RyanT
Ryan Thomson Joined: March 17th 2005
Logged in: August 25th 2011
Logged in: August 25th 2011
2007: Montreal, Canada (pending)
2006: New York City, USA
2005: France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden
2004: Quebec City, Canada
1998-2003: [moved from Scotland to Canada and went through college]
1996: London, England
1994: Australia
Travel Blog Posts
NYC Taxis
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 a place. I can't be bothered listing what we did day by day, so instead I will just point form it or something. Times Square: We took the time to walk through this place quite ... read more
A braw view
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. Well.....I have done all of that before, seen it all, so I don't feel the need to do it. If I had a friend with me to tour around or something then I would possibly ... read more
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 travel. Turns out I could fly from Hamburg to Glasgow for 15 euro, good deal, best I could get. I grabbed it. With my flight booked for 10:30am takeoff on the 15th, I left Stockholm ... read more
Dusk
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 say, hella nice! They are all sparklingly clean, and feature many murals and cool tiled patterns or decorations, with almost no signs of grafetti which is not the norm for subway stops in general. No ... read more
The Harbour area with Aker Brygge
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 is very far north, it barely got dark the whole time I was here, and I found myself sitting outdoors reading a book when it was almost midnight yesterday without even realising it. Oslo is ... read more
Hans Christian Andersen Statue
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 floor, eek! Seems like a good hostel though, and I took an immediate liking to the group of 4 people hanging out in the room, easy going and friendly people. That night we were bored ... read more
Prinsengracht Canal
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 after some thought I decided that it wouldn't be a bad idea to stay in a place with at least a few morals. Amsterdam is a party city to be sure, and it is packed ... read more
The Grand Place
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 des Arts, which give a nice panoramic view of the city, and this just happened to be right when the sun was dipping under the horizon, so I caught a few nice pics. From the ... read more
Line of the Berlin Wall
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 a ticket and found my way to the U2 line. Within 30 minutes of getting off the train, I was relaxing in my hostel, which after the Prague arrival, was very welcome. Day one in ... read more
Staromestke namesti
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 getting off the train, and found one, a big guy called Eric from New York, perfect, and he was a cool guy. We hit up the ATM at the station for some Czech funds since ... read more
