and all the world came tumbling in

The only thing worse than having things go wrong, is having everything go as planned Right now Spain is in a rough spot. With unemployment in Spain rising consistantly over the past half year, more people then ever are out of work. It is said that one in five people do not have a job, bringing the total figure to nearly 5 million unemployed. The percentage is said to be around 23% which is more than twice the EU average. It is odd because at first glance, they do not seem to be suffering. However, looking hard at the surroundings, it becomes easy to spot. While there have always been people begging in the streets, the things I have seen in the past week have painted a bigger picture for me. The man begging outside of ... read more

Oh Barcelona! Beautiful Barcelona and embarassing Americans abroad... March 20th Barcelona is a charming Mediterranean city literally bursting at it's seams with European urban style, art, architecture, and most importantly, delicious Catalan cuisine. The capital of Catalonia, Barcelona ranks in as Spain's second largest city after Madrid. It is not hard to see why it is one of the most populous urban areas in all of the European Union... Lee start packing. My flight to Barcelona started with 50 16year olds in the airport talking so loudly that I could not hear what the lady was announcing over the intercom. I asked if there were any upgrades available for fear of having to sit near them. Fortunately, I did not. The flight was okay, and I think I only had one or ten visions of us ... read more

The Camino de Santiago I wasn't going to do this; That is, talk about the history of the Camino and all the little details. However, my family, or rather really just my mother, seems to need some sort of peace of mind and I am hoping that by presenting the Camino as the well established journey that it is, might help. **If interested, see previous blog to find out why I am wakling the Camino... There are many caminos, long distance pathways/walks, all over the world. But none have quite reached the popularity level as the Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of Saint James. The Camino involves a pilgrimage route leading to the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela which is where the supposed remains of St James the apostle are burried. The Camino ... read more

New York for Two Days Everytime New York City would come up in a conversation, Lee would always say, "You know, I've never been there..." So I thought it would be a great Christmas present to surprise him with an overnight trip. It took me over a week to decide on a hotel because there are sooooo many! Getting There We woke up at 5:30am because we had decided to get an early start to our trip into NYC. However, we both were quite sleepy and decided to sleep in until about 8:30am. As we did not want to drive in the city because of expensive parking and crazy drivers and traffic, we decided to drive to Lee's work in Ardmore and leave the car there in the shopping center. We took the train from Ardmore ... read more

"Trash 300 Years Ago is Still Trash Today" I thought it would be a good idea to include in our travel journal what I have been up to the past three months as it has certainly been interesting to say the least. I have been participating in an archeological dig in Lancaster County since September and we have recenetly closed our excavations. The name of the site where we were excavating is called the Wiesenthal Site. Here is a little history of the site: The Weisenthal site is located on what was once a 500 acre tract that was settled by the Hess family in 711. The location of this site is one of the earliest European settled in Lancaster County. The house located onsite is one of thirty families that initially settled in this area ... read more