Ah, finally an in-depth update! (Note: The pictures on this entry are almost entirely from London, because I didn't purchase a new camera until just before we went there.) Don L. left Amsterdam this morning, and I'm just milling about for a few hours before I catch my flight to Trondheim, Norway later this evening. I left Barcelona on the night of the 14th, catching an overnight train to Paris. I was staying in a TINY little cabin with four seats which folded out into two tiny bunks, sharing with three Mexican guys from Monterrey who spoke very little English and [View Full Entry]

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Hello from a marijuana cafe in Amsterdam! The last couple of days with Don L. have been absolutely fantastic. We've done some touring around Amsterdam, visited the Red Light District, and have drunk quite a bit of Heineken, which is ubiquitous here. We're staying in a quite nice hotel called the Swissôtel Amsterdam (which we are only sort of sure that we know how to pronounce), and it's right in the midst of everything interesting: right next to the Royal Palace and Madame Toussaud's, and just blocks from the train station. I'll take more time from Norway to tell more details [View Full Entry]

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So my time in Barcelona has been really nice... now that I´ve actually found a cheap-ish hotel that I can stay in until I leave tomorrow night. It´s only €80 per night, which is well under half of what I was paying at the other place. I´ve mostly been wandering around, eating, and trying to soak up the really cool sights here. I haven´t been to the beach yet, but it´s on my agenda for tomorrow. The only bad news: My brand new camera broke! I´m going to try to find a camera shop that can fix it today, but I´m [View Full Entry]

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I went to the Madrid train station to catch a train to Barcelona on Monday afternoon, only to wait in line in an 88-degree, non-air-conditioned building for an hour and a half before finally paying for my ticket. Luckily, though, I didn´t get heat stroke, and I only smelled like a musty goat on my train, and not like a feces-coated rabid squirrel, which I´m sure would smell much worse. I got to the Barcelona train station on a brand-new, high-speed train, and had plenty of time to get to the airport.... but for the life of me, I could NOT [View Full Entry]

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I arrived safely in Madrid yesterday after a long 11-hour flight. I´ve never been on a plane with so little service - they passed through the cabin only twice with drinks, and they only had water, Sprite, Coke, coffee, and tea... nervous travelers couldn´t even drink! Luckily, I had some sleep aids with me, so I was able to sleep pretty well most of the flight. The sun doesn´t set until after 10 pm in Madrid! So odd. I had dinner last night around 10:30, then was told that it was the last night of Madrid´s Gay Pride, so I went [View Full Entry]

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Since my last entry, Wendy and I spent one more day at Iguazú National Park, and it was a good thing that we did - the weather was absolutely perfect! I´ve never seen so many rainbows in my entire life. I managed to capture a few of them in photos, and they´re pretty amazing. Unfortunately, we didn´t find any pots of gold or hordes of leprechauns.... only in Ireland, I suppose. We did find a few lizards and vultures, though; not quite as exciting, but interesting nonetheless. Speaking of pictures, I´m uploading most of my pictures to Snapfish, so I´m only [View Full Entry]

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Wow, what a day! We woke up this morning about 15 minutes before our taxi was supposed to arrive to take us to Iguazú National Park, thanks to my extremely quiet iPod alarm. We made it with a few minutes to spare, and even got a cup of coffee before we left. Our personal cabbie, Marcos - who we befriended yesterday at the airport - took us to the park, stopping along the way to show us a crocodile in the wild! Our day of ecological sight-seeing began with a 30-minute mini-safari through the jungle to a point downstream from the [View Full Entry]

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We safely arrived in Iguazu, Argentina! Our flight was delayed this morning by about 2 hours, thanks to some nasty fog, but otherwise the evening was uneventful. It was odd to get up this morning at 8 and find out that absolutely NOTHING was open before 10, including banks. We had to make do with dollars (instead of the Argentinean peso) for our cab ride to the airport. On arrival in Iguazu, it was raining. We went to the taxi stand to pick up a taxi to our pre-booked hostel, only to find out that the hostel is inaccessible by car [View Full Entry]

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Nothing much new, except that Wendy and I have slept entirely too much the last two nights... 11-12 hours a night, waking up at 2:00 pm... yikes! An interesting tidbit: our hotel room has a bidet! Oh the joys of wet butt. Last night Wendy and I went out for dinner and drinks; we went to two different bars - the first was called Deep Blue, where Wendy got the traditional Argentine drink, Fernet and Coke, which was absolutely repulsive. Then we found a fun Irish pub (yes, I know, and Irish pub in Buenos Aires), where we had great conversation [View Full Entry]

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Wendy and I safely arrived in Buenos Aires this morning at about 4 a.m., and had no problems finding our hotel -- the Grand King Hotel. Wendy befriended (surprise surprise) a very nice man on the plane into Buenos Aires, and he has agreed to meet up with us and show us around Buenos Aires at some point this week. What luck! The flights were relatively uneventful, except for the squealing baby on flight #2 from San Salvador to Lima, the repulsive freeze-dried merengue cookies, and Wendy being completely unable to wake me up for about an hour (talk about exhaustion!). [View Full Entry]

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