New York City, a long overdue roadtrip which I have finally got around to doing. It only took us a relatively short 6 hour drive to get there, plus some additional time for some rough food at a Friendlies on the way. Our home for the week would be a 6 bed dorm supplied by 1291 Youth Hostel. $40 per person, per night, gave us a wonderful little Bachelor apartment with 3 bunk beds, a small kitchen, and our own private bathroom. Located not even a 5 minute walk from Central Park, Times Square, and 5th Avenue, this was too perfect [View Full Entry]

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Nine days back in Scotland, 4 of which were in Edinburgh, and the remaining 5 in the Glasgow area. Welcome to a cold and rainy country, my luck finally caught up with me weather wise, but in Scotland I would have it no other way, haha! I mostly took the time to relax and do normal things while back here. So I didn't get very much tourism done. Some may wonder why I am not seeing more than I am while here like I did in other places, or why I am not going up north to Loch Ness and such. [View Full Entry]

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Normally I wouldn't mention this, but things didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked them to have done. After Stockholm I decided to head back to Scotland for just under 2 weeks before then flying homeward to Canada. I did a lot of searching for cheap flights, and could have flown from an airport near Stockholm called Skavsta for about 50 euro, but that airport was 70Km south of the city, and I wanted cheaper. With one day to spare on my Eurail pass and did some more looking at cities with airports and are inside one day of [View Full Entry]

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I LOVE this city! 5th July After a dreadfully boring trainride, possibly six of the longest hours of my life, I arrived in Stockholm and immediately set about getting my bearings on how to get to my hostel which is located in an area known as Zinkensdamm. A quick metro check revealed that there is a stop within 1km of the hostel, brilliant. I grab a 10 stop ticket to see me through my stay here and then head down to catch the train. The metro stops in Stockholm are, as the Californians I have bumped into during my travels would [View Full Entry]

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Oslo, hmm, a very very beautiful city, but not very exciting. But generally I have found that how much fun you have in a place often depends on the people you spend time with while there. I never got too friendly with anyone at the hostel here, so my time was alone to myself. I still made the best of it though. The trainride here from Copenhagen was a long one, 9 hours, But comfortable enough since the trains were all of an extremely high standard of quality. The Scandanavians don't let things get run down too much it seems. Oslo [View Full Entry]

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A short stay for me in the Danish capitol. Due to limited hostel availability, I had to settle for only 2 days here, and sadly almost all of the first day was spent in transit from Amsterdam to here. I didn't do a whole lot of exciting things here, so hopefully the journal won't bore you all too much... My room this time had only 9 beds in it, thank god, but I got the top bunk. These bunks sit 3 beds high and it means that if I roll out of bed, I am falling about 14 feet to the [View Full Entry]

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Whoever is responsible for coining that phrase was a shortsighted fool. Amsterdam is infinitely nicer and more interesting than Venice is, and even though they both share canals, it's still an insult to Amsterdam. Quick useless stat for people like me that love them: 70% of the Netherlands is under sea level. There you go, and now on with my journal. During my time in Amsterdam I am staying at a christian youth hostel called "Shelter Jordan". Why? several reasons really. The key reason is that it was one of the only places with rooms available, and it was cheap. but [View Full Entry]

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Brussels has to be one of the most underrated cities in Europe, really. By this time I have travelled to most of the heavily hyped cities, and seen what people will tell you is beautiful and so on, but Brussels has just as much to share as any of those places. I arrived around 1700 on the Thursday, dropped my things off at the hostel, and went for a walk around to see the city at dusk. I walked through the Parc de Bruxelles to the Royal Palace, admired it for a moment, and then over to the steps at Mont [View Full Entry]

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After being held up in Prague waiting for my laundry to be done, which should have been done on time, I grabbed the 1530 train to Berlin. The laundry cost me a €1 for wash and dry, but I don't deem waiting until that late for it to be done as a worthwhile use of my time. But anyway.... I arrived in Berlin around 2100 and headed for the undergound to grab the subway to get over to my hostel. The Berlin underground system is huge, ridiculously huge, and confusing too. Somehow I managed not to get lost and quickly got [View Full Entry]

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Prague, what a city! Amazing old buildings everywhere, some history, and it's nice to be in a place where I don't constantly go over my budget, this is a wonderfully inexpensive place to take a trip to. I arrived in Prague at about 2300, not the best time for it, but oh well. The train station in Prague is dodgy as hell, and at that hour I wasn't looking forward to navigating my way to the hostel on my own. Basically you have transients and potential muggers sitting around everywhere....watching you....thinking about targetting you.... So I looked for a fellow backpacker [View Full Entry]

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