July 9

(15:00) After the concert started, we moved up to the front row, where we stayed for about a half hour. We soon got tired of standing in the cold, however, and decided to try our hand at the other side of the parking garage. We soon found ourselves trying to sleep in a corner of the staircase going down to the parking garage. This sleep was fairly worthless as we woke up about two hours later (around 5:00 am) more sore than when we fell asleep. We got up and started walking toward the starting point where the bulls were to be released. We soon realized that we didn’t need to be there as early as we had thought. Since it was still cold out we had to find a store or something to sit down in until the time to run drew nearer.

I failed to mention yesterday that we had purchased traditional San Fermin attire for the festival. Apparently, it is offensive to the locals if you don’t run in the traditional white clothes with a red scarf and sash. However, as long as you were dressed in red and white and had the red scarf, you would fit in just fine. We were told that people could get beaten by locals for doing one of two things: not wearing the San Fermin garb and touching the bull with the bare hands. Both are considered disrespectful, although you are allowed to touch the bull with a newspaper (as nearly all the runners had equipped themselves with). So Ben bought the entire set (white Capri pants, a red handkerchief, and a red sash. He borrowed my white shirt and he was all set. I simply wore my white khaki shorts and my red Munger softball t-shirt to represent my team in Pamplona. I did purchase the red handkerchief though, to look as authentic as I could.

Anyway, as the time to run drew nearer the street where the running would take place began to get absolutely packed. There was nothing but red and white as far as the eye could see. It was truly an amazing spectacle. I was able to take some videos and photos, but cameras were strictly forbidden to the runners so I had to make sure none of the dozens of police saw me. At 7:30 am, the stores along the street all pulled down their gates to close up while the running was taking place.

The bulls run at 8:00 am sharp every morning. At about 7:50 am, the crowd went into a chant and then began cheering wildly. The same thing happened about five minutes later. I began to try to get loose and I strapped up the Velcros to get ready to run. At this point, we knew very little as to what to expect. All we knew was that when the first firecracker went off it had meant that the bulls had been released. When we heard the firecracker, a mass of people started running. We were told that we should wait until the second firecracker, which signified that the bulls had crossed a certain point and were getting close, before we should start to run. Once we heard the second firecracker, we hesitantly began to run out into the street. At that moment, we saw about five 1,500 pound bulls racing toward us. We dove back to the side as the bulls went flying by. We were told earlier that there was no way we could keep up with the bulls; that they end up passing everybody on the way to the stadium, no matter how soon you start. Since the group had already passed, we took off sprinting behind them. We remembered that they also released a group of domestic bulls to run behind them to make sure that the wild ones keep moving. We soon saw those approaching and dove off to the side again to make sure to stay out of their way. We knew that we were in the clear now and had to sprint to try to make it into the stadium to be a part of the bull fight before they closed the doors. Sure enough, the doors had long been closed by the time we made the half mile sprint up the road….and by “up” the road, I literally mean “uphill.” The entire track toward the stadium is uphill, which drastically reduces my half mile sprint time. In hindsight, we now know that we should have began running much sooner. We would have then been right in the rush and would have actually been sprinting in front of the bulls for a while, which would have been an awesome thrill. It also would have given us the opportunity to make it into the stadium and participate in the bull fighting festivities. The first thing that happens inside the stadium is the release of a baby bull in which the participants are expected to taunt and see how close they can get without getting gored. The crowd expects everybody that makes it into the stadium to participate and they will boo you if you climb out early. Soon after they have an actual bull fight in which the bull is eventually slaughtered in front of the entire crowd. Since we didn’t make it into the stadium, I can only tell you about what I have heard, because we were not able to witness it firsthand. However, I’m glad we waited to run in order to be more safe since we were unsure of what to expect. Next time we run, someday, we will then know how to handle ourselves.

Once we realized that we weren’t getting into the stadium, we began our trek back to city hall to collect our bags and then head back to the train station. The debris from the night before was unexplainable. Piles upon piles of trash littered the streets while maintenance crews worked to clean up the area. You couldn’t even walk without stepping on beer bottles and cups. The amazing thing is that the road was fairly clean when we arrived the previous evening. This means that this wasn’t an accumulation of trash over the course of three days, but only one night. The festival runs for ten days straight. Imagine if they didn’t clean up the streets every morning.

Anyway, we made it back to the train station to find out that all the trains to Madrid were booked until 2:35 pm. This meant that we had five and a half hour wait until our train left. We have a half hour lay over in Madrid and then we are off to Alicante to hopefully meet up with Tiff. We were able to take a nap in the park while we waited for our train, but we still can’t wait until we can sleep an entire night on one of Tiff’s two couches. I have no idea how much we have slept since the ferry, but I know it hasn’t been much. We find ourselves only sleeping when we feel tired, which usually turns out to be on a train or while waiting for a train, so we never sleep for more than a couple hours. We are on the train to Madrid at the moment. The scenery of the Pyrenees mountains was gorgeous. I wish I could have taken more pictures. . Hopefully Tiff will have internet somewhere handy so I can post again soon.

(24:00) It was interesting to watch the thermometer fluctuate as we rode away from the mountains. In Pamplona, it was 21° C (about 70° F). As we rode out of Madrid, it got up to 36° C (about 100° F). Then once we got to Alicante, it was again down in the mid to lower twenties. We ended up getting to Alicante alright, but found our little sheet of paper with Tiff’s address didn’t have all the information we needed. We first asked a guy at the train station where he thought the paper was leading us. In broken English he pointed us down a street for two blocks and then had us turn right. We did this successfully but couldn’t figure out what building was supposed to be Tiff’s. We ended up stopping at a bar to ask directions. One lady working there tried for about ten minutes to help us out. Finally, her solution was to go to every building and ring the bell for all the first floor apartments. We did this once and got yelled at in Spanish, but the street was only a couple blocks long so we were hopeful. Just then, we heard a girl yell “There they are!” It was Tiff and her roommate. Apparently, they had walked to the train station to meet us there as I had suggested, but we left before they got there. Either way, we had found them and their apartment, equipped with two couches and a shower. We also had the privilege of meeting one of Tiff’s roommates, Kelsey. She is a very special character to say the least. She told us how she has a few job offers back in the States making a lot of money. During the same conversation, we had to explain to her that Austria was an actual country. I’m not sure how Tiff can handle more than a few hours of her at a time.

It is a cool night, according to Tiff, but it still is about 75° F. As soon as I got out of the shower I was sweating again, but I did feel more refreshed. We ended up walking down to the beach and tried a little Sangria before walking home and crashing on the couch.

July 10

We woke up feeling amazingly refreshed. It had been the first time we had slept for more than a couple hours at a time in quite some time. My body actually felt groggy because it wasn’t used to getting so much sleep. We had a little something to eat and then sent Tiff and her roommate off to class for the day. They told us that we could help ourselves to anything in the fridge or cupboards. This was not a good idea for their sake. We did indeed help ourselves. We eventually ended up buying groceries later to help make up for the havoc we wreaked in the kitchen.

While Tiff was gone to class, we were able to do our laundry in Tiff’s washing machine. We had successfully made it three weeks without doing any laundry. I found that this is only possibly by wearing the same shirt for a week straight and wearing your socks and underwear into the shower to get them clean. While the laundry was washing, Ben and I had to find a way to entertain ourselves. We came up with a card throwing game where we simply sat on the couch and tried to flip cards into a basket half way across the room. We used tennis style scoring in honor of Wimbledon. Sadly, I find it hard to admit that Ben came back to win three sets in a row to take the match in four sets. After the match, we were dripping with sweat from the intense competition (and possibly the 90 degree temperature) so we called it quits. We turned on the television hoping to find something in English. Nothing was, but we were able to determine from the Spanish news that somebody had died while running with the bulls either that morning or the previous morning when we were there. We didn’t see any major scene while we ran so I am guessing that it was the day after, however, we did see multiple ambulances driving away afterward. Either way, we did know that nobody had died since 1995 so it was quite a milestone day.

Anyway, once Tiff got back, Ben and I went grocery shopping. It was an amazing feeling that we could buy whatever we wanted and would actually be able to cook and prepare it. We bought five pounds of potatoes, six pork chops, a bag of frozen green beans, a dozen eggs, and a liter and a half of milk. It was all for a reasonable price as well, so we were pretty excited.

Once we got back, the four of us found a Chinese restaurant with decent prices. It wasn’t a buffet like we had been craving, but it would do. I ordered the family size plate of fried rice. The server kept thinking I meant something else because it was meant to feed four people. I had to explain to him through hand gestures that it was exactly what I wanted. He laughed and nodded “okay.” The food was delicious and I was stuffed. It was a great meal. We then went to the train station to purchase our tickets to Barcelona for the following day. We are going to be happy to get out of Spain simply because they charge us 7.00 Euros for every ticket as a reservation fee even though the Eurail Pass is advertised as unlimited free travel. Hopefully the other countries are not nearly as expensive.

Once we got back, it was still terribly hot outside, so the three of us went to the beach. On our way to the beach, Ben and I were going to attempt to fit in with the locals by purchasing a couple Speedos. We didn’t have a swim suit so we thought that the lightest version would be best. We went to a small convenience store that had a couple racks of beach attire. We found a rack with a couple dozen Speedos and started looking through them. We thought they looked rather small and they only had colors like bright yellow, pink, and powder blue. Right on the verge of us picking one out to purchase, a gentlemen came up to us and informed us that those were for girls. Fighting embarrassment, we went and checked out the two male Speedos. Both were black and twice the price of the others. We decided that a black Speedo might act like an oven; an oven cooking rocky mountain oysters. We passed.

We went to the beach and ended up going into the Mediterranean Sea in our shorts. The Mediterranean is terrible salty. I hardly even had to tread water because I practically floated. We ended up staying on the beach for quite a few hours. It was slightly before midnight before we decided that we should go home and cook dinner. I ended up cooking the pork chops and green beans (just like Granny taught me). Ben was in charge of the mashed potatoes, his specialty. Tiff decided that she was going to cook some pasta. I’m not sure how we ended up eating all that food among the three of us, but I could hardly move when we got done eating. Soon after, we crashed again for another awesome sleep on the couch.

July 11

(16:30) We slept in late yet again. I am afraid that we are spoiling ourselves with all this sleep and it might be hard to get back to our old sleep schedule in a couple days. We packed up are bags with all our clothes that were now dry, showered, and started making breakfast. We had some potatoes left and the dozen eggs, so it looked like we would be stuffing ourselves again. I fried up the potatoes and Ben scrambled the eggs. Again, afterward we had to collapse on the couch because we were having a hard time moving. Normally back at home, this amount of food would be a normal meal. Here, it was a ridiculous amount of food that my stomach still isn’t used to. I hope it doesn’t get used to it either, because I know this trend won’t last long.

After we recovered enough to move, I used Tiff’s sewing kit to sew my button back on my khaki shorts. I lost two off the button-up fly since we’ve been here so sewing the top one back on basically added another pair of shorts to my wardrobe. Meanwhile, Ben was going through house cleaning withdrawals so he took the opportunity to spit shine the entire kitchen. It was funny to see him get upset with things being out of place before he realized that it wasn’t his house and he didn’t have to worry about it.

Once we left the apartment, we picked up one of Tiff’s friends and headed to an internet café to book a room in Barcelona for the night. It took us way too long, so I wasn’t able to update anything online like I had hoped. I did have time to check my bank account to find out I was charged for a night at a hostel in which we didn’t even stay, so I’m going to have to try and find a time and a way to sort that mess out. Anyway, the four of us then went to the train station to catch the train to Barcelona which means the blog is now updated to the second.

(24:00) The train ride to Barcelona was long and tedious due to the fact that the train company decided to use their oldest, slowest train they had for one of the most popular routes in the country. The trip took over five hours and the train was twenty minutes late to begin with. Ben and I had to sit in seats that were facing two other seats so we had no leg room whatsoever. Luckily, the view was pretty amazing, especially as we got closer to Barcelona. The last leg of the trip was right along the coast of the Mediterranean. We saw miles of beaches and a rocky coastline. There were points when we would be hovering over the water on a bridge on the edge of a cliff and then instantly be inside a tunnel going through a cliff. It definitely helped to pass the time.

Once we arrived, we realized that we again had failed to plan accordingly. Our first task was to get a train toward Marseilles the next day. We stood in line at one booth and once we got to the front, all they could tell us was that we had to go to another booth. Once we made it through that line, they told us that we had to go to a different booth. Finally, the third booth told us that there were no trains toward Marseilles until Monday night. We told him that we didn’t care where we had to go to find a train to Marseilles, we just needed to get there by early Monday. All he could tell us was to get a ticket to go to another station and they might have a train going that way. I can’t tell you how disappointed we are with the Spanish train system. You would think that if every train is always booked solid days in advance, that you could make more money by having more trains running. Then again, the Spanish do take a four hour break in the middle of each day and call it Siesta. Just add it to the list of cultural differences we have experienced.

Anyway, once we got through with the ticket people, we then realized that we had no idea where our hotel was. We had the address but had no idea where the road might be. We asked some locals, but they had no clue. We later found that this was because the street is only a couple blocks long. We started walking away from the train station until I spotted an internet shop. We used it to find the general direction of our hotel, which was actually quite a ways away. The next task was to find out what subway line would get us the closest. We had to walk back to the train station to find the metro. Since Tiff’s friend Chauna speaks fluent Spanish (being from Texas) we were able to ask for directions from the locals. They are all very nice and helpful, but only a few speak English.

It was about 11:00 pm before we even figured out where we needed to go. At that point, Ben and I hadn’t eaten anything since 11:00 am this morning. We had eaten such a big breakfast that we didn’t even think about food until we were half way to Barcelona. We walked in circles around the metro station before we figured out which one we needed to take. Once our train arrived, we had to push our way onto the train just to have enough space for the four of us. I accidentally drilled a guy in the face when I swung around with my backpack on and I’m pretty sure I leaned against another girl the whole time just to stay upright. Once we got out of there, I had sweat pouring down my face and I couldn’t feel my left arm from holding myself up. When we finally got to the hotel room, all we could think about was getting food. We asked the lady at the front desk where we could get food this late. She directed us back to the metro station that we had just gotten off. We walked back there and was walking up to a restaurant right as the lights went out. We then walked to another bar close by. We asked if we could order food (or I should say that we asked Chauna to ask if we could order food) but they said the grill was closed. The waitress told us that we could order cold salads though, so we sat down and told her what we wanted. A few minutes later she explained to Chauna that they didn’t have any so there was no food. I saw that they had a little snack food bar with chips and candy bars so I ate a few things from that to hold me over. We sat around for a little while before heading back to the hotel. Once we got there, I went in search of a vending machine. The one with candy in it was not working, but then I turned and saw the most glorious site. There was a vending machine with frozen dinners in it and a microwave in the common room. I was in heaven with whatever kind of meat and potatoes that I bought. I still don’t know what exactly I ate, but it was tasty and filling.
After that, we went back up to the room and I immediately laid claim to the bath tub. They have a really nice bathroom here with a huge bathtub. I drew myself a bath and laid in it for quite some time. I had been awhile since I had been able to clean myself and have a towel to dry off with after. I had become so used to air drying that I found myself squeegeeing the water off my body with my hands before I got out of the tub. I was now full, refreshed, and ready for bed.

Sorry for not making any post recently. We haven't had internet in a while. We found some in Pamplona but don't expect to have it again for awhile. I will post again as soon as possible.

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July 4

Last night we just relaxed on the boardwalk alongside the Tilley River next to our hostel. We were just enjoying the river and the people passing by until a couple of guys next to us decided to light up a joint. We were down wind so the smell of marijuana coaxed us into going back inside. It is quite odd to see people smoking weed and drinking beer out in the open on the busiest intersection in town. This is just another of many cultural differences we have experienced thus far.

This morning we woke up late (but not late enough to miss our free breakfast of course). We didn’t have a plan yet for the day so we began searching for something to do for the day. We decided that we would travel to the Irish west coast to check out a popular town of Galway, known for its beautiful coastline. We needed to leave the hostel for the train station around 12:30 pm to make it to our train. At around noon, I began to bake my beef and kidney pot pie in the hostel’s oven. I had just finished baking it and was prepared to take it with me as we left for the train when I walked through the kitchen to find Ben just putting spaghetti in his pot of boiling water . It was almost 12:30 pm already. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to our train on time so I will have to visit Galway on my next trip to Ireland.

We walked to the train station anyway to see if there was another excursion we could embark on. We inquired of the service desk if there was any near-by towns of interest to which we could make a day trip (or actually a half-day trip). She told us of the small town of Kildare, known for its two old-style churches and its Japanese gardens. It was about a forty-five minute journey away from Dublin.

We arrived with no clue as to what we were expecting to accomplish in Kildare, but we were completely reliant on the hospitality of the Irish to get us around. Basically, all we did was walk to the two churches, snap some pictures, walk to the local grocery store (the biggest we have seen yet) and then come back home. We did, however, start a walk toward the Japanese gardens until we got about halfway there. At that point, we realized that neither one of us was willing to walk a few miles one way just to see some flowers.

After we returned to our hostel, we waited a few hours before deciding we should go out to celebrate our Independence day in a foreign land. Our French friends had stopped by the hostel earlier and wanted to go out later so I told them to meet us at a certain club. The club was supposed to be putting on a special 4th of July celebration to which our hostel gave us free tickets. At 10:30 pm, we went to the club as the doors had just opened. We were the first ones in the door and the place was absolutely dead. We then left and went to a couple famous Temple Street bars. No one could really afford a drink (about 8 USD a piece) so we just sat and talked for the most part. We did enjoy the company of our French lady friends; they are quite interesting. We exchanged a bit of information on cultural differences which left all of us in shock at certain points. The thing that seemed to shock them the most was how we didn’t know many Michael Jackson songs. We ended up staying out until 3:00 am and we had to wake up at 7:00 am the next morning to make it to our train to take us to Cork to see the Blarney Castle/Stone.

July 5

We woke up at 9:00 am. Our intentions of awaking at 7:00 am were foiled by the inability of Ben’s I-pod’s alarm feature. Of course, there was the slight possibility of operator deficiency. Either way, we missed our free bus from Cork to Blarney by missing the earlier train. We eventually had to pay 6.20 Euros to take the bus. The cost of admission to the Blarney Castle was 8.00 Euros. With a grand total of 14.20 Euros (about 20 USD) it looked like we would be sleeping outside yet again tonight.

Inside the castle area, there were many information stands telling about the rich history of the area of Blarney. There are many centuries of history and myths that the signs attempted to sort out. The first thing we did was make it across the Blarney River to go the castle. This wasn’t much of a feat since the Blarney River is approximately five feet across, just big enough that they had to build a bridge. We stepped inside the castle, which was built on the side of a rocky bluff. It didn’t seem to tremendous, but as you got closer, it seemed more and more imposing. We later found that this was because the castle leaned slightly forward, so it actually seemed taller than it was while standing directly below it.
Our next task was to climb to the top of the castle and gain eternal eloquence by kissing the famous Blarney Stone (rated the dirtiest surface on earth). We climbed and explored the castle, which was not designed for six-plus-footers as we soon found out. It really wasn’t that big, but since it was actually the living quarters of many famous Irish people, I’m sure it made for a tough house to keep clean. At one point during our climb up the spiral staircase to the top, we were looking around in a room. A sign told us to check out the fireplace where they used to roast whole pigs and other beasts for family feasts. We looked for a couple minutes before we looked up and realized that we were actually standing inside the fireplace.

We finally got to the top and made our way over to kiss the famous stone. For those who don’t know, the Blarney Stone is at the bottom of an overhanging ledge at the top of the castle. In order to kiss it, you must grab hold of the two support bars, lean completely backwards over a gap with nothing but the ground below, and kiss it upside down. This reminds me of the effort I had to put in to get my first kiss…haha (except in this case, the term “bending over backwards“ was a bit more literal). It was a quick adventure; so quick that I couldn’t even get Ben’s camera turned on before he was done bending over to make his move on the rock. However, I took my time and romanced the Stone a while longer and was able to get my picture taken mid-smooch while sporting my Munger Softball t-shirt. Maybe the gift of eloquence will transfer over to the ball field back home.

Anyway, after I put down the rumors of myself and the Blarney Stone being in a serious relationship, we proceeded to check out the rest of the surrounding area. It wasn’t anything too spectacular, but I figured we paid twenty bucks to get in so I was going to get my money’s worth picture-wise. After about a two hour excursion around the Castle and surrounding areas, we headed toward the grocery store in town. After we came out, we went to the bus stop to find our bus had just left twenty minutes ago and the next one wasn’t due for another hour and a half. We ended up finding a nice bench under a tree to shelter us from the intermittent rain until our bus came. We talked to some fellow Americans as our bus was approaching and ended up riding the same train back to Dublin an hour and a half later. Once we got back to our hostel, where they had let us store our bags even though we had checked out, we grabbed our bags and went to hang out in the common room until we got kicked out. Since we didn’t have a place to stay for the night and it was raining and about 55° F outside, we were going to stay as long as they let us stay. We ended up falling asleep and not waking up until sometime in the early morning. We actually had to leave for our train before we got kicked out. Maybe the hostel has a “buy four nights, get one free night in the common room” policy.

July 6

Today was our most uneventful day yet. We were to embark on our journey back to mainland Europe. This journey consisted of catching a train at 7:30 am, walking to our ferry, and waiting. Since there was only one train that left from Dublin to Rosslare Europort (where our ferry sailed from) we had to wake up early just to do a bunch of waiting around. After a three hour train ride to the port, we had to wait for three more hours just to check in. Once we checked in, we had to wait another hour before we could board the ferry. Once we boarded the ferry, we had to wait another hour (which turned into an hour and a half after a delay) before we took off. Then the ferry ride was going to take about eighteen hours. There are many types of entertainment on the ferry, but we were both too tired to make it to anything. Besides that, we had ten foot swells on the ocean, so my stomach wasn’t feeling great. I think I was the last one in our room of reserved seats to go to sleep, which was around 9:00 pm. I may have also been the first to wake up, around 9:00 am (10:00 am French time). I can’t believe how much these people can sleep.

July 7

(20:00) Today we have done nothing but travel and wait around for our next train. When we landed in Cherbourg, we had to walk about two miles to find the train station. Once we got there, we tried to talk our way through the ticket booth to get tickets to Royan, France. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to communicate well enough to get to our desired destination. Instead, it looks like we are on our way to Bordeaux, France. It is quite a coincidence since our French girls live there and we told them that we would not be visiting their town on our trip. All well, looks like we lied.
Our train itinerary for the day looked something like this: Cherbourg to Lison (0:45 travel time), wait for our train for an hour and a half, Lison to Rennes (2:40 travel time), wait an hour, Rennes to Nantes (2:15 travel time), wait a half hour, Nantes to Bordeaux (3:00 travel time). All in all, we will travel for over twelve hours today.

The most interesting part of the day so far was when we witnessed a girl in the train station in Lison smoking. The reason this was interesting was because she was all by herself and she looked to be about ten or twelve years old. It was one of those moments when Ben and I saw her at the same time, turned and looked at each other simultaneously, and just shrugged our shoulders wondering what was next.

It has rained everywhere we have been so far today. I think it has literally rained everyday, at least once, since we were in London. It feels like we have one rain cloud following us around the entire continent. Hopefully, Spain will be a little kinder.

July 8

(7:00) We arrived in Bordeaux around 1:00 am. We went to the information booth to find that the next train to Pamplona didn’t leave until 10:30 am and the ticket booths didn’t open until 5:00 am. Our next task was to find a place to sleep. We only had to kill about four hours in order to get to the ticket booth as it opened. We went in search of a nearby park. We found a small one very close to the train station, but it was already littered with bodies, apparently in a similar situation. We moved on and found a small grassy area near an expressway entrance ramp. Since it had been raining everywhere we went, we decided that we needed to find a overpass or bridge to stay close to in case it did indeed rain. We set up camp behind a row of bushes, but just as we began to get comfortable, sure enough, the rain came yet again. We had to move to the bridge we had picked out earlier. It was actually an underpass for a bike path. Apparently, this is the popular area for bums to come and pee; it smelled like urine and rotten fish. However, it was better than being wet. The only problem was trying to find a spot to sleep in the dark that wasn’t disgusting. I knew it would be interesting in the morning to find out what exactly we had laid out on. 5:00 am rolled around too soon, and we had to make our way back to the train station in the cold to find out what train we would be taking. I then realized that I had bedded down in something rancid and now my blanket smells almost unbearable. I wonder how long it will be before I am able to wash it (probably not until I get home). We did catch a break at the train station though. There was an older lady training a younger guy at the ticket booth. She seemed to guide him to find us a short cut. We no longer had to wait until 10:30 am to depart. We would be able to catch the 7:00 am train into Spain and then transfer to another train that would get us there quicker. Right now we are on our way to crossing the Spanish border toward Pamplona. I am going to try to get some actual sleep before we arrive.

We arrived in Irun, Spain at around noon today. We had one transfer train at the border which took awhile to transfer over to even though it was only an eight minute ride. We immediately noticed three things in Spain: you can use the restrooms free of charge, there are drinking fountains, and it was raining again. We had a four hour lay over until our train toward Pamplona. We had an interesting conversation with a Canadian at the train stop telling us all about running with the bulls. We are two hours away from Pamplona, yet we have seen at least five or six people wearing the traditional white uniform with a red scarf of the San Fermine festival. We plan on purchasing our outfits before we run tomorrow. The more we hear about this festival the more we want to just get in and get out. We are still hoping to meet up with Tiff tomorrow or the next day. It will be difficult, however, because we don’t have internet and don’t know the specifics of where she lives. We did find an internet place that charged us fifty cents to use the internet for fifteen minutes. It was quite interesting watching Ben trying to finagle a Spanish keyboard to work everything since his mouse was broken. We were able to send out a few contact messages, but when we came back to check if we had any responses at 3:00 pm, the place had already closed. Hopefully we can find internet in Pamplona or we may not get a hold of Tiff at all.

We arrived in Pamplona about 6:00 pm. The San Fermin Festival is CRAZY! I’ve never seen anything like it. I will try to post video and pictures soon, but they don’t show how many people there were there. Everywhere you look for about a square mile, people were shoulder to shoulder wearing all white with red handkerchiefs around their necks and red sashes around their waists. We went around and checked out all the bands marching through the streets and the people putting on unique displays. We ended up sitting on a bench talking to a Glenn from Atlanta, Georgia. He was telling us about all the times he has come to run with the bulls. He gave us some good advice and got us fired up to run. We walked around a little more and found a huge stage where a live band was playing at midnight that night. We were pretty tired from not getting any real sleep since the ferry, so we went in search of a place to take a nap. Since people were everywhere and the streets were nothing but trash, there weren’t too many options. It was slightly cold and we had checked our bags at the city hall building so we didn’t have any access to our clothes. We ended up walking down into a parking garage and falling asleep lying in a corner on the pavement. We were awoken by a policeman informing us that we weren’t supposed to be there. So we got up and went back outside into the cold. We ended up walking around and going into random bars and stores just to get into a warm place. By the time the concert started, we were just warm enough to stay outside and dance around a little to the music. The start of the concert at midnight officially ends the blog for the day. We were to run with the bulls at 8:00 am sharp the next morning.

July 3
(21:00) We woke up around 8:30 am to get our free breakfast again. There were two new people in our room that came in about 1:00 am last night. They woke me up when they came in and when they left early this morning. I did feel bad though, because we had all our clothes hanging over the railings of their beds to dry. We didn’t expect anyone to be coming after midnight I guess. After we got ready to go, we started walking toward the Connelly train station to get on the DART to head toward Howth for the day. Once we got close to the station, we could easily see it, but couldn’t find a way to get in. We asked for directions and eventually managed to come in some obscure door. We found out after we had entered that it was the back door for employees to enter or something. Needless to say, we just walked up onto the platform and could have gotten onto any train without having to go through the gated turnstiles and showing our tickets.

Once we got to Howth, a small fishing town north of Dublin on the Irish Sea, we headed toward the fishing wharf. We were able to see the Eye of Ireland, a small, unsettled island just off the coast. The scenery was amazing. Pictures just don’t do justice to all the awesome scenic views we saw today. After we got done with the wharf, we got a map from the tourist office and started to head around the peninsula where Howth is located. The entire peninsula is full of rocky cliff sides and green hills. We found one area where you could climb down the cliff side and access a rocky beach to swim or wade out into the Sea. We got about up to our ankles before we decided that the temperature was like that of Lake Superior; too cold for enjoyment. We explored the trails around the cliffs a little longer before we started talking to two French girls. Their names are Natasha (pronounced Natasha) and Cecile. We ended up walking with them for about four hours around the peninsula even though they said they only wanted to go on a fifteen minute walk. The adventure got interesting from there.

Soon after we all started walking together, we met a dog who kept looking back at us as if we should follow him. No one else wanted to follow the pooch so I decided I should. The dog acted like Lassy; running ahead, then turning back to make sure I was still in pursuit. He led me down a path toward the cliff which eventually turned into concrete steps inlayed into the rock. I could see that the path led towards a secluded beach at the bottom of the drop. I wanted to go all the way but knew it would take some time to do so. Since the others were still waiting at the top of the cliff I only ended up going about one third of the way down. By the time I quit, the dog was already at the bottom looking up at me. I couldn’t believe how small the dog looked from that high up. I didn’t think we were that high until I saw the dog at the bottom. As I was walking back up to meet the others, I stepped in a pile of mud and it splattered all over my Velcros. My socks were so dirty after this that I ended up wearing them in the shower when I got back.

After walking around to the opposite side of the peninsula, we saw a neat lighthouse on the rocks, We weren’t allowed access to go see it though. We checked the maps and the girls decided that they wanted to go check out the field of rotedendrums (my spelling on this is so far off that spell-check doesn’t even have any suggestions) and the castle. We got lost and Natacha ended up stopping a car to ask for directions. At that moment, two ladies walked by and I asked them for directions as well. Then another lady stopped and told us of a “short cut” and also offered to drive us to the gate to enter the park area. So all four of us piled into her small vehicle and rode up the road a few hundred yards. We had to jump the fence to get in and then walked through the football pitch (soccer field) to get to the other side of the trees. On the other side was a golf course. We ended up walking all the way across this golf course to find a thicket and a stone wall from denying us any more advance in that direction. I walked through the thicket to what was on the other side of the wall. I managed to cut stabbed a million times by some sort of Irish poison ivy. My legs are still tingling all over from whatever plant this was. Anyway, I scaled the wall to find myself in someone’s back yard. Apparently, walking through somebody’s yard is a taboo in France, so we had to turn back. We then asked two golfers for directions toward the castle. They helped us out tremendously, although they did get a good chuckle out of our situation. They told us that we had to do a basic 180 and head backward. Eventually we found the castle. It was nothing special, but the adventure of getting there was well worth it. We then proceeded to walk back to the train station and ride with the girls back to Dublin. Their bus stop was right next to our hostel so we showed them where our hostel was and then went our separate ways. We may try to hang out once more before we leave on Sunday.

We then went back to our hostel. I took a shower while Ben prepared some spaghetti in the kitchen. Then I came down to eat my dinner which consisted of four hot dogs. I was so hungry since we hadn’t eaten anything during our entire adventure from about 9 am-5 pm. We watched some Wimbledon with some others. They were rooting for the guy from Scotland, Andy Murray, and we were quietly rooting for Andy Roddick. Roddick won of course so they were all disappointed. I think I even heard some bashing of America going on amongst them since they didn’t know we were American. I then came back up to the room to take a nap. We now have four other people in our room; one from Hungary, two speaking a language I haven’t pinpointed yet, and a girl who just walked in and said hi. We are now going downstairs to plan our trip to Cork on Sunday.

July 2

(12:00) I woke up at 6:30 am this morning. My watch uses Roman numerals instead of numbers so I though it said 12:00 pm before I realized I was holding the watch upside down. I fell asleep for a little while longer but made sure to wake up in time to get my free breakfast. The breakfast consisted of my choice of cornflakes or rice krispies, wheat or white toast, and coffee or juice. I never realized how good rice krispies and toast could taste. Sadly, I was stuffed after only a small bowl of cereal and two pieces of toast. I sat and drank some coffee and read the paper for about an hour before I went up to the room to wake Ben up before breakfast ended. Before we checked out for the day, we went to look at some of the videos and realized that they all had been deleted from the hard drive somehow. Now they come up on the computer but not the camera. Hopefully I will be able to upload them somehow. I have done a lot of updates on the videos; I am almost caught up.

We went for a walk to see the Dublin Castle and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It rained the whole time and I was worried that my computer and camera would get wet, but they are fine. The weather forecast says that it is going to rain everyday for the remainder of our stay in Ireland. Today was supposed to be the only day of sunshine, yet it hasn’t stopped raining yet. Besides the rain though, we are enjoying Dublin and all the people here. It is funny how well Dubliners follow stereotypical Irish protocol. It seems everybody is short with pale skin, rosy cheeks, and red hair. We walked by two twin Irish girls in front of our hostel as we returned from our walk. They were pretty good looking (so much so that it was worth putting in the blog I guess…haha). We are now relaxing in the common room waiting for the rain to stop and to find out if we will be staying here after tonight or moving on to another hostel.

(24:00) We ended up hanging out in the hostel until about 5:00 pm until we headed back toward St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the daily evening mass. It was quite interesting to partake in a traditional mass similar to thase of about 1,000 years ago. After the mass we walked around the inside of the cathedral and checked out the tombs of many famous Irish people including Jonathan Swift. Once we left the cathedral, we went to a couple local grocery stores to buy our meals for the next few days. Everything is ridiculously expensive, so we didn’t get much. I bought a loaf of bread, a ten pack of hot dogs, and some sort of pot pie in a can filled with steak and kidney meat. That should make for an interesting meal. We then went back to our hostel and checked out the pubs next door. We found out where the entertainment was and came back about an hour later to check it out. We saw a live band playing Irish music followed by an Irish dance group. The band was okay but the dancers were pretty awesome. We both had a Guiness draught while we sat and watched. It took me about an hour and a half to drink mine. Now I am not quite as excited about our idea of drinking Guiness on the coast of the Irish sea tomorrow. We might have to find another Irish beer to try (although we haven’t seen one can of Killian’s yet, so I’m not sure what else there is).

Right now, Ben is sleeping, of course, since he sleeps about twelve hours a day. We need to plan for the next couple days and tomorrow we are supposed to be on the beach all day so hopefully he can stay awake for more than fourteen hours one of these days….haha. I am off to my top bunk bed. I need to wake up by 9:00 am for my free breakfast again.

June 30

(22:00) Today we had to wake up relatively early to make it to our train to Manchester. I woke up at about 8:30 am and it took another half hour to get Ben up. It was okay though, because I actually planned for this in our morning itinerary. We had to make that long, treacherous bus trip to downtown London one last time. Once we got there, we had plenty of time to get to our train. We got to the train station early and was actually waiting on the platform for about ten minutes waiting for our train to show up. Our train was due any minute and there was still no sign of the train. We finally asked somebody and he checked his timetable and informed us that our train was leaving in five minutes on the other side of the station. We were a few hundred yards down the platform still and then had to run to the next terminal and sprint down that platform to make it to our train on time. It was hard enough walking in the heat with our packs on, let alone sprinting. By the time we got there, we were drenched in sweat and of course, our designated car was at the front of the train. We got there with less than a minute to spare and didn’t even get to sit down before our train took off.

The train ride flew by; two hour trips seem like nothing these days. It was interesting to see the countryside of central England littered with wildflowers, hay, and sheep. There were also many old cathedral-style churches spread out along the countryside, seemingly with no populations supporting them anymore. The skies were beautiful the entire trip…until we got to Manchester of course.

As we walked out of the train station, the sky was darkening and we had no clue what we wanted to accomplish in our nine hour stay there (except to check out Old Trafford Stadium of course). We went and got some lunch and then attempted to figure out the mass transportation system. We eventually made the half hour trip out to see the home of Manchester United. We were a few minutes late for the last tour, but we probably wouldn’t have coughed up the pounds to go on it anyway. They have quite the outfit inside that stadium. There is restaurants and bars and even a museum full of the rich Man-U history. The lady at the gate for the museum was nice enough to let us go into the trophy room free of charge; we just had to make sure we didn’t stray from her range of vision. We tried to sneak a peak at the inside of the stadium, but after taking an elevator all the way up to the executive suites, a janitor told us the only way to see it was to go on the tour. I’m just happy he didn’t get upset, because I’m pretty sure we weren’t supposed to be there.

After we got done with our own makeshift tour, we got back on the bus and rode back to downtown Manchester. There was really nothing to do for the next five hours until our next train left for Holyhead. We just sat at the train station while it rained steadily outside. It has rained everyday since our second day here. It rains so much that it actually is raining inside the train right now. I have to protect my computer to make sure it doesn’t get wet.

Well we are soon to arrive in Chester to cross over to our train to Holyhead. We supposedly have only five minutes to find our crossover train, but the people continually assure us that it is no big deal. “No worries mate!” they always tell us. Hopefully this crossover is less eventful than our previous five minute window to catch our train.

July 1

(1:30) Well our train was delayed twenty minutes for mechanical reasons but we were able to skip three stops because nobody was getting off so we made up the time. We arrived in Holyhead a little bit ahead of schedule actually and are now waiting to board our ferry. We should be leaving for Dublin in about an hour and should arrive in Ireland about two hours after that. We then are going to check into our hostel and crash. We have managed to not schedule any time for sleep tonight yet again.

(11:00) We made it to our ferry in plenty of time. The ferry was amazing! It was more like a cruise ship than a ferry. There were bars, restaurants, shops, and even a movie theater on board. Unfortunately, everything was extremely expensive and we were too tired to do anything. Actually, the only thing we found that we could afford with our remaining British Pounds was a scoop of butter. We found a couch to crash on and were both asleep before the ferry even left the port. Our captain woke us up with the announcement that we were pulling into the port in Dublin. It was 6:00 am when we arrived and it was raining yet again. I checked the weather forecast for our stay here and it looks like rain for the last four days of our stay in Ireland.

Once we got off the ferry, we found out that there was only one bus to transport us into the city centre. We didn’t want to pony up the 2.50 Euros to take it so we just took a nap until the rain stopped and then headed toward the city. About an hour and a half of walking later lead us to our hostel. We needed the help of a few nice Irish people to find our way. One guy actually walked us about halfway to our destination. We are already finding that the hospitality of the Irish is the best we have experienced so far.

Ben decided that he was sick of his Velcro shoes already since they were starting to fall apart and bothered his feet. We went to multiple shoe stores before he finally found a pair that fit him. He purchased them, put them on, and then threw the Velcros in the trash on the way out the door. I laughed because they didn’t even last two weeks and he didn’t want to carry them around for seven weeks to take them back.

Right now, we are just relaxing in the common room of the hostel, waiting to check in at 2:30 pm. It doesn’t look like they have internet here so we might have to pay to use a booth for an hour to check in. We are looking forward to a good night’s sleep and free breakfast in the morning.

(22:00) I got a nice nap in while waiting for check in. After we checked in, we showered and went for a walk around town. We now know that hostels don’t provide towels for you so we have been air drying after our showers since Paris. I don’t think Ben has even used any soap yet for his showers. I’m sure I would smell him if it weren’t for my own stench.

Anyway, Dublin is pretty awesome. They have Guiness trucks that haul Guiness beer by the 500 gallon drum! We saw a loading dock with at least twenty or thirty of them lined up! I think Ben took a picture. There is quite a few of spectacular sites just walking around town. However, most of them involve music and beer which costs a lot of money here. We found out today that Dublin is the most expensive city in Europe. This is not good for our budget if we actually plan on doing anything. We plan on just relaxing for the rest of the day, although we might have to walk next door to the pub and see if we can see some live music without buying anything. Tomorrow we hope to take the DART train to the northernmost section of town and relax on the beach of the Irish sea. We have heard a lot of people tell us how relaxing and beautiful it is. I am hoping the internet starts cooperating better here; I have a bunch of updates to make.

June 29

The day started late as we didn’t wake up until noon. I guess we had too much fun last night; despite our best interests for today. At noon, it was already scorching hot outside. We had to get into a cramped bus that was like an oven and ride for about an hour. It got to the point where we actually got off the bus halfway through our trip to wait for the next bus just to get some fresh. We were drenched in sweat already before we even arrived in downtown London. We read in the newspaper later that day that London was experiencing an extreme heat wave and the Mayor actually called a state of emergency and had a lot of things shut down. Great timing on our part. At least we had a shower at our disposal when we got back.

While we were downtown, we had to check out all the main tourist attractions. These seem to be the least enjoyable parts of our experiences in London and Paris, but it’s something that we must do of course. It’s not that we weren’t impressed by Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye, but it seems like we are impressed only for about five seconds for each attraction and then it’s on to the next. Two hours of steaming hot bus travel doesn’t really make it seem worth it at the moment, although now I can definitely say it was worth it.

There are a few cultural things that we have been able to pick up on in our four days here. One is that they love their McDonald’s and Pizza Hut restaurants. Our bus actually passed eight Mickey D’s on the way into town. They also have an extreme amount of fast food chicken restaurants and grocery stores in the area of our hostel. I’m not sure if the rest of the outskirt neighborhoods are the same way, but there are literally seven or eight restaurants similar to KFC within walking distance of our hostel. The funny thing is that they are all extremely cheap and they all have their “unbeatable deals” posted all over their storefronts. They also all have a chicken as their symbol/mascot which seem to all be drawn by the same artist. It is a wonder how they all can stay in business. We have eaten eight “two chicken strip sandwich w/fries” in two days together. They are good and cheap; right up our alley.

Another thing we now realize about London (and probably the UK in general) is that they love Michael Jackson. I’m sure it is only this evident because of his death, but we hear his music and see his fans wearing his t-shirts everywhere. Yesterday, some random guy walked up to us and shouted “Don’t stop ‘til you get enough!” This of course is a line from a MJ song. It was kind of funny now in hindsight (with respect to the King of Pop of course) when we learned about his death. Since we were in Paris when it happened, we saw his photos littered all over the newspapers. However, since we can’t read French, we had no idea why he was receiving so much attention until we got to London. It was just kind of a weird way to learn about something that is such a big news story.

I finally got the computer to charge, but the internet here is pretty shotty. I uploaded all our latest pictures, but there is quite a few videos that I would like to post that just aren’t working right now. Hopefully there will be a place in Manchester tomorrow or Dublin the following day that will work better. Right now I am just catching up on all the updates for the past couple days. Ben is hanging out in his room with all his roommates. They are pretty interesting people as I may have mentioned previously. Ben has definitely taken a liking to them and they are able to put up with him so it’s a match made in heaven. Well I need to go to bed now so I can make sure to be up in time to make that miserable bus trip one more time.

June 27

We woke up around noon (or “mid-day” as they call it here) today from our camp in Regents Park. We didn’t get any rain although the forecast called for it. I got cold during the night because all our warm clothes were still wet from the night before, but we made it through alright. I didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight; partly because of our four hour “nap” in the afternoon and partly because I just couldn’t get comfortable. However, when we picked up camp to get away from the long grass and bugs, I realized that I had been sleeping on a big fallen tree branch, so that may have led to some of the discomfort. It didn’t help that I had spiders and bugs crawling and flying around my head all night as well. I woke up twice with a spider crawling around on or near my face. When I packed my bag I had to pick off sixteen spiders from it. All and all though, I feel pretty refreshed.

We now have all our clothes lying out in the lawn to dry. I also did some laundry in the public bathroom today so those are lying out to dry as well. We have decided that our rainstorm the other night was actually a blessing in disguise. It was miserable for about an hour, but we did get a free shower, a free clothes wash, and a valuable lesson in choosing places to sleep outside. It has been four days now without a shower for me and five for Ben. The rain actually really helped us to rinse off and stay somewhat bearable, especially for Ben who failed to bring any soap or deodorant along.

We are probably just going to chill in the park for the rest of the day until nightfall. Ben wants to go to the club with these girls he’s been talking to online. I’m not sure how that will work out with our backpacks and since we don’t have a way of getting a hold of them. I am now going to take the opportunity to watch some British football, some rugby, and some cricket.

June 28
Well we sat down to watch an intense game of what we thought was rugby, but it turned out to be Australian football as we found out from our roommates here at the hostel. Soon after the game ended, it began to sprinkle. As we looked toward the sky, we saw that the weather did not look promising. Remembering our lesson from two nights earlier, we ran for cover in the nearest pavilion. There we met a nice lady with a Russian accent who gave us the advice to go sleep in the train station if the ground gets too wet. It hadn’t been raining too badly yet, but we could see another big storm coming. Ben claimed that we had twenty minutes before it hit us. I thought we probably had only a couple minutes, but we decided to head towards the bigger pavilion in the center of the park. We made about 100 yards of progress before it started pouring on us. We quickly sprinted for the big pavilion with our packs feeling heavier than ever. By the time we got there, we were soaked and my blanket (strapped to the outside of my pack) didn’t fare too much better. We packed into the pavilion with another dozen or so people just before it started to hail. We talked for awhile to a Brit who had just moved back from New York. She didn’t seem to believe us that we were planning on sleeping in the park that night. After she left, we talked to a group who had just been finishing up there picnic in the park. One was a school teacher, another a doctor, and I’m not sure about the other two. They all had different accents though. One was from Ireland, another from Turkey, and another grew up in Britain, but both his parents were from the States. The Turkish lady was really nice; she insisted that we try all of her Turkish dishes that she had made. They were really good actually.

After the rain stopped and the group went home, we made our way back to the internet café. We got there around 8:00 pm but they were already closed. Everything closes early around here. Even the bars close at 11:30 pm according to the guys in the park. Anyway, we decided to head back to the train station to see if we could spend the night there. Once we got there, we realized that it was much too noisy and there were no benches to sleep on, so we went outside in search of a bed. Since it had rained so hard a couple hours earlier, anything grassy was still soaked, so we ended up finding concrete steps about a block away from station. The wind was blowing and the steps were cold, so I never really did any serious sleeping. All we had to do was make it until 4:30 am so we could get our bus passes for the day and ride out to our hostel. Once 4:30 am finally came around, we got on our bus and headed toward the hostel. Unfortunately, we rode about an hour to the end of the line before we realized that we had taken the wrong bus. We rode all the way back and got on the correct bus this time. After another hour-long trip (where my head kept crashing against the window every time I dozed off to sleep) we finally arrived at our hostel. Our watch had broken the day earlier so we didn’t even know what time it was. We knew check in was at 11:00 am but had to ask a guy standing in the hostel door what the current time was. He told us, but apparently we heard him wrong through his heavy accent. We thought it was 10:30 am, but it was actually only 9:30 am. We waited for a half hour to get in and all we could think about was crashing in our beds and sleeping the day away. Then, at what we thought was 11:00 am, we went into the hostel and they informed us that it was only 10:00 am and check in wasn’t until noon! The day just could not feel any longer. At that point, I had been up for twenty-four hours straight (minus the split seconds before my head hit bus window). So we walked around the neighborhood for a little while until we finally were able to check in. We immediately went up to our beds and crashed. We slept for about five hours before I woke up and convinced Ben that we needed to get up and do something with the day. While waiting for Ben to get out of bed, I took my first shower since our second day in Paris; it was quite refreshing to say the least. Ben was complaining that I made him get out of bed, and that his feet hurt, and that his calves were sore among other things. I guess I always thought I would be the one complaining about all that stuff. Anyway, Ben would later be grateful that I got him up; we ended up having a pretty fun night.

Our hostel is also a bar and a nightclub downstairs. We went to go check everything out but we never even made it inside the door. We started talking to a group of people outside on the sidewalk and we pretty much stayed there all night. We are finding that the people at this hostel are quite interesting, and everybody is really open and trusting., In my room, I have a girl from Melbourn, Australia in the bunk above me and a few other girls from all over Europe. Ben has got a group from Australia and New Zealand living in his dorm. Oh, and I actually mean “living”. They came there six months ago in search of a change in life and have been renting the beds by the week ever since. I guess tonight is the last night here for one of the guys. There is also a girl from California living in there. It is fun to talk to all of them to try to get their perspective on America and to make fun of their accents. Realistically though, we get made fun of more because we talk slower that any other accent. Well I am headed to bed for the night. Tomorrow we are going downtown to check out all the sites on our last full day in London. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to accomplish the “must-sees”.

June 25

(10:00)Yesterday was quite the day. We woke up at 8 am to go to the Lourve. After a lot of walking with our packs strapped on tightly we finally arrived at the Louvre around 10:30. We were able to check our bags thankfully, which allowed us to see the entire museum. It only took us five and a half hours. Needless to say, I won’t be needing to see any more art anytime soon. At one point during the walk through, we actually got so tired that we laid down on a bench and we both fell asleep in the middle of one of the galleries. Luckily I was awaken by Ben’s snoring. After the Lourve, we started our attempt to see the Arc of Triumph (I think that’s what it’s called anyway). The only good part of the walk was finding a French sandwich shop. I ate a delicious salami sandwich on French bread with a little grey poupon and Ben ate a hot dog. Nothing like flying all the way to France to experience French culture just to order a hot dog. He did say it was the best hot dog he’s ever had though (although that may be because it was the first authentic meal we’ve had since Toronto). Anyway, after about three hours of walking and not being able to get on the subway, we finally followed another guy’s lead and jumped the terminal and rode back to Versailles to take a nap.

After we made it to Versailles, we went in search of the free public park that we had strolled through the day before. We ended up finding a man-made pond with a grassy park surrounding it. There were a number of small groups of people just relaxing and drinking around the pond. We joined them by opening our bottle of wine back up, and then we remembered how awful it tasted the day before. Pretty soon, masses of people began gathering around this pond. Just before dark we decided that we didn’t want to stay there as there were about six police vehicles directly behind us. One cop had a spot light that he kept shining on the main crowd every once in a while. We walked about a half mile away before deciding that we should go back to the edge of the park to see what exactly was going on there. Nothing was happening so eventually we got our blankets out and laid against a tree. It was probably about 11:00 pm when we had both dozed off. When we woke up, it was 5:30 the next morning. I never knew that I could get exhausted enough where I could sleep six and a half hours against a tree. I was able to take a photo of the Palace of Versailles at sunrise though; hopefully it turns out. Anyway, we never found out what all those people we there for. If something special happened, we must have slept through it. There was litter all over the park when we woke up though.

We started walking at about 6:00 am this morning to find a train going toward the beaches of Normandy. Basically all we did was walk from one information booth to get directions to the location of the next information booth until we finally got on our train a few minutes ago which left at 10:10 am. So that takes us to now, four hours after we departed from Versailles, on a train headed toward Caen, France to see Normandy.

June 26
(4:00) Quite a bit has happened since we left for Caen. Our mothers are going to kill us when they here these stories I’m sure, but here we go.

Shortly after arriving in Caen, we found that the only way to get to the war sites and the Normandy Beaches was to rent a car. After finding out that a car rental would cost us 160 Euros for only eight hours, we realized that we would not be experiencing the Normandy Beaches. We then proceeded to find a park next to a cemetery and I slept for two hours against a tree. Ben snapped off a few photos of some of the bigger tombstones and then we were on our way back to Paris; about a two hour train ride. I did not even take one picture or video all day, yet somehow we managed to turn it into our most eventful day yet. About fifteen minutes before arrival in Paris, the ticket checker came around and checked our tickets for the first time during the entire trip. He explained to us in broken English that we were riding in first class and that our tickets were for second class. We then had to stand for the last fifteen minutes. Once we got back we spent two hours trying to navigate the subway to find a place to sleep. After countless mistakes of taking wrong trains and getting off too early, we just headed back to the familiar Versailles park where we had spent the previous night. We got all situated for sleeping against our tree and then a policeman came through the park with a spotlight, so we thought we should pack up quickly and move toward the rest of the public area, just in case we were in a spot we weren’t supposed to be. After the cop and passed through, we moved back to our spot and began to fall asleep. Ben was asleep and I was just dozing off when I heard a rumbling off in the distance. I feared the worst so I began to put my bag into the plastic garbage bag I had packed. The sky seemed fine for a few minutes until all of a sudden a lightning bolt struck and thunder cracked only about a half second later. That one was close! Ben (who didn’t even wake up on the plane when I punched his shoulder) jumped to his feet from a comatose sleep. We looked up and saw rain coming over the pond. We packed everything up as quickly as possible and tried to find shelter somewhere. Unfortunately, we were about a half mile from anything with a roof or canopy. We were soaked and were struggling to keep our packs dry. We realized at that moment that there was nothing we could do except walk towards the town of Versailles at 1:00 am in a pouring rain. We got quite a few looks from the town folk while we were walking with garbage bags over our shoulders with no shirts or shoes. All we knew was that we needed to find a roof or canopy to curl up under or we would freeze. We ended up staying under a small canopy over the sidewalk for over an hour while we waited for the rain to stop. Eventually it stopped long enough for us to make it to the train station which doesn’t open until 4:45 am. Right now, we are waiting for the train station to open up so we can begin to navigate toward our train that leaves at 7:13 am toward London. Just now, we had a cop stop his car to shine a flashlight on us thinking we might be bums or something I guess. Once he got a glimpse of my laptop, however, he figured we must just be night owls. I can not wait to sleep on the train toward London!

Paris

June 23

(18::00)) Last night was an interesting night. The bed in our room is a normal twin size bed that we are both sharing. Luckily we are not shy about cuddling I guess. Ben slept from 8 pm to 8 am and I’m not sure if he even moved the entire time. I, on the other hand, slept soundly from 10 pm-2 am, but woke up thinking it was morning and started getting ready to go for the day before I realized that I didn’t know how to tell time and that it was actually 2 am. So I proceeded to stay up to use the computer since I wasn’t tired at all. I took a couple hour nap at 5 am and we were out for the day.

We took the train to Versailles where we found just how extravagant the palace actually was. The pictures don’t do justice to the enormousness of the ponds and gardens. Ben and I walked around the entire pond which had to have been about a 5 mile walk. Thank goodness for my massaging gel insoles! We did take a break, however, at about the four mile mark where we both fell asleep against a tree in a garden. How you can sleep against a tree only 4 hours after waking up from a 12 hour sleep is beyond me, but I have video to prove that Ben was out cold. We pretty much crashed when we got back. Since our room is so small, our bed is right next to EVERYTHING, including the window. Therefore, I managed to get sunburned while taking a nap in bed. Well we are going out to explore a little more and maybe get our first meal that doesn’t include goldfish crackers, peanut butter pretzels, and granola bars.

(22:00) We just got back from a nice amble through another section of town in search of a grocery store. The one we wanted to go to originally was closed, but we stumbled upon another small store where we purchased a loaf of bread, some pre-sliced salami, and a bottle of wine. The bread was dry, the salami scanty, and the wine was…well, wine. I’m going to spend the rest of the night trying to convince Ben to stay in tonight.

Paris

June 21

Well we made it through check in and now I have an hour and a half to blow before our flight takes off. Our mothers were both crying as we left. Next, we had to sit through quite the ordeal while we were trying to go through security because some kid was screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time. He kept running away every time they tried putting him through the metal detector. We got through it though and then proceeded to get lost and got yelled at while trying to find our way back to wave goodbye. I’m not sure how we will navigate in the cities if we can’t make it 100 yards down the airport terminal without getting lost (haha…as if my mom wasn’t worried enough). Well I don’t want to wear the laptop battery down too much because we don’t know how long it will be before we can charge it again. See everyone in 62 days!

June 22

(6:30 Icelandic Time) We just landed in Reykjavik, Iceland where everything seems quite weird. We had less than three hours of darkness on the way over so we actually saw the sun set and rise within three hours. The airport in almost right on the coastline so all we saw was water on our decent. After we landed we could see nothing but green and purple for miles. They have no trees here but have fields of purple wild flowers blossoming right now. They speak their own native language of Icelandic which remains almost identical to the language of the Vikings. The total population of Iceland is 300,000 people with 60% of them living within Reykjavik. I wish I could claim to know this information first hand, but I got all these details from the plane ride over since I couldn’t watch any movies without headphones.

We leave for Paris in about an hour so I will hopefully make a post then.

(20:30 French Time) We searched for about 3 or 4 hours for a place to stay in Paris and finally found a super-tiny hotel room to stay in. My shoulders hurt like I’ve never felt before from carrying about 50 pounds for well over ten miles on foot. We were able to check out the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Eiffel Tower, and a few other neat places though. The hotel has internet and is right next to the Eiffel Tower and a McDonald’s, so I’m sure we won’t be straying too far tonight. I am currently trying to upload some pictures and videos to facebook, so hopefully it works.

June 20
Well tomorrow is the big day. We leave tomorrow at 10:00 AM to Toronto. Our flight leaves at 9:10 PM, but we need to check in at least 2 hours early, of course. For those of you that wish to contact us, we won’t have any cell phones or anything, but hope to connect to the internet as often as possible. You can facebook us or email me at bczimmer@svsu.edu. Hopefully I will be able to keep in touch with everybody, but if I am not able to respond, it is only because of limited time or internet access.

I would also like to add special thanks to those who have supported this trip financially, especially my grandparents, my parents, Aunt Susie and Uncle Tim, Aunt Deb and Uncle Phil, Del Benson, and Aunt Kay for all the help with the traveler’s insurance. And thanks to all who will be following along and keeping tabs. Hopefully we will not disappoint.

I will post again as soon as I have internet access in Paris!

May 21-ONE MONTH TO GO

Today is May 21, which means we have exactly one month until we fly out from Toronto to Paris. I am trying out this blog thing to see if it will work better than facebook for keeping everybody posted while we are on the trip.

Anyway, as far as the planning for the trip is going, it seems to finally be taking a toll on me stress-wise. I am not so nervous about the culture shock or general safety as much as I am about the specific itinerary that we are going to have to follow for the first couple weeks. We have three specific trains and two specific ferries that we need to catch within two weeks in order to make it to the next destination on time. I think once we make it through Ireland and get on the ferry with free showers, we will be able to relax a little bit and enjoy some free time.

I will try to leave a post before I go, and then I will post as often as I can while on the trip. I will also be trying to leave webcam posts either on facebook or on here the blogspot is capable.