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 |
5/14 - Portbou, Spain Damn the French. I'm in a train station in Portbou  (wherever the hell that is) and I'll be spending the night here. The people at the train station in Barcelona were remarkably uncoordinated. This morning they told me the strike was over, and sold me a ticket. When I got back in the evening, there was a notice saying that there were no international connections in France. I only had about 15 minutes before the train left, so I ran around trying to find out if it was going to Cerbere. After getting conflicting responses, I decided to just get on the train because everyone who was on the train was going to France. The train of course stopped at the Spanish/French border and would go no further. So it seems we're all spending the night here. Last night was a Kabul (This was the hostel where I'd attended the all-you-can-drink thing the week before. I decided that since I was stuck here I might as well stay there. It's quite the rowdy place, complete with beer vending machines in the common area) sanctioned pub crawl. They do these several times a week, but for some reason this one was free. As a result, it was absolutely mobbed. It started with close to 150 people (my estimate). I think these things normally sustain about 60. The first bar we went to was about the size of the Reef, with more floor space. You can imagine how crowded that was. After that we headed to the next bar, called Heavy Metal. The walls were covered in record covers, mostly heavy metal(duh) with a couple more more subdued ones thrown in for good measure. Next up was a rather touristy club, we got 2 for 1 coupons. That was followed by a more interesting club, but I was too drunk anyway at that point, so followed some other people who were going back to the hostel. There was a brief attempt at finding some food, but at 3:30 in the morning, options for people who don't know the city well are very limited. I managed to oversleep through my train this morning, (apparently that one actually made it to Nice). After buying my ill fated night trip ticket to Nice, I went to the Barcelona Zoo, which took up most of my day. I hadn't been to a zoo in a long time, and I really enjoyed it. The main attraction is Snowflake, the worlds only known existing albino gorilla. He made the cover of National Geographic in 1966 as a baby. He was half asleep when I was there, he looks exactly like a tired old man. Gorillas and other apes are always so interesting to watch because they look so human. You really have to wonder how far off we are from them. They also had a very entertaining section of small primates (tamarins, marmosets, etc). Other than that they had the fairly standard zoo selection. After the zoo, I had a final dinner consisting of Tapas, and headed off to the train of doom.
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