Home Sweat Home

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Yes, it is finally here, the much anticipated finale to this edition of my travel blog. I realize it has been quite a while since I updated, blame it on lack of internet, then lack of website(which crashed, if anyone has copies of my blogs, could you send them to me?) and finally overabundance of work. This may be better though, now that I've had a week to digest.
England was wonderful, it was the perfect end to my trip. I was staying in the Northhampton area, which is in the middle of the country, with my good friends Claire and Tom who I met this year in New Orleans. Claire's family has a wonderful old farmhouse out in the country, it was exactly where I needed to be after spending 7 weeks running around. I got there late Saturday night, after about 16 hours of traveling, including a 10 1/2 hour bus ride from Dubrovnik (it actually took me far longer to get from Croatia to England than it did to get back to America, go figure). On Sunday we went into London for lunch. It was nice, we didn't do any touristy stuff, just ate, walked around, and had drinks with some of Tom's friends. Also saw a man who, um, juggles (?) budgies while singing about them, fantastic! During the week I hung out with Claire's family (absolutely lovely!), spent a day in Oxford (beautiful), and went to a BBQ at Tom's mom's (also wonderful). Wednesday I went in to London to meet up with my cousin Kristin. We had a great day, went to some of the museums and did some siteseeing, I never manage to see her in the states so it was great to catch up.
I will admit that I seem to have jinxed myself by previously saying how smoothly everything had gone. Basically, long story short, British Airways canceled my flight home for me because I didn't show up for my flight from Turkey to London. I found this out 2 days before I was supposed to leave. I was able to get on another flight, but they make a ton of money off that policy. So, FYI, if you are ever going to miss a flight, make sure you call the airline first! (They did upgrade my seat when I got to the airport, small victories!)
So, now I am back in New Orleans, actually have been for about a week. It was great to come back and see my friends, I think I managed to cram almost all of my favorite New Orleans things into the weekend before starting school Monday. Now that it's back to real life, I do kind of wish that I was back on a beach somewhere in Croatia. Or Turkey. Or Spain.
This trip was absolutely one of the most amazing things I have ever done. Everyone asks what my favorite place was, and I really have a hard time picking. There was no where that I wouldn't want to go back to, although if I had to pick a few, I'd love to spend more time in Turkey, camp along the beaches in Croatia, and spend a lot more time in Spain, if Barcelona was any indicator. I guess the "problem" with traveling is that no matter how many places I go, my list of where I want to go just gets longer. I'm already trying to figure out what I can do next, er, summer, with a very limited amount of time and budget. As much as I was very excited to get back to New Orleans, I feel like I could have kept going for a really long time, or at least another month or so.
But now its back to real life (or as real as it gets here): 12 hour days at school, hurricane season, 90 degree heat at 6 am. Of course, it's also time for catching up with friends, Saint's season, and welcome back parties til 3am, so I really have no complaints.
Well, I guess this marks the season finale of my travel blog. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

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