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 |
5/30 - Interlaken, Switzerland Finally managing to drag myself away from Interlaken. I'm serious this time, I'm physically on the train, about to go to Amsterdam. I spent the last few mornings convinced I was going to leave that night, and then changing my mind. I really liked this place, I'm seriously considering looking into employment here for next summer. It's just that cool. So anyway, I did actually get to skydive yesterday after a 2.5 hour weather hold. We were convinced we were not going to get to go. Miraculously, the clouds cleared up for about 45 minutes, enough time to get 2 planes up and get us all up there. During the wait all nervousness was gone and replaced by boredom and frustration. As soon as the plane took off, it all came back. The thought of doing it was much scarier then the actual jump. It's was good that this was a tandem jump (qualified jumper strapped to my back), because I don't think I could have pushed myself out the door. The feeling of freefall only lasted about 5 or so seconds, even though the actual fall before the chute is pulled is about 45 seconds. After that first bit your body adjusts to the fall, and you don't have that stomach churning feeling. Still, the feeling of dropping through the air like that (at around 125 miles an hour) is just indescribable. After that the chute opens and you're jerked violently out of free fall. We then started doing turns and spins which were fun, albeit painful (the harness really pulls hard on your legs). The landing hurt my feet a bit, but other that went fine.  Oh yeah, at some point in the jump, one of my contacts popped out from the force of the wind (even with goggles on), something I didn't realize until much later (I now have no extra contacts left, and just under 5 weeks to go). Took a nap when I got back to the hostel. The movie of the evening was Rounders, which I of course watched (I'm so starved for movies right now). The evening was similar to the others, hanging out and drinking. At one point we went to another hostel (the Funny Farm) where they had a big fire going. The next morning I had canyoning scheduled for 9:00, which kinda hurt a bit after the drinking. I was kind of annoyed at myself the whole morning, until we hit the water, at which point I was having too much fun to feel hungover. This one was much further away than the other one, I think we drove most of the way to Lucerne. According to the guides, this canyon was about the most challenging you can do on a guided tour with no experience. It was incredible. The highlight for me was the many jumps, most of which were bigger than the one we did in the other canyon. I think the biggest one was 25-30 feet. My confidence was a little higher from the other canyon and skydiving, but I still got jittery before each one. I think I've experienced more free fall in the last 3 days than I have in my whole life. This canyon also had a lot of slides, which were fun, but somewhat painful. I have several bruises from them, and I pulled out both of my shoulders again on one of them. They vary from straight drops, to ones that turn you mid way down. There was also two sections of rappelling, although one was more just being lowered through the air down a waterfall. There was one part near the end after the biggest slide were you could jump off a rock into a pool repeatedly (5 feet or so). Because it was easy we were doing flips into the water, which was so fun. We finished off the trip with cheese sandwiches and beer. Went back to the hostel, took a shower, got my refund for the previous night (if you do 2 activities, your third night is free), grabbed some food, watched the first half of Goodfellas, then walked to the train station.
|