I´ve spent my last week and a half in Granada. It´s really a beautiful place to just relax and chill...or chillaxin´ as some might say. For the first week I did almost nothing at all. I really just needed to be quiet, read my book, hang out, sleep, and not see anything of any kind of historical importance whatsoever. I did decide to take some Spanish lessons hear at the hostel. They have been really good, and I can now actually say things and ask questions and pretend to understand the answers. Well, I get the gist of what´s being said. [View Full Entry]

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Dad, there´s a monster at the end of this book. I´ve put it at the end so you can dodge it. I was in Madrid for a couple of days only. The most interesting thing I have to say about it is that everything moves at a very leisurely pace. I saw the Prado and that was very nice, but I must say, Madrid held no magic for me; simply put, it was just a dry, hot, big city in my eyes. If I were to decide now, I would see no need ever to return to it. With that in [View Full Entry]

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I've spent 6 days in a great literary city, the capital of Scotland and home of the Scottish renaissance - Edinburgh (pronounced Ed-in-burr-uh, as opposed to Edinburg) So, the title's much more witty if you know that...see...see. I've had a chance to reconnect with my heritage a little bit. The sense of national pride here is infectious. I've come to the quick realization that the saying: 'Scotland's better than England' holds water. Okay, well that's not a good saying, or even a saying at all, but it's still true. The Scotts are fine hosts, and what they lack in comprehensibility, they [View Full Entry]

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Hi All, So I made it to the UK and have already had some pretty interesting experiences. I kept trying to book accomodations in Cambridge, but the internet connection wouldn't work to the site (this was in Salzburg) then the internet in Sweden was about three million dollars a minute (well actually 2 franks for 10, which is about 1.70 for 10 minutes....crazy) So I figured, I'd wait until I got to Germany, but they didn't have a connection I could get to in Friedrichshaven...they did however have the best salad I've ever had in my life - of all things [View Full Entry]

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Well, I now have a camera, so the entries will be little more exciting for those of the visual persuasion. I will gloss over the non-picture stops, which are less eventful anyway. Auschwitz was really intense, I know the history very well and I still found it an overwhelming experience to see the physical evidence of such horrors first hand. The room full of piles and piles of hair and that full of what must have been tens of thousands of shoes was really powerful. I can understand why it's so widely visited; outside of just morbid curiousity, I think it [View Full Entry]

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Thanks to all of you who wrote a reply, I really enjoy reading them. It's hard staying connected; so it helps me feel like a little bit of home is with me - thanks. As some of may quickly notice this blog is lacking in pictures. That's because my camera has recently been liberated from the fetters of my endless picture taking, it was - I can only guess stolen, brilliantly out of my pocket by such an ingenious Krakovian thief that I did not notice. A brief aside: we could not decide what a denizen of Krakow was called, the [View Full Entry]

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Observation about Slovenes: If nothing else, Slovenes love their ice cream stands...they have one, it seems, every ten feet. So just in case you find yourself in desperate need of ice cream it's only a few steps away. Perhaps they are made of a diffeernt material, alien to us regular humans, that needs constant nourishment in the form of ice cream. That might help to explain why no matter what you order, it tastes like something else. The tiramisu tasted suspiciously like vanilla with a hint of coffee, and the toblerone like rum balls...neither are bad, but both surprisingly not what [View Full Entry]

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This blog is broken up into paragraphs for those who don't read good ;) and want to take it just a bit at a time. With our start to the trip leaving SFO I realiyed just how much I'm going to be missing my friends and their generosity. It was hard saying goodbye to everyone, but their generosity in my last days will be with me, quite tangibly throughout my travels. Colleen and Geoff have started me off well; I am quite spoiled indeed. We flew direct, first class with Lufthansa, and it really is first class, and I now see [View Full Entry]

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Oh Man I Love The Cake! Enter a place without sight or sound and you'll hear and see no evil. <Jangly, Jangly> But the party was definitely not that place. Held in the picturesque town of Portola Valley at the home of my adopted auntie Colleen's and uncle Geoff's, the party was a smashing good time. I won't speak for anyone else, of course, but I had a lot of fun. What was not to like: most of my favorite people, good food (albeit something, I suspect a dish I made, gave me some serious gas today - prolific, yes; loud, [View Full Entry]

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