A Long Overdue Post ...and A Long Post Indeed

Alright, so this if officially the longest gap in all of my blogging, of course because I’ve been SO busy over here in Europe. I know, that sounds so miserable to all of you readers out there (basically just my family) but at the same time, I’m going to flashback and recount for all the days I missed in this episode, so don’t worry. The thing is, I’ve been keeping a nice little personal journal for myself of my excursions, and then transposing most of it all to the web for the public to read, and/or not read, so here’s the breakdown of my life since my trip to Greece, almost a month ago…Cheers!

Alright I left off on Thursday, Nov. 13th, which was the night I took a trip out to Heathrow airport and flew to Athens, Greece. I was heading to the Greek Islands to meet up with my friend Kat, who as you may know from previous posts, has visited/run into me in Europe on several other excursions, so this was going to be a nice little get-away with my best friend, and a good opportunity to relax before school and internship stuff really kicked off hard at the end of the semester. So I arrived in the airport sometime around 11pm, and Kat landed soon after. We then proceeded to run to the nearest train, and caught the very last train that left the central station to get into the city before we’d get stranded. We checked into our hostel, the “Athens Backpackers” around 12-12:30, and went to grab a small late night snack before hitting the hay and an exciting weekend would begin.

Kat and I were up early on Friday for breakfast. It consisted of toast, and hardboiled eggs. This was actually quite filling, in a Rocky-esk sort of way, and it wasn’t until Sunday, that I definitely feel that I’ve had my share of hardboiled eggs for quite some time. Anyhow, after breakfast, we started off our Greek experience by taking a really cheap 2-3 hour walking tour that was provided by our hostel. So we toured the entire city of Athens in an overview sort of way right in the first few hours of even being there. We saw the Parthenon/the Acropolis, saw the very first theater ever created, followed by the Roman Theater, one of the pinnacles of the city where Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato used to speak to the people, watched the changing of the guard at Greek Parliament, strolled through the national gardens, and even ended up at the Olympic stadium. Some tour huh? Even after that, on our way back, we passed the temple of Zeus, and by that time, I was starving, and so Kat and I found our way to a café and devoured some amazing sandwiches for lunch.

By this time it was early in the afternoon still, so Kat and I decided to further explore on our own around the city. We started with the Acropolis, since our hostel was basically at the base of it, and miraculously enough, our student ID’s that we had from our schools, got us in for FREE! That’s right, absolutely free, just showed it to the attendants and they waved us on through. It turns out that this worked EVERYWHERE in Greece, and it was the first time my student ID had actually come to good use for sure, so that was thoroughly exciting for me and a way to save a bit of change. So anyhow, we walked atop the Acropolis, stood at the foot of the Parthenon (and the temple of Athena), and got a great view of the entire city of Athens, from the Mediterranean to the mountains, all exactly where the greatest minds of all time used to stay. It was such a humbling experience to be in the exact spot that I’ve always dreamed to visit (and have studied quite a lot in school), and just stand in front of it all, and take in the view. It’s incredible. Needless to say we stayed up there for a little while taking pictures, and of course, while we’re doing so, I took a candid quick one in my Pi Kappa Phi shirt, just as a nice little Greek gimmick. However, when I started to put my coat back on and switch shirts, a guy to the left of me asked “Excuse me, do you go to Elon University?” Of course, I confirmed that I did, and he started to ask me about people that went to school there. Turns out that he knew a friend that goes to Elon, that happens to be one of Katherine’s sorority sisters, and a friend of mine as well. NOT only that, but it turns out that the guy was studying in Greece for the semester and goes to school at Bridgewater College, the same university a block from my old high school! Small world? Nope, it gets better. Then I finished putting on my coat, which was my Roanoke Star Soccer one, and he said, “NO WAY!” Because, he actually lives in Roanoke, played soccer there, and he worked as a waiter at this little restaurant named Anthony’s, which is where Dad and I used to stop and eat all the time on the way home from practices! It was surreal.

Anyhow, after I got over all this excitement, I dragged Kat onto the metro, and we went to the north of the city to climb the mountain that sits in the middle of Athens, which is the tallest point, and has the greatest view. Despite our huffing and puffing the two of us finally reached the summit for a beautiful view of the city at sunset, followed by watching the lights of Athens come to life. It was a great end to an awesome day. We climbed down and headed back to our hostel, where we then changed and went to dinner at this awesome place called “God’s Restaurant.” I had a traditional Greek meal of Pork Slouvaki, which was absolutely epic, and Kat had the same. Then Kat decided to get some rest, and I went out for a while with some of the people at our hostel for the “pub crawl” which lasted a few hours, and I ended up coming home early because it really was very crowded, and not all that exciting.

Saturday the 14th of course brought on quite the long day as well though, as we woke up early, again had our hardboiled eggs, and then headed off to see the Temple of Zeus up close. The ruins don’t seem like much, if you’ve seen the pictures, but the size of them is just gargantuan. It’s wild how all of these temples and ancient structures were so massive, with technology seeming so primitive then, and is definitely why I’m so intrigued I guess. Anyhow, I dragged Kat all around those ruins for a while, and then we took a bus ride all along the Greek coast to a place called Suonio, which is at like the southern-most tip of Greece, to see the Temple of Poseidon. The views along the coastline of Greece are spectacular, and I took a number of pictures for Mom, since they probably will remind her of Mamma Mia or something, but either way the views were incredible. Once we got to Suonio, we basically spent the afternoon there. There isn’t a lot in this small little town, except the temple and a restaurant, so Kat and I split a sandwich and Greek Salads (SOOOO good), since we’re cheap college kids, but we had a great view of the Mediterranean, and got to catch up some more on each others lives. After the bus-ride back, we actually made a second stop at God’s Restaurant for another amazing meal, this time I tried some of their fish, which again, so epic, and then we just basically had a night in to ourselves. We played some cards, talked with our new roommates in our hostel, and caught up on some much needed sleep. Traveling is very physically demanding.

Sunday brought about my last day of hardboiled eggs, and a trip to the northern and busy part of the city, through the marketplaces, to the Archaeological Museum. Kat and I actually witnessed the a large protest while we were trying to enter the museum as well, which was very interesting to see, lots of rallies and political activism in the streets seem to be quite prevalent in Europe, it just seems so much more predominant than in the states. Anyways, the museum was alright, there’s a large controversy between Britain/Greece about who should own the Greek artifacts, since most are in the British Museum, but either way, I got to see them in both places, so I didn’t particularly mind. After that, we grabbed our first authentic Greek Gyros, which were scrumptious and then we headed toward the airport to catch our planes, it was a wonderful Greek-Filled weekend with a friend, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now of course I’ll do the quickest run-down of the next week possible. Monday, Nov. 17th I was back for another “typical” day at Xtreme Info, so I was working quite a lot. That night I went with my theater class to a showing of Shakespeare’s Othello but it was a modern adaptation, and to be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of it. The acting was a big over the top, the stage was very weird, and there were random modern dance numbers, that didn’t exactly make sense (sorry Kelsey) Anyhow, that brings me to Tuesday, where I had classes, and then I did the typical errands, cleaning, and getting my life back together in the post-traveling time of a weekend. Wednesday the 18th, I was back in my office chair at Xtreme trucking away on our newest edition of The Reel, and scouting out new ads for the guys. That night I decided to spur of the moment go to a production of Les Miserables with a few of my peers on the trip, which was absolutely stunning, and completely made up for the terrible performance of Othello I saw on the previous Monday. It was my dream once again to see Les Miserables on the London stage, and I absolutely am in love with the show as it is, so it was a great and awesome way to see my last big production of my semester. By Thursday, we had class and were starting to wind down the semester into the home stretch, we had a lot of presentations by students, and also were one class closer to the finale for us, so that was exciting to get through with. That evening, all the guys in the flat decided to have a guys night, so my friend Mack Gilmor (a fraternity brother of mine, also from Elon – and studying in London) came over to hang out with the guys and we all just shared stories and a few drinks and hung out for the evening. It was nice to see another familiar face I hadn’t previously seen on my trip, and always nice to have a new guest in the penthouse too.

Friday the 21st, we all slept in a bit but then James and I decided to be really cultural, so we both went to the Tower of London. This was probably one of my favorite sites to actually see in the heart of London, and the two of us spent a good solid three hours visiting it. Essentially, in addition to being the home of England’s Crown Jewels, the Tower of London, is a fortress along the Thames that used to be the residence of royalty and also a prison as well. It’s so ancient, has so much to see, I could literally get lost there for hours on end and love every minute of it. James and I of course took pictures with everything, in armor, and all the sites, and did audio tours too, just like complete nerds, and talked to the “beef-eaters” or security guards in the Tower, as well for a while, and then headed back home. Friday night we got a lot of homework done (since the next week of the semester would be the hardest-work-load-wise) and got some sleep.

Saturday the 22nd, James, Carver, and myself all decided to go hit up another cultural site, so we all visited St. Pauls Cathedral for the afternoon. It is spectacular, and the artwork, architecture, and history are all very rich. We climbed to the top to see the incredible view over the city, and also spent some time in the tombs as well. Since it gets dark in London around 4:30pm these days, it’s hard to do a ton of tourist-like things if you don’t start early, but we got to catch the sunset from the top of St. Pauls, and that was all worth it. That night, the guys and I went out to one of our favorite places, Sports Café, and had a another fun guys night out, that ended in getting late night food and coming home in the morning hours.

Sunday was our day to finish a lot of the work for the upcoming week and I spent a majority of that time finishing the papers for the next few days I needed to get done.

That brings me to Monday the 24th of November, which was another full day at Xtreme Information. I did some of the usual work, worked a little bit with digital imaging, and called it a day there as well. That night I went with the theater class to our last production of the semester, entitled “In a Dark Dark House” which was about two brothers, in adulthood, who had been both beaten and sexually abused as children, and how they live their lives as adults. It was quite a morbid way to end the theater class, but it was still a decent show, and I think I only actually rather appreciated it the next day when I had to let all of it sink in a bit, since it is a little bit unsettling. Tuesday morning I went to classes, and James and I played Chess at a local pub in between our class time which was a fun change of pace of something to do while we had a bit of time to spare. I stayed up really late on Tuesday night to finish all of my unfinished homework, and so that meant that by Wednesday, I was quite tired at Xtreme.

After work at Xtreme on my “official” last day, I was quite beat, because I worked in a new department for the afternoon, and spent most of my time reading, interpreting, and recomposing financial data, which was really boring and almost put me to sleep, but I made it through nonetheless, and it just reconfirmed that no matter what, I’m not going to be an accountant (sorry dad). That night Carver and I went to the pub to celebrate our work being done, and came home early to get some rest, since Thursday morning was the day of my presentation for classes and my last true day of having lots of work to turn in.

Thursday, was Thanksgiving Day, and I went to class like normal. I gave an epic presentation with my roommate Nick on Chinese Culture in London, and then after I was done with class, I headed straight back to the penthouse to begin cooking our Thanksgiving meal. The Penthouse decided to have a full-out Thanksgiving dinner for our flat, and I cooked an entire turkey breast, baked potatoes, and corn, while my friend James made us homemade macaroni and cheese. The four of us ate for about an hour or so straight, were completely stuffed in a food-coma and took short naps afterwards. It was crazy celebrating Thanksgiving in London, but we definitely brought in the holiday with a bang, and had tons of leftovers to spare, which we all thoroughly enjoyed as well. Everyone hung out in our flat for the evening of Thanksgiving celebrations after our amazing dinner and we all called it a night relatively early, well at least I did, because in the morning, I had to fly to Amsterdam with my friend Katie.

So Friday the 28th, I was up early in the morning, caught the Heathrow Express train, and was airborne by about 8:45am, and was landing safely in Amsterdam by 11am their time. First off, the Netherlands, are COLD this time of year. I didn’t anticipate that, and so many times during the weekend my ears were very pink, as well as my nose, and I wore my coat pretty tightly wrapped and lots of layers as well. Other than not anticipating the cold and windy weather of Amsterdam, it’s quite a beautiful and eclectic city. Katie and I checked into our hostel right away, the Youth Hostel Meeting Point, and decided to go touring the city for a bit. We made our way down toward New Markt, which is essentially the market place of the town, and I found a supermarket there (I always locate food once I arrive in a city), and also passed Amsterdam’s Chinatown, which was also exciting to see, since it seems to be a tourist attraction in every major city on the planet. Katie and I saw some of the coffee shops, and I was hungry, so we ate McDonalds (always a plus) and we also ate Kebabs later in the day…which is another one of my favorite delicacies on this side of the pond. We explored some more in the cold, although we couldn’t bear to stay outside for too long of periods at a time, and we walked in the daytime through the Red Light District as well. I’ll explain more about this below. But either way, it is a very interesting city that’s quite liberal, but also quite quiet, calm, and relaxed. There aren’t many cars at all in Amsterdam, there’s public transportation, and a lot of bikes, that was also a nice change from busy and loud London-town. After we did a loop around most of the inner-city for the day, we grabbed dinner, and actually called it an early night in our hostel. I was wiped out from traveling, my busy week of school, and exhausted from staying up so late earlier in the week that sleep was much appreciated by the time I actually passed out.

However, I was up early the next morning, grabbed a bit to eat, and Katie and I decided to do a walking tour of the entire city, with the free walking tour provided by a hostel recommendation. The 3-hour tour of the city took us to all the major sites. It showed us part of the Amsterdam Historical Museum, through the Red Light District, to New Markt, to some of the oldest churches and Jewish quarter, and ended at the Anne Frank house too! Not only that, it was thoroughly informational, and all free! After the walking tour, I dragged Katie to the Van Gogh museum, which was actually a bit of a bummer to tell you the truth. I looked at all 200+ pieces of Van Gogh’s art, and frankly, although he lived an impressive and depressing life too, they didn’t even have some of his most famous artwork! So I was a bit upset about how much we paid for that, versus the overall outcome, but oh well. Even so, it gets dark in Amsterdam very fast, just like in London, so by the time we’d done an afternoon walking tour, gone all the way to Van Gogh, and got back toward our hostel it was night time. Katie went back to the hostel to take a nap, and I decided to go on a guided tour of the Red Light District, since the same tour guide that we had earlier, was doing another tour later that evening, and she was so awesome and knowledgeable.

This of course is where I learned the history of prostitution, the reason Amsterdam legalized it, the way that the whole institution operates, and frankly, it was a very very interesting and intellectually stimulating experience. Now this may seem like a complete crack if you haven’t been there, but there are many many misconceptions that people have about prostitution and also the way that it occurs in Amsterdam. I don’t believe I’m whole heartedly in favor of it, but frankly, it works for The Netherlands, so it’s fine. Anyhow, just some random facts about prostitution there in Amsterdam, first off, all of the prostitutes in Amsterdam work for themselves. It is illegal to pimp, or sell women, or practice prostitution on the streets whatsoever. The Red Light District is heavily enforced by police, and is a very safe place to walk around at night. All of the prostitutes, in addition to being self-employed, pay taxes, get tested twice a week, and rent out a window-space for 150 euros for an eight hour time slot as well. All of them are anonymous, they do not want anyone to know their identities, they are just working for a living like everyone else in society there. Last few facts: there are definitely strict legal rules about prostitution in Amsterdam, involving the use of contraceptives, and many regulations on privacy, as well as safety for these women and such. None of them are required to do what they do, nor are they forced to do anything they don’t want to, it’s just an occupation of choice. Additionally, Amsterdam has a very strong sex-education program in their school systems, the lowest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, and also prostitutes in Amsterdam as well as youth in Amsterdam have a 17% sexually transmitted disease rate, so prostitution doesn’t increase this percentage whatsoever, and vice versa…all of these are common misconceptions.

Anyhow, I learned more about the history and such, but most people won’t believe anything I’ve written anyways, needless to say, I was actually surprised by a lot of the things I learned in Amsterdam, and it was an interesting comparison to for instance the states, where sex, and youth, and all of those other issues are far more controversial, than the way that it’s treated in the Netherlands. But anyhow, after that tour, I left and found a pub near our hostel that had a live cover band that played oldies, rock and roll, and new singles, so I listened to them for about two hours before going back to the hostel, and calling it a night.

Sunday, I woke up early again and Katie and I wandered through the blistering cold to the Anne Frank museum, which was probably the highlight of my Amsterdam experience overall. I’m a huge history nerd, so walking through the same house that Anne and her family hid in, and seeing the hidden bookcase, and listening to the documentary accounts of the people that helped them hide was just mind-blowing. I saw her original diary in the last exhibit of the room, and also stood in each and everyone of the rooms that housed the secret lives of Anne and her family. I never formally red Anne Frank’s diary when I was younger, but it is definitely something I’d be interested in reading nowadays after touring the place, because their story, and the occupation of Nazi-Netherlands in the second World War is just fascinating. To be in the same places as all of these great people in history has been such an experience and honor as well, that I can’t really imagine what it would have been like to live during the times of others hard struggles of the past.

After the tour of the museum, we basically headed back to the Grand Central train station and caught a train back to the airport. We flew back to London by dinner time, and I was back safe and sound in the Penthouse by 7pm. It was nice to have a relaxing weekend away after my tough week in November, and was nice to sleep in my bed again for sure.

Monday the 31st was another fun day at Xtreme, where I finished up work with the financial news of the previous week, and that night I had one final paper to write of my semester, so I was up late doing that for quite some time. After we finished our work, Carver took me down the street with Nick to the local Thai restaurant to have a pint and recap our coursework. After a late night grocery run, we finally called it a night and prepared for one of our last days of class on Tuesday.

Tuesday was the last day official classes, so it was pretty amazing. I went to GST class, watched some student presentations, then got lunch with Brett and James at a Fish/Chips joint (we had burgers) and then my Theater Class was kinda cool because we had a guest speaker who is both a professional actor and director, and did lots of work with Shakespeare (he even knew of the Blackfriars in Staunton, VA!) so we talked to him for quite a while about acting, styles, and directing, which was all intriguing to me as well. Of course after that, I headed back to the Penthouse to clean up a bit because in the afternoon, everyone came over and we had a big party and dinner to celebrate the end of the semester. So all of the guys from the downstairs flat came up and hung out with us for a while, and some of our other Elon mates came too, that was a lot of fun. Later we all went to our usual hangout spot on Tuesday nights, which was Sports Café, and we came home late. Great success.
Wednesday morning I went into Xtreme Information again. Of course, Monday/Wednesday (the 30th, and 3rd) were both overtime for me, but I just enjoyed working so much, that they didn’t mind having me around. So anyways, I did my usual thing, but then my boss, David, took me out to lunch with all of my co-workers to a noodle-bar called “Wagamama” here, and they gave me gifts and bonus for working so hard this semester and bought me lunch. It was a very thoughtful and much appreciated gesture. The co-workers even got me an authentic England soccer jersey, which I’ll of course wear with pride too. After work, my other co-workers Jamie, James, and Chris, all took me out to have a pint at their favorite pub, and that was a hilarious time, because we all just shared funny stories, and talked forever about working, and “the real world” and such. Later, Jamie and Chris and I all went to dinner at this place called Bodeans, which is a UK attempt at like southern cooking, but it’s basically just a lot of meat. I had an enormous meal of pork bbq, chicken, ribs, and such, which was epic, and then after that Chris and Jamie took me to their favorite place on earth, which was called the Kareoke Box, and we stayed out late singing Christmas Kareoke tunes among other songs until about 12:30am, when we finally called it a night since we all had to commute home. That was a wonderful closing chapter to my experience at Xtreme Information, and will be a night that I’ll always remember from my trip.

Thursday the 4th rolled around soon after and I was up and decided to travel to Oxford with James, Carver, and my friend Melanie. So we took a train and go to Oxford by lunch time and ate at an authentic pub there, as well as booked an afternoon walking tour of the city. The tour took us in and out of a number of the colleges that make up the entire university, all of which were absolutely stunning and gorgeous, and we also saw many of the locations where Harry Potter was filmed, or at least got the ideas to film a replica of. That was for Kelsey, of course. But on a more serious and nerdy note, it was incredible to hear about all the many details of Oxford and its rich heritage. For instance, aside from having many great famous people graduating from the walls of the University (Tolkien, Christopher Wren, Hugh Grant :-P), I saw the original wall that used to surround the city of Oxford when it was fortified, learned that Hitler didn’t bomb Oxford in WWII because he was originally going to use it for his intelligence base when he took over England, and learned that every year, one of the largest libraries there that houses a copy of every book ever made in the UK has to build 2.5 miles of bookshelf just to hold all of the texts!

Needless to say, I was thoroughly engaged and at the front of the pack with our tour guide, rambling off questions. Anyhow, Oxford was an exciting adventure, we even saw some of their museum of science, which was also cool because I saw an original manuscript written by Sir Isaac Newton, and also some famous astronomer’s instruments too.

Friday the 5th, brought on Carver’s favorite part of the trip, which was the Fuller’s Beer Factory tour. We took a group of 12 Elon students to the Beer factory out in suburban London to tour the facility and talk to locals. This of course lasted a number of hours, we did a beer tasting of all the types of beers that Fuller’s produces, and I even got a picture behind the bar counter as a “bar tender,” which I thought was pretty sweet. After that we all headed back to the flats and I ended up getting sleep on a Friday night, because I was exhausted from tourism, if you can even imagine that.

Saturday though was pretty exciting because I took a train with a group of Elon kids again and we traveled to Greenwich, England for the afternoon. Greenwich is a small town in outer suburban London that has a beautiful park and scenery, and of course is famous because it houses one of the greatest imaginary lines in history…the Prime Meridian. There’s a huge amount of hype over an invisible and made up line, but I’m going to be honest, it was pretty dang cool though, no doubt. Anyhow, so the 5-6 of us spent plenty of time getting our pictures standing in two hemispheres at once, as well as touring the many museums that are on top of the hill in the middle of the park. I personally found the Royal Observatory to be one of my favorites, because we actually got to see Halley’s grave (as in the Halley comet), and learn about the history of longitude, based on star mapping, and all those fun and exciting details too. After that, we had one last fiesta in the penthouse for all of our mates that were getting ready to leave and called it a night. My friends from Elon time in London was winding down, and it was definitely evident for sure.

Sunday the 7th was a day spent mostly packing. But, we did take a quick excursion out of the flats to get some fresh air. The weekend was a big shopping weekend for the holidays, since London has been decorated for Christmas for a number of months now, and there were people everywhere walking around and shopping. I saw plenty of people playing Christmas music in the streets, got a picture with Po from Kung Fu Panda since they were trying to sell the DVD in a store, and even found a few great deals on some souvenirs and such too. After this, I spent most of the day, just like the rest of my flat mates, packing and getting ready for departure, as everyone else was supposed to leave on Monday morning, and I was still going to be traveling around. We ended Sunday evening with a great big dinner at the local Thai restaurant and shared lots of stories about the previous semester and my friend Jon Mahlandt from Elon (in Scotland for the semester) was in town for the weekend, so he even joined us for a great meal and some good stories too. We got some sleep and called it a night, and I must say, it was a great picture-esk way to end our semester here in London.

Monday morning I was up pretty early. I was able to wave goodbye to a few of my friends before they left (even if I was half asleep) and I even finished packing up my last bag so that I could be ready to move out. James had a later flight, so he and I went and got a second round of Thai food, and played some chess at the local pub/restaurant on our street, and then I eventually helped him get his bags onto the tube, and off and on his way toward the airport. After that, I made my way to the Natural History Museum, and explored for a number of hours, which was pretty remarkable, because the British exhibits on the dinosaurs are absolutely incredible. I felt like a little kid roaming in a big colossal prehistoric age, but that’s okay, I enjoy interactive museums way too much.

After that, I took some of my bags over to my friend Mack’s place since I’d be staying with him the next night, and I got some sleep after trying to plan my trip for the next ten days. All of my friends from Elon had gone home, but I still have 10 days ahead to explore and travel, so I’m trying to make the best of it.

When today rolled, around, yes, finally, 5,000 words later, you’ve finally caught up to me today, Tuesday, December 9th, I got up and was mobile and out of my flat by 11am. I said goodbye to the penthouse and Clifton Gardens and Little Venice one last time, and I headed out with my laptop bag over one shoulder and my giant over-stuffed backpack on my back. I headed straight for more museums today, first stopping for 2-3 hours at the Imperial War Museum, and then later to the Victoria-Albert museum. The War museum is a must-see in my opinion, if you ever visit London, only because the WWI, WWII, and Holocaust Exhibits are absolutely spectacular. In addition to reading so much information about tactics, history, weaponry, and the scenes of those times, the struggles that the people have to go through in wartime is so immense. They even have a real life trench scenario to get a feel for what it must have been like in trench-warfare, so I was in heaven for quite some time. The Holocaust museum was very humbling, and once again, is another reason why I think I’m so intrigued by history, and so amazed about people’s triumph stories, and horrified by the terrorizing ones. It’s just a crazy and indescribable feeling overall, but I was blown away by the exhibits and thoroughly enjoyed them too. As for the Victoria-Albert museum, which is more or less a museum full of artifacts of royalty and history, I was indecisive overall. The musical instrument section was cool, as well as the cast section, where there were many different replicas and some originals of large monuments and sculptures created over time. I did also get to see one of Raphael’s most famous paintings…”The Meeting in Athens?” maybe something like that, I forget the name, I better look it up, but this is getting way too long, anyways, even so I saw lots more paintings, sculptures, artwork, and other artifacts to my heart’s content that I left, and called it a day. I later went out to dinner with my friend Mack from Elon and his girlfriend Becky, to an amazing chicken-grill restaurant, where I ate my fair share of food, and then am crashing on Mack’s floor for the evening. I’m lucky to have friends in the area that are willing to give up some floors pace for me, that’s for sure.

Anyhow, the next 10 days are up in the air. I’m going to Brighton tomorrow and the next day to crash on my friend Weezy’s floor/couch and see the sights there. I’ll probably try to come back to London, because I want to take a day trip out to Hampton Courts, and possibly Bath too if I get the chance, if not, I may try to visit Wales for a few days and stay in a hostel there, but on Monday the 15th, I’m flying to Dublin with all my gear to stay in Ireland for a couple of days until Wednesday the 18th, where I’ll be heading back to the states. As for now, that’s all of the wrapping up you’ll ever need to keep up to speed on my life. I’m excited to be traveling and adventuring on my own, and my backpack, although heavy, has served me very well. I’ll try to keep you posted, but if not, I’m sure I’ll see everyone back on the state-side soon. Take care, miss you all lots, love you too, and above all else, check out the pictures if you can. Most are up on Facebook, and I’ll try to put some up on my picasa site, but if I don’t I’ll show them to you in full on my return! Until next time…Cheers!