The Blog is dead, long live the Blog.
You might try this. superhappyfuntime.wordpress.com
Have fun in Japan, thanks for reading.
You might try this. superhappyfuntime.wordpress.com
Have fun in Japan, thanks for reading.
Finished!
Here's Fuji Rock, Tokyo, and Nikko.
The last chunk of my trip was spent in Berlin. I did a lot and it was mostly all awesome. My favorite part may have been my bike tour because a. i didnt have to walk on my sore feet, b. the guide was really entertaining and informative and we saw loads of the city, and c. it was free. I saw some awesome museums, and a concentration camp. Had more sausages and Turkish food, also more beers. Went to the funkiest bar ive ever seen in my life. The building used to be a fancy shopping mall and or high class apts. Then it got bombed out and is now filled with graphitee and artists selling really weird art. Also, this rastafarian dude asked me where I was from using the best phrase ever. "Hey mon, wheres dat accent from" Maybe it was just cool cuz he was all rastay and after I answered him he went back to shouting, "They gonna legalize it man!" Took a dump in the Reichstag as my last act in Berlin. Then went to bed to wake up at 345 to catch my train and outta here.
Unfortunately, I didnt wake up for my alarm and so missed my train, thus missing my flight. So here I am on the free computers in Frankfurt with a day to kill and a big chunk taken out of my wallet for travel changes. Sad. Good trip though.
To Germany. I spent a night and the better part of two day in cologne. A town on the rhine. Famous for cologne, iw ent to the original site and found it underwhelming, altho it did have its history told in puppet form. They had a really good chocolate museum that had a really in depth history of chocolate (even with some comments on how the industry is support largely by inhumane working condidtions) and some chocolate production, and my favorite part, a really excited pudgy german kid trying to get as much free chocolate as possible. I took his picture, its not creepy.
Köln also has a huge cathedral that was free to enter and must be the german capital of extreme sports as i saw loads of skaters and bmx bikers. The local beer, Kölsch was quite nice. I also ate a big sausage. Germany.
After seeing London, I saw France, one would expect that then I saw so and sos underpants, but that wasnt until Berlin. Paris was as rainy if not more so than the UK. That part sucked. The rest of Paris was cool. I went to the Notre Dame and looked at the outside and the hordes of tourists and walked around not inside it. Took way too many pictures of the Seine and went to the Louvre. Its famous. They have there an audio tour revealing the secrets of the Da Vinci Code, or reliving your favorite moments of some such nonesense. I saw the Mona Lisa. She looks much as she looks on the internet, only with more people in front of her. The Louvre was massive and I saw maybe a third of it before I decided that I had had enough and left. Decided to be less cheap that night and sprung for a duck dinner, which was all kinds of delicious and definitly my favorite meal of the trip. The waitress looked kind of insulated that I didnt order a drink or a dessert, but I was le cheap. Sat at lots of streetside cafes and felt edgy writing postcards and reading a hemmingway book about living in Paris. My second day was much better than my first and I started it off early with a trip to the catacombs where something like 6 million peoples bones lay all piled up and creepy looking. It was cool. I got yelled at in french for not turning off my flash. Sacre Bleu! After that I went to the Rodin museum which was super cool. I really really liked his gates of hell sculpture and a few of the other pieces. so much so that I bought 3 postcards. Walked up the Champs Elysee with the same named song stuck in mz head from HS french class and saw lArc de Triumphe, which is massive. They were having some ceremony in the middle so I watched the military band play and used my amazing umbrella. Its not amazing, its broken and cost me a dollar in japan. Last thing I did in Paris was go and see the Tour Eifel at night, which was much less lame than I imagined. It looks all nice lit up so.
What I really liked about being in Paris beyond all the touristy crap was using French I had learned like a billion years ago in HS. I remembered much more than expected, which is to say some, and so I didnt feel like a total ass. Also, the french say things like "Viola!" when they bring you your food and theyre not being pretentious. Plus the food was kind of like magic, oh man that duck. I did feel like an ass telling the hostel guy Jaquette was swiss and not french, he kind of rolled his eyes at me.
Upon my triumphant return to blighty we parked it for the night at the englishmans house and headed out the next day for the "lake district." As the educated among you haved guessed, this area or "district" is famous for lakes. And so we camped yet some more and the rain poured down and we traveled from quaint pub to quaint pub in search of ales and pickled eggs. Pickled eggs were nowhere to be found, but ales were plentiful. Our second day up in the lakes we went for a climb, and by we I mean the staunchest, strongest of us. The big man stayed behind and cried and read Harry Potter and made floral wreaths and embroidered. We climbed a mighty peak. The peak of Helvelyn. The weather was fierce, but fair and with pork pies, and thermoses filled with hot tea we climbed. A family had to turn back near the peak due to the harsh winds, but we young dumb adventures sallied forth. (The fourth of our party was merely a sally.) There were many nerdy lord of the rings references and it was mostly too cloudy to see anything at the top, but for a moment, and the view was great. The climb down was easier a bit, although hiking in converse gave me manly blisters on my pinkie toes. Twas great. Definitely the high light of the trip.
After, we traveled further north to the untamed wilds of Scotland, were we saw a Fukui JET in his native habitat, his father served us bacon sandwiches and we saw the birthplace of Robert Burns. Also were accosted bz local youths whom i have written of previously.
Then up to the Isle of Arran which is said to be scotland in miniture, thus no need to go further into the land of the caber. The weather was fine Scottish weather of rain and more rain, a solid 18 hours, the longest that summer, the rainiest summer on record. We went on a whiskey distillery tour and ate at an amazingly delicious restaurant. The scallops were so good that I decided to taste them twice and to leave some for the next user of the "loo." The last night in Scotland, we wrangled a spot at the only youth hostel on the island. The first night we partied with locals, including an huge individual with a flat cap and no teeth (i think) whose accent was such that we mostly couldnt understand and he gave us the following advice on what to do on the island.
"If yer loooking for raandy wimen, dount go to lochranza. Go to loch (unintelligble gibberish). Thats war the only prostitute on the island lives." Thanks guy.
The next day we drove the long drive back to the englishmans house and had a great indian dinner. Two of the lads left the next morning. And my host and I poodled around his town and took a hike up Pendlehill, famous for witches and as the site of George Foxs revelations leading him into being the first Quaker, or something, my Quaker history is pretty shaky.
Popped over to Prague for a three day detour. The plane over was filled with a tour groups of brits, and the plane being delayed an hour gave them time to do what brits naturally do. Drink ale. Two of them werent allowed to board the plane cuy thez were too sauced. Hilarious, they also sang songs the whole flight, i felt bad for the stewardesses. Prague was good, walked around a lot and accrued more culture points, saw some art, saw a famous clock, saw a famous bridge. Went to a museum of communism and ate a sausge in the square. It was sausagy. A hobo threw up next to me while I was eating, which was prettz spectacular. My last day in the area I went up to Kutna Hora, a quaint little Czech town that contained the only thing I knew about the Czech republic. a church decorated with human bones. There a chandelier made of at least one of every bone of the human body. I didnt see the ear bones, but maybe they were there. Im no scientist. Prague gets a thumbs up and its back to England.
After leaving London we drove to Salisbury and stopped at Stonehenge, where the demons dwell. Where the banshees live and they do live well. It was great, thought it had potential to be hoky as its so famous, but it was cool. We also hit up Salisbury Cathedral and saw the best copy of the Magna Carta, a document of freedom and liberty. I think if I were a wrestler I would pick The Magna Carta as my wrestling name, itd be hella intimidating.
That night we rough camped out on the moors. It was cold and I was too cheap to buy a sleeping bag, on the plus side we had some great pickled eggs, there were no werewolves and I awoke to the soft bleeting of sheep, which was peaceful and just a little sexy. Drove to Devon in the morning and camped at a proper camping ground, had some ales, grilled some meat, slept better.