Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Happy Holidays!!!



Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!


I am leaving for my 15 day Eurotrip with Leanna in less than 24 hours and the fact that I will not be spending the holidays with my family is starting to sink in. It is such an odd concept for me. I am really excited about going on this trip and I know my family wants me to have an amazing time so I'm trying not to feel too guilty about not being with them for "the most wonderful time of the year." There is no way that I could be going on the trip or spend a year in a foreign country without their love and support. I'm going to miss all the family traditions associated with the next few weeks, but I know I will appreciate them that much more next year. And with a little luck I'll make some awesome memories this year to treasure for the rest of my life. So everyone enjoy your holidays, I'll be thinking of you and wishing you the very best!

Love,
Julie

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Celebrating the end of the Autumn term

Me and Peggy in Rottingdean

To celebrate the end of the term, Peggy came down to visit Brighton on Friday. She wanted to see some of the southern country before returning to Livingston County on Tuesday. We took the bus out to Rottingdean to see the chalk cliffs and the Rottingdean Imp. The chalk cliffs in Rottingdean are roughly the same as the White Cliffs of Dover, just less famous and much closer to Brighton. It was SOOOO windy on the shore. We walked down to the seafront and the wind was even strong than it was when we were on top of the cliffs. I had already been to Rottingdean with my folklore class so I showed Peggy so of the landmarks in town that we had stopped by including the Rottingdean Imp. We both made wishes but I'm not sure he heard them because of all the wind.

We went back into Brighton and walked around the Lanes and the North lanes for a while. We both got hot milkshakes at Shake-away. Peggy had never been there before so we had to stop by. I had never heard of a hot milkshake before but they were surprisingly good. I had hot apple pie, custard, and cinnamon, and Peggy had toffee cheesecake, oreo cookies, and marshmellows. So delicious. We wandered in and out of shops discussing things we would buy if we had the money and/or room in our suitcases. We did buy a couple of treats though. Peggy bought sour gummy worms and I bought some roasted chestnuts. As dusk settled in we went down towards the Brighton Pier. Once again the wind was brutal as we got close to the seafront. We spent a little time in the games room and spent a few pence on a couple different games. We started to walk out to where the rides are but thought better of it after about 20 seconds of being out in the wind again.

We went to Casa Della Pizza for dinner which is essentially a knock-off version of the Pizza Hut Buffet. The pizza was really very similar to Pizza Hut's buffet pizza. Now I know where to go if I ever get a craving for (not great) American-esque pizza. After dinner we took a bus back to Sussex Uni for some hot chocolate. I also showed Peggy some of my photos from my travels. I already knew that I had a ton of photos and scrolling through the folders made me slightly more aware of how much traveling I have really done since I arrived here. And believe it or not, I have even more planned!

Right now I am preparing to send two weeks with my friend Leanna traveling around the European continent. Two weeks of hostels, rucksacks, and train rides... I'm so glad that I already spent one full week traveling at the end of September so I have a rough idea of how to pace myself for this. It's still going to be a long and intense trip though. This trip will also take place over Christmas and New Years. Adding the holidays, and holiday travelers, into the mix will make this trip especially crazy. However if it's anything like my Prague and Madrid trip, it will be extremely tiring but also extremely rewarding and be over all too soon.

One full term and 100 days

Last Group Photo of SIS 08

I am finally done with my autumn term here at Sussex Uni. For those of you keeping score at home, I have also completed 100 days of my school year abroad which puts me just past the one-third mark. I'm not sure how I got to this point. I know that I got up and went to all of my classes. I stayed up and finished all of my work. And now that's it's over I'm looking back and vaguely wondering where all the time went. Everyone from the September program has returned to the their home countries now and only two out of the seventy will be returning. The last couple weeks, from Thanksgiving to when everyone left, were probably the hardest for me. Everyone around me was looking forward to going home to their families and a common mantra was "I've had a lot of fun but it's time to go home." At that point I was looking at a stack of assignments that meant the end of the term but not the end of the class and a calendar that told me I would be spending my first Christmas without my family. Needless to say I found it very hard to be positive about staying when so many people around me were finishing their classes and preparing to go home. Through the ups and downs and wishing I was going to be home for Christmas, I knew that my time wasn't finished in England and if I stopped now I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

In a way, that stubborn voice inside of me has already been proved right. In the last week before everyone had to go, several people started telling me that I was lucky that I was staying and that they wished they could too. I have no idea what's going to happen next term but I know I'll make the most of it.

Monday, December 8, 2008

A day in London...with my dad

This past Saturday my dad came to visit me on his way back from a business trip in Italy. Even though this trip isn't the longest I've been away from home, it certainly is the farthest which somehow makes it feel longer. Needless to say I was very excited to hear I would get to see him for the day.

We decided to meet at the train station in Brighton. The station is pretty small compared to some of the other stations in the UK and yet we still managed to walk passed each other twice before actually seeing each other. We grabbed breakfast at this little cafe in Brighton before heading back to Sussex Uni. In some sense, I'm lucky to live on the opposite side of campus as the station so I was able to show my dad almost all of it before we reached my front door. Dad was able to see my room in all its glory. He said that it looked a lot bigger in real life than on the webcam which I suppose is a good thing.

After a brief tour of campus, we went into London to see the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree and the West End Christmas lights. The Christmas tree was huge! A website said it was 20 meters tall, I think it was even taller than that. The tree is a gift from Norway and has been given to England every year since the end of WWII. We wandered around to see Westminster and Parliament, and then went to Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus to look at the Christmas lights. Little did I know that the West End was having some sort of massive shopping event that Saturday. So the roads were closed which was nice, but they were FILLED with people. We were walking in the middle of the street and still getting elbowed by people from time to time. We also went to Harrods department store which was completely overwhelming for me. We went in on the luxury floor which was probably the start of it. We took the tube over to Green Park and ate dinner at the absolutely amazing Italian place called Alloro. I had risotto with baby artichokes and smoke cheese. It was probably the best meal I've had in a very long time. I had tiramisu for dessert which was also good. I accidentally ate all the biscotti while Dad was taking care of the bill. Whoops! We took a black cab back to London Victoria to get out train back to Brighton. London via cab is a lot prettier than London via tube, especially during holiday shopping season.

I am still so happy I was able to see my dad, even if it was only for a day, and I can't wait till I have the chance to see the rest of the family.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Thanksgiving

SIS people at Thanksgiving dinner

My dinner table/Pub trivia team

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
So yesterday was Turkey Day, and the first major holiday I've ever spent away from my family. I was slightly apprehensive of the idea to say the least but the transatlantic plane ride and no time off left me little choice in the matter. I decided to go to the International office's catered Thanksgiving dinner rather than try to cook my own after getting out of lab at 5 pm. I was pleasantly surprised to see about a dozen kids from the Sussex in September program when I arrived. I was so happy that I would at least be sitting and eating with people I knew before sitting down at the table.

The food couldn't compare with the feast I usually cook with my grandma but it was still pretty good. I was disappointed that we didn't have pumpkin pie. They served Pecan pie instead. One of the girls was telling me the only place they could find canned pumpkin to make a pie was in the exotic foods section of Whole Foods in London. I never would have thought of pumpkin as an exotic food before.

After dinner, they had a trivia contest. Lucky for us most of the trivia was about American movies, music, and history, otherwise we would have done horribly. As it was we did really poorly on the music section. We did manage to identify 20 presidents from pictures. I was really impressed by how well we did on that one. In the end, my team had the highest score so we each got a box of Lindt truffles. It was a lot of fun. I'm so glad I was able to spend time sitting around the table with friends. Coming from a family that lives 'round the kitchen table, I was really starting to miss that part of my life and was dreading spending most of Thanksgiving night in my room trying to do homework. Luckily that wasn't the scenario that played out and I had a very different but still enjoyable Thanksgiving.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

An Old Friend and the RPO

It occurred to me today that this term is really almost over and I should probably put some more effort into learning my course material since I won't have much contact with it for the next six months or so until the final. Then I bought my eurail pass for my trip with Leanna and all motivation went bye-bye. I have a lot of fun things mixed in with school for these last few weeks and it's going to be difficult to keep the fun from completely overshadowing the work.

Last Saturday I met up with my friend Peggy in London. She is studying at the University of Greenwich this term. Back in the States we live maybe 10 minutes away from each other but for one reason or another we haven't seen each other since about when we graduated from high school some two and a half years ago. We spent some time poking around Camden Town, a marketplace just north of the city center. We also went to the British Museum and then went Christmas decoration hunting. Oxford Street has the beginning of what will be incredible decorations. While hunting for dinner we came across a Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. It was very picturesque with fairy lights, food and crafts stalls, an ice rink, and a few rides. The hour we spent wandering amongst the stalls put me in such a holiday mood I forgot that Christmas was over a month away. Hopefully Peggy can make it down to Brighton before she goes back to the States so she can see me corner of the country.

Last night I went to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The music was phenomenal. I didn't realize that the concert was a performance of choral pieces so I was surprised to see the chorus file in. I was a little skeptical about how much I'd enjoy the choral music since it was the orchestra that I really wanted to hear. I was pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed how the two complimented each other. The hall was also awe-inspiring. It was so huge that the full-sized pipe organ actually looked small in comparison. On the way to and from the performance I saw flyers for The Nutcracker Ballet. I was really hoping I'd be able to be but closer inspection revealed that I'll be on mainland Europe when the tours come to Brighton and London. Oh well. These last few weeks before my trip will be a whirlwind without adding the Ballet into the mix.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Day 74

Today is the 74th day of of my time abroad which means that one quarter of it has passed already. With the holidays coming and the end of the semester near, I find myself wishing these next few weeks would hurry up already! It feels like I've been here forever and for no time at all. I tried dozens of new things, gone places on a whim that I had only ever dreamed of going previously, and met scores of interesting people. I've taken enough pictures to develop a serious scrapbooking addiction and probably will. It's really impossible to truly explain what this experience has been like for me. It has it's ups and downs but ups have definitely outweighed the downs. These adventures will stay with me for the rest of my life and I'm very lucky to be here.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Cambridge

Punts on the River Cam

Street view of Kings' College

Shopping Area where we had lunch

Part of St. John's College

River view of Trinity College

Yesterday I went to Cambridge with the International School. Cambridge is really the ultimate college city in that it has 31 colleges and some 18,000 students. The University of Cambridge is actually made up of all the independent colleges in Cambridge instead of one massive university. Very interesting concept for someone who is used to campus-colleges. I think every block we walked had at least one building devoted to higher education on it. The first thing we did was go on a walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was this batty little old English lady. She was very amusing and knew a lot about the city. She was just a little....odd as well and pretty anti-Oxford (although I guess there's a pretty stiff rivalry between Cambridge and Oxford). She definitely took my tour into the plainly marked "no visitors" section of Trinity College. We weren't complaining but it was a little different than the 'by the book' tours we're used to getting. As we toured the colleges we saw probably half a dozen plaques commemorating breakthrough scientific discoveries. It's easy to forget that all of those discoveries actually had to take place at a place before they could go in a textbook. It was still a little weird to stand next to buildings where J.J. Thompson, Isaac Newton, and some many others worked and sculpted modern science. Cambridge University has some 83 Nobel prizes associated with it; 31 of which are from Trinity College. After the tour, some of the other girls from the September program and myself went to get some lunch. We went to a little cafe with a lunch special to grab something warm to eat. I ordered a chicken and mayo sandwich and the homemade soup. The soup was very good and the sandwich was infinitely better when dunked in the soup. The description said char-grilled chicken so I thought the chicken would at least be hot. No such luck. I'm still adjusting to some of these sandwich ideas.

After lunch we wandered around a couple markets and the University of Cambridge shop. The outdoor markets we wandered through were pretty cool. The first one had a lot of clothes and food and the second one was all handmade crafts. There was one vendor in the craft market who made jewelry out of recycled metal such as spoons, forks, and coins. He was using a coping saw to make new pieces while sitting at his booth. It was very cool.

One of the last things we did in Cambridge was go punting. A punt is a long flat boat that is very close to the water. The punter uses a long pole, gondola-style, to propel and steer the boat. We went of the River Cam and got to see The Backs or the backs of several of the more famous colleges in Cambridge. The Backs are also supposed to be some of the betters views in the city. There are also several moderately famous bridges associated with the colleges that cross the River Cam, so we got to see those too. The sun was just starting to set when we went on our punting tour so we had a beautiful autumn dusk as the backdrop for many of our photos. I've really been lucky as very as weather goes in my travels, and have the pictures to prove. I hope it keeps up. *knocks on wood* After the tour, we had to make a pit stop at Caffe Nero, Tim Horton-esque chain, before going back to the bus to get something to fight off the chill we picked up from being on the water. This trip was really impressive, not because to the arichtecture, or cultural, or food, but because of all the scientific discoveries, which have directly affected my education, that happened in buildings right off the streets we walked on.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Warwick Castle and the Cotswolds

Bourton-on-the-Water

Today I figured out why people go on about the English countryside. Up until now I haven't gone into the countryside very much, and when I did it certainly was not quite as beautiful as the countryside I saw today. We had to leave at around 8:00 in the morning and I ended up falling asleep on the coach to our first destination so I missed the first leg of our scenic drive through "The Cotswolds." The fist stop on our trip was Bourton-on-the-Water, picturesque village known as 'the Venice of the Cotswolds.' It's called that because of the shallow river that runs through the center of the village and footbridges that cross it. Most of the buildings in the town center were stone and looked like they could have been built centuries ago. The streets are lined with small shops and boutiques which goes to show how many tourists actually come to the village. We were only there for an hour but I couldn't have spent much longer just sitting on bench with a cup of tea watching the ducks with the autumn leaves all around me.

Warwick Castle

Warwick Castle reminded me of a castle you would see in the movies. You walk through a small wooded area and then *BAM* giant castle complete with moat right in front of you. Warwick wasn't the biggest castle I've been to but it was definitely one of the better kept castles. From one side of the castle retaining wall you looked out over the countryside and from the other side out over the village of Warwick. I prefered the countryside because it was easier to think by 1068 when William the Conquerer built it. The castle is right next to the river Avon and the view of the castle grounds with the river running through them was awesome. After spending most of the day surrounded by goregous scenry, the Great Hall and state rooms of the castle were not as impressive as they may have been another day. The Great Hall had maybe half a dozen sets of armor and a collection of swords on display. I still have a hard time picturing people actually wearing suits of armor. It really doesn't look like you could move in it; let alone ride a horse or fight. One of the state rooms had mannequins of Henry VIII and his many wives. I found that exhibit rather amusing just because they portrayed Henry VIII as being about as fat as he was a jerk.

Without a doubt, my favorite part of this trip was spending all day outside in the beautfil autumn weather. Driving through the farmland on our way from Bourton-on-the-Water to Warwick reminded me of driving through Livingston County in late October. I'm really glad I was able to get out and spend some time surrounded by natural beauty before the dreary English winter sets in.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Bonfire Night (Lewes, England)

Starting the night at The Rainbow
A Bonfire Society during a procession

Guy Fawkes effigy
South Street Bonfire Society fire site

"Remember, remember the 5th of November..."
Thanks to V for Vendetta, American society has been exposed to the story of the Gunpowder Treason and Guy Fawkes. The Bonfire Night that I went to in Lewes is one of the largest celebrations in England and could only be described by putting Halloween, Fourth of July, and Marti Gras in a blender and leaving it on high for a while and then adding the English love of fire and booze. We left Sussex just before 4pm in order to get to Lewes before the crowds completely took over the city. We arrived about an hour and a half before the festivities started. Just in time to watch the shop keepers put plywood over their store windows and have the pubs move all of their tables out of the main rooms. Food choices had already been reduced to take out and fast food carts.

Somehow our initial group of eight people from the September program was able to get a small rickety table in a pub called "The Rainbow," which became headquarters for everyone to meet. Over the next half hour our group grew from eight to over 20 people. The combination of cheap food and moderately cheap drinks probably contributed to why we stayed at the pub so much longer than we had planned. I had my first boiled hot dog in over a year. Unfortunately it couldn't compare with the hot dog vendor from Boston Commons, but it was a decent attempt.

Once the processions started our massive group fractured into slightly more manageable sections. Bonfire Night Processions are made up of groups called Bonfire Societies that dress up in certain costumes/uniforms and parade through the streets of Lewes, with torches, floats, effigies and firecrackers, before going to their fire sites. At the fire sites, they have giant bonfires and firework displays. I went to the South Street fire site and their bonfire must have been made up of at least fifty pallets and looked like it could be a small house at first glance just because it was so huge. I was actually really excited to see a substantial fire because it had started to rain. I was able to dry off or at least warm up a little from a mere 30 feet away from the flames.
Guy Fawkes was part of a group of Catholic dissenters, so Bonfire Night is traditionally an anti-papal event. Bonfire Societies carry flaming crosses in processions, and a "non-descript" pope joins Guy Fawkes as popular effigies. I'm not entirely sure if these are legitimate anti-Catholic actions, or resurrections of old practices that have lost their meaning. Rumor has it that there was an effigy of Sarah Palin somewhere north of here so they may not have completely lost their meaning. Whether or not you honor the political past of Bonfire Night, the dominating attitude of the night is "Let's get drunk and burn stuff/light fireworks." Which is exactly was people where doing. Once the processions started, at 6pm, every pub was packed and people on the streets were downing cans of beer and cider, and cups of who knows what else. If two minutes past without a firecracker going off, at least two were immediately set off just because things were getting to quiet. It's impossible to accurately describe the insanity of the streets of Lewes.

Getting home was another adventure in itself. I had gone to an early fire site so I decided to leave around 9:30pm since I had seen everything I had wanted to see, it was raining harder, and they were predict queues for the train. We joined the queue at 9:30 and didn't make it onto a train until almost 10:30 and all the while the queue was getting longer. The rain was the worst part of waiting, but I was back in my nice, dry flat before 11pm after only an hour of waiting so I guess I was better off than the people in queue behind me.


For anyone interested in how the English are reacting to the election results: The vast majority of people that I've talked to are thrilled with Obama/no Palin. General outlooks towards the States have definitely become more pleasant. The next largest group are the people who don't understand US politics/don't care. I guess some of my fellow September term participants had a job explaining red and blue states, the difference in the democrat and republican parties, and the electoral college to some people at the on-campus pub Tuesday night. I think I've spoken to a total of three Brits who really wanted McCain to win which is something like 15-20% of the British people I hang out with regularly. After talking to other people from the September Program, it sounds like I've met an usually high precentage of British McCain supporters. The bottom line is that a big majority of Brits like Obama.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Hallowe'en UK Style




Halloween, or Hallowe'en as is spelt over on this side of the Atlanitc, was a lot of fun but nowhere near as exciting as it is in the States. Stores had already moved on the Christmas except for an aisle cap with some meager Halloween decorations and nothing to compare to Wal-marts Halloween candy/costume aisle. In fact, it took some searching and luck to get the costume I ended up wearing and even then it was not very good compared to what I usually would put together. I borrowed a purple wig and sought out a witch's hat, and paired with a skirt and tights to get a sort of teen witch costume. I made sure I got my Halloween candy, although I was very disappointed that I couldn't find three musketeer bars or reese's peanut butter cups.

I went on a pub crawl with the Chem society people on Halloween night. I had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone. I was surprised that the people we saw in the pubs really weren't that dressed up and the pubs themselves weren't that into the Halloween mood either. Some had spider webs up and I think one had drink specials but that was about it. The houses around town generally didn't have any decorations out either. The night was still a lot of fun regardless of decorations or costumes.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

The Emerald Isle - Dublin Edition

Kilmainham Gaol


Guinness Storehouse

Dublin Castle


St. Stephen Shopping Center

St. Patrick's Cathedral

The Famous Temple Bar


The old Jameson Distillery

I just returned from a two-day jaunt to Dublin, Ireland. Another very cool city on the list of, hopefully many, that I will visit while I'm on this side of the Atlantic. I had to book it out of class on Thursday to make my train in order to get to the airport somewhere close to on time. Even though I should have had plenty of time, the line at security really held me up. I have never been held out in a line like that for security. I'm used to queues in passport control/customs but not in security. I finally made it through though and made my boarding call with about 2 minutes to spare.

Once I was in Ireland everything was pretty standard for international travel; few lines, extra questions for not being an EU citizen, tracking down a cash point, and finding public transport tickets. The one thing I forgot is that it's dark by 8pm in October. So riding on a bus and looking for street signs was harder than I had anticipated. Luckily there was a group of ten students from James Madison University on the same bus I was and going to the same hostel I was going to also. They had directions from a local and I had a map. Map plus directions equals instant friendship. The eleven of us checked into the hostel and took off to find someplace that was still serving dinner at 9:30pm which is actually harder than it sounds. We ended up at Murray's Bar which had a interesting decorating scheme of old housework items and a fish tank over the bar. I ordered Irish stew, mash, and brown bread. I was so hungry and chilled from traveling and looking for a restaurant that it was exactly what I needed. The stew had meat, vegetables, and potatoes in it and then had a big scoop of mash on top of that. It was almost too many potatoes even for me. I think the brown bread was really good too. After dinner we went to a couple if Irish pubs which happened to be still be in the tourist district so drink cost us an arm and a leg, but it was still a really good time. One of the places we went was a micro-brewery so we got to sample some of their specialty creation-which we all did because the house-brew was the cheapest pint on the list. The JMU kids were leaving the next morning to start a Bus Tour of the northern half of the island including some of Northern Ireland so we couldn't stay out very late.

The next day I went off on a full day of site-seeing in Dublin. I started off at the Kilmainham Gaol, a prison that was used during the 18th century Irish rebellions against Great Britain. It was big and stone and freezing! It was definitely cooler inside the building than it was ouside. So happy I wasn't a prisoner there, just being in that kind of cold would been awful enough without the other crummy things that go with being in jail. From the gaol I went to the Guinness Storehouse. It was easy to find since as soon as you got within about 10 blocks of the brewery you could smell the malted barley. The Storehouse used to part of the Brewery but was converted to a visitor's center after most of the brewing process was automated. The building was redone so the core is now a giant pint glass that could hold the 14.3 million pints of Guinness that are consumed everyday. On the ascending floors around the center are exhibits that feature the brewing process, past advertising campaigns, and how Guinness is transported around the world. They also had us a do a quality control tasting and, at the end, staff members showed us how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness and then let us do it ourselves so we ended up with a complimentary pint and a certificate. Happy to have graduated from the Guinness school of pint-pouring, I wandered through the city looking at old buildings along the way like St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin Castle, few more churches, and then St. Stephen's Green and Stephen's Green Shopping Center. Dublin is really easy to walk around and all the sites that I waned to see were spread out enough that I didn't have problems with crowds of tourists. That night a bunch of the girls from the hostel I was in and I went to the Temple Bar which is actually an area full of pubs including THE Temple Bar, and Oliver St. John Gogarty where we heard so traditional Irish music. Drinks were extremely expensive at both places but that's what you get for venturing into the heart of tourist-land.

Saturday I got up early but didn't leave until almost an hour after I originally planned to. The first thing I did was go to the Old Jameson Distillery which had a similar tour to that of the Guiness storehouse except it covered the distillation of whiskey instead of stout. I was surprised to learn that they still used wooden casks in the distillery and they only get casks from certain regions. After the tours we had a whiskey tasting tutorial on the the differences between Jamesson, Johnny Walker Black (scotch), and Jack Daniels (American corn whiskey). It was pretty cool to learn about all the differences between the three. After the tasting they gave us a free glass of whiskey. Having a glass of whiskey at 11am made me feel a little like a lush but I was in Ireland so I guess that makes it okay. After the distillery I wanted to see the crypts of St. Michen Church which inspired the story of Dracula but as fortune would have it the church was closed for the two days and only the two days I was in Dublin. I wasn't going to let that spoil my day though. Instead I went to a house that Oscar Wilde lived in and a park that had this awesome statue of the man himself. I also went to Trinity college and saw the Book of Kells exhibit in the library. I guess the Book of Kells is actually several books or maybe a regional name for the gospels because there were at least three books labelled as the Book of Kells in the display cases. In any case they all dated back to about the 8th century AD. The illustrations were so elaborate. It was hard to imagine someone drawing them with a feather quill and a pot of ink. By the time I finished with that it was just about time for me to go to the airport so I started walking back towards the bus stop with a scenic detour to a couple other historic spots along the way. Dublin was definitely an awesome city to visit. I found most people to be friendly and polite, and it wasn't completely overrun with tourists. I'd like to come back in the spring and see the infamous countryside and maybe go down to Cork and see the Blarney Stone.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Pictures from my travels



Palacio Real



Living art



Plaza Mayor


La Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas


Poster for the bullfight



Church of Our Lady of Tyn


Astronomical Clock


The classic Prague Skyline


On the Streets of Prague


St. Vistro Cathedral


Liverpool Cathedral


Strawberry Fields


John Lennon's childhood home


Beatles Fan Museum




Stonehenge


Parliament



Saint Paul's Cathedral


The Globe Theater in London

These are just a few of the thousand-some-odd pictures of taken. A more complete collection will be available when I get back to the States.