Back on the Road Again

Finally!  After far too long, I get to travel again.  This time I'll be headed down to New Zealand, partly to see a new part of the world, and partly to visit my brother and sister-in-law.  More details will follow as we get closer to the departure date, but I'll be down there from roughly May 17th to June 3... stupid travel time is cutting a couple days out.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm ready for teleporters.

At the end of the line

For those of you not Facebook stalking me, I've decided that Rhodes will indeed be the last stop on my trip. I've enjoyed it, and now that I'm starting to recover from my sickness I'm enjoying it more; but by the time I'm finished I'll have been out of the US for just over a month, and I'm ready to be home.

Also, for those of you not satisfied with the few pictures I've been uploading from my trip, I'm willing to stick everything on a DVD and send it your way. I've got plenty of blanks from when they were on sale, but I won't complain if you decide to chip in for shipping. :)

For those of you that do want them, a question: do you want everything--the good, the bad, and the ugly--or would you prefer to wait until I've weeded out the repeats, the blurry ones, etc.? Let me know in the comments.

Greece!

I was worried I'd be short on money before I was able to make it there, but after going over my finances it looks like I'll be able to pull it off. I'll be spending four nights in Athens and then heading out to Rhodes for three more nights. I think this is going to be one of my favorite stops of the trip; in college I did a research paper on the Ottoman siege of the island in 1522, and actually got to give a guest lecture on it back at Whitworth a few years later.

I'm also hoping to make it to Turkey to see Istanbul, but I'm not going to plan that part out... if it happens, it happens. As decent as the money situation looked, I have to keep in mind that the Euro is still around $1.30, so my money won't be worth quite as much.

For those of you interested, I'm using Hostelworld to plan out my stays in the various cities I'm visiting. It's a nice service, and the user reviews are (for the most part) really helpful in choosing a hostel to stay at.

Heart of the Empire

They say that all roads lead to Rome, and mine is no different. I'll be spending four nights there at a hostel that's a bit off the beaten path, but the owners got really high marks for helping people plan out their visit based on how much time they have. It's about half an hour walk from the train station, and although I may disagree at the time, the exercise will do me good. After that it's on to Venice for a couple nights, and then to Greece by ferry... still need to get that part figured out. Money seems to be disappearing quicker than I'd like so I may have to call it quits after Greece (including another ferry out to Rhodes), but I'd really like to make it to Istanbul too; we'll have to see how things pan out. Who knows? Maybe one of my favorite fortune cookies ever--"A blonde from afar has something in store for you"--will come true, and I'll meet a sugar mama who'll let me travel more.

But what about...? Why aren't you going...? How can you not see...?

As you may have noticed already, and definitely will by the time I start posting from overseas, I'll be skipping over quite a few places in the countries I'll be visiting. My basic plan is for this to be the traveling equivalent of a world history class: covering little bits and pieces of as many areas as possible. On it's own, I'm not a huge fan of world history for exactly that reason... you never get to spend enough time covering any one topic/location. However, it does usually give you at least an idea of what areas you would like to focus on. Unless things in life go terribly wrong and I end up living in a van down by the river, this won't be my last trip to Europe, and I'm hoping that it will give me an idea of places that I want to spend more time in on my next visit.

On to the Continent

On September 26th I'll be leaving Dublin and arriving in Paris, to spend three nights. That's a day longer than I had originally planned on staying, but it doesn't look like the train ride to Munich is all that bad, so I'll head straight there afterwards and catch the last five days or so of Oktoberfest. As much as I enjoy beer and brats I think that many days of them would ruin me, so I plan on exploring the rest of Bavaria a bit as well. From there it's down into Switzerland to visit relatives and recuperate before crossing the Alps and invading Italy. No elephants will be involved, unfortunately.

Paris should be an interesting stop. I plan on skipping the Louvre, since I'm a fan of neither art (with a few exceptions) nor standing in line. The Eiffel Tower is a must... I love high places, although I'm always tempted to spit from them. I also plan on visiting Notre Dam and the Arc de Triomphe, and maybe the Moulin Rouge (hopefully that's the English language version) if I'm feeling especially brave/saucy.

To beer, or not to beer? That is the question.

Oktoberfest runs from September 18 - October 4 this year. I'll be leaving Dublin on September 26, which means if I tweak my plans a bit and either fly there directly, or head there right after Paris, I could catch the tail end of it.

Pros

1. Oktoberfest!
2. In Germany!

Cons

1. Change in plans would make my loop around Europe a bit trickier.
2. It's probably been impossible to get a room anywhere near it for months now.

I guess we'll see how I'm feeling at that point... I really don't want to get too much planned out in advance, so that I've got plenty of freedom to switch things up for events/places like this. Any thoughts?

Part Next

Not sure if it actually counts as Part II, since I still won't be to the continent. I decided to skip Glasgow (mostly because I hate it) and spend an extra night in Edinburgh... looks like there are a couple distilleries in the area for scotches I haven't tried yet, so those may be worth a visit. I'll be spending the next couple nights in Oban, giving me time to visit the distillery (probably my favorite) and spend a bit of time wandering the town. Unfortunately, it looks like the Laphroaig distillery out on Islay will have to wait for my next visit; it's too much of a pain to get to and from by public transit, and I really don't think I'd do so well with a rental car over there. Much of my driving is done by habit/muscle memory/whatever, and if I ever got tired or distracted I'd probably revert to driving on the right side of the road and wreak all sorts of havoc.

Also unfortunately, I don't actually get to skip Glasgow completely, but luckily it's a quick stop. I'll be hopping a train for the city in the morning, getting there in the afternoon, and taking off for Dublin that evening. My hostel is just a few blocks from Trinity College, which I hear all sorts of good things about. As I mentioned before I'll also be stopping by the Guinness brewery, and hopefully the Jameson distillery as well; don't like it as well as Laphroaig, but it's a consistently good whiskey. I'll be spending four nights there, so I'll probably be taking a few day trips too.

That's it for now, but stay tuned for more exciting updates!

And so it begins

And unlike my other blogs, I'll probably use the shift key on a fairly regular basis. Unless you stumbled upon this site accidentally, you're probably aware that I'm planning a trip to Europe at the end of this summer. I've been unemployed since the end of February and figured that this would be the best time to do it: while I've got no kids or job tying me down, and before I run out of money and have to rejoin the real world. I'm hoping to be there for at least a month, and unless you've decided to come along, this will be the best way to keep up with where I'm at and what I'm doing.

Part I: The Big Picture

Right now, most of what I've got is a general idea of where I want to go. I'll be starting out in the UK since I've been there before and am at least semi-familiar with it; England and Scotland will be the main features, with Ireland (where I haven't been) a definite stop and Wales (haven't been there either) a possibility. From there it's on to Paris for a couple of days--preferably via the Chunnel--and then most likely down to Switzerland, where I'm hoping to meet some relatives and rest up for a few days before moving on. I've been told by several people that I need to get into Spain as well... it's definitely not at the top of my list, but if I do make it there I'll probably continue down into Portugal to see Lisbon and the remains of the Lines of Torres Vedras, and possibly down to Gibraltar as well. Otherwise, I'll continue through Switzerland into Italy to see Rome and Venice, then take a ferry to Greece (if there is still a Greece) to see Athens and Rhodes. Since I'm hoping study Byzantine history when I finally get my ass in gear and get to grad school, I also want to spend some time in Istanbul (was Constantinople, now it's Istanbul not Constantinople) and see what's left of several once-great empires. After that it's up through eastern Europe, with possible stops in Prague and Vienna, before visiting a few of the castles dotted around Germany and then finishing up in Berlin. Unless, of course, by some miracle I still have some money, in which I'll swing through the Netherlands to Amsterdam and up through Denmark to Copenhagen, and I'll head home from there.

Part II: The Little Picture

So far I've got the first little part of my journey actually planned out. My flight leaves Sea-Tac on the afternoon of September 12, and after a brief stop in Iceland puts me down in London the next morning. I'll be spending three nights there in a hostel right across from the British Museum, then hopping on a bus up to Edinburgh for another three nights in another hostel, this one just a couple blocks from the castle. After that I plan to head to Oban to visit the distillery, although I may have to spend a night elsewhere (either one more in Edinburgh, or maybe [yikes!] Glasgow) so the hostel there will have an opening and I don't have to spring for a hotel or B&B. I'm also hoping to make it out to Islay to visit the Laphroaig distillery, but it's looking a bit tricky to get to and from there, so I may just head straight to Ireland from there. In Ireland I plan to base myself out of Dublin; I want to visit the Guinness brewery and Trinity College (home of the Book of Kells), and based off information from a friend who's spent time there it sounds like Ireland is smaller than I thought, so day trips shouldn't be hard to pull off.

Part III: Then What?

Still working on that part. I'm trying to walk a fine line between planning everything out ahead of time--which, barring any horrible accidents that put me behind schedule, would maximize security--and figuring things out on the go, which would make things a bit more stressful and possibly more expensive, but would leave me plenty of freedom to change my mind and make it easier to adapt to anything that may come up.

Thus ends the first post. I'm guessing that all the others will be significantly shorter, at least initially. I plan on taking a copious amount of pictures but won't have any way to upload them until I get home, so I'll probably insert them later, and you'll have to read through everything again to see what I was talking about.