So here is my travel journal from my backpacking trip to Europe. It's more involved than my day log stuff that's already been up the site. There has been some complaining (you know who you are) that my daylog was rather boring and that it focused too much on the details of transportation. I can't promise that this is less boring, but's there's certainly a hell of lot more of it. Occasional parts of the journal have been omitted to protect the (not-so)innocent. These parts really weren't that common, but hey - use your imagination. Keep in mind that this is a journal and things like punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph breaks, grammar, and spelling may or may not been a part of the writing process. Not to mention my almost criminal use of parenthesis. Like my pictures, the writing is quite erratic as far as consistency of content. The journal style kind of mutates over the course of the trip. Read at your own risk.
 4/28 Cincinnati 4/30 Paris 5/02 Paris 5/03 Paris 5/04 Bayeux 5/06 Toulouse 5/07 Barcelona 5/08 Barcelona 5/09 Madrid 5/11 Salamanca 5/12 Salamanca 5/13 Barcelona 5/14 Portbou 5/15 Narbonne 5/17 Nice 5/18 Venice 5/20 Naples 5/21 Rome 5/22 Rome 5/24 Florence 5/25 La Spezia 5/26 Lucerne 5/29 Interlaken 5/30 Interlaken 6/03 Amsterdam 6/04 London 6/06 Salisbury 6/09 Nottingham 6/11 Edinburgh 6/13 Kyleakin 6/15 Dublin 6/17 Dublin 6/23 Hamburg 6/27 Brussels 6/29 Berlin 7/01 Prague 7/02 Munich 7/03 Munich |
5/12 - Salamanca, Spain Again, I'm not actually in Salamanca, I'm on the train, heading back to Madrid, where I'll catch the overnight to Barcelona. From there I'm leaving Spain and heading to Nice,either tomorrow morning, or on the overnight, depending on what hostel reservations I can get. After that, most likely Italy. I got into Salamanca fine yesterday afternoon. Very nice little town, houses the oldest university in Spain (founded 1218).  Great architecture, fun town to just walk around in. It was very nice to get out of the big city, I really didn't enjoy Madrid, for various reasons. Walked around trying to find a hostel, because I of course didn't have any reservations. This was not only out of laziness(I'm not denying this was a factor), but also I really wanted to see the hostels before getting a room, after the few duds I'd had. After several ones that were either full or too expensive, I settled on the HI hostel in town (I found this online, and as far as online listings, it's the only one in town). It was mostly empty, but there were a few people to talk to which was an improvement over the last couple of days. One guy was in the process of getting an apartment here, held been apparently financing his stay through blackjack. Apparently he could get away with stuff here that he got he got kicked out of Vegas (counting cards?). Or so he said.... I also met this woman named Debbie who has been travelling for about three years. I hung out with her most of the evening, doing the tapas bar hopping thing, which I'd yet to do, even though I've been in Spain for a week now. Fun evening, amusingly she happened to have lived in Atlanta (albeit briefly), and she also was quite computer literate, so that made for good conversation. The fact that she hadn't spoken to a native English speaker in 4 months (apparently she'd been working as live in english conversation teacher), didn't hurt either. Walking around at night is even nicer than during the day, the lights are set up perfectly, so all of the cathedrals, squares, and sculptures look amazing. Earlier in the day I'd had lunch at the Tintin restaurant (as in the Belgian comic book character - I'm guessing it's a chain). I ordered a hamburger, which was the least cooked hamburger I've ever had (all pink - on the outside!). I couldn't quite bring myself to eat the whole thing. I think I'm going to stop trying european versions of American food, because it can get a wee bit scary. Today I started off at the train station, vaguely planned out the itinerary mentioned above. My stated goal for the rest of the day before my train left was to find a place to do laundry and find some books. I found both, but of course they were closed until 4:30 because it was siesta time. That put laundry out of the picture because my train left at 6:10, but still left time to get some books. I just started reading High Fidelity(they had a very small, but random english section). So far it's exactly like the movie, which is of course very good.
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