Full Entry]

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