for dad, and those who want to track me like a migratory duck

May 17th-
train at 6:50 from Granada to Madrid
flight at 13:20 from Madrid to Amsterdam (Schiphol airport) flight number HV5202

Hostel StayOkay
p. 310206246832

May 18th
I think I´m going to take day trip bike ride to Utrecht and stay in a hostel there because the StayOkay was booked for the 18th and 19th. I´ll let you know.

May 20th-22nd
Flying Pig Uptown Hostel in Amsterdam
street Vossiusstraat 46

May 23rd
flight Amsterdam-Warsaw
amsterdam-copenhagen 10:20 SAS flight number 552
copenhagen-warsaw 2:20 SAS flight number 2751

2 nights at Jump Inn Hostel
p. 48228251167

May 25, 26,27
Atlantis Hostel, Krakow
p. 48124210861

May 28th
Wroclaw, Poland

May 29th-31st
Prague

then Vienna and Budapest, which i haven´t booked yet. I will let you know.

As you have all probably heard by now, last week I experienced my first purse-snatching.

Here’s the story.

It was Saturday night in Barcelona. Earlier I had met up with my friend Rachel, from Westwood, who is studying abroad in Madrid and was in Barecelona for the weekend. We ate at a delicious vegan restaurant called Juicy Jones. (I would recommend it to anyone traveling there). Later on we met up with another friend of hers from Madrid to have a couple drinks at a bar down by the water. At about 2:45 (very early for Spanish time) we left head back. Rachel was staying in a hostel that was less than a 5 minute walk from the hotel I was staying at with my program. On the corner of Calle Hospital and Las Ramblas, Rachel and I parted ways, and I continued on my way, which, had I made it there without interruption, would have been no more than an minute’s walk alone. About 20 paces later, two short men, looking about in their 30’s, appear out of nowhere. I literally hadn’t even seen them on the street until suddenly I felt my purse being yanked from my shoulder.
It was a small, black leather purse that tucked tightly under my shoulder, and I was even holding on to the strap. They grabbed with so much force that the strap, which was connected to the bag with a metal clasp, broke right open. Before I had time to realize what had happened, they had taken off down a side street.

I screamed a couple times. And then I burst into tears, unable to speak to crowd of Spaniards that was forming around me, as the street had been far from empty. I have to say, for the two cabrones that temporarily ruined my view of human nature, there were about 10 more amazingly kind people there to help me out after it happened. One guy in particular I will never forget. He was about 45, I guess, from Mexico, with a huge heedful of long thick dreadlocks. He gave me a big hug and kept telling me to “tranquila te” and that “ya estas bien”. He offered to walk with me to the police station, stayed there with me while I called my bank and talked to the officers, and then accompanied me back to my hotel. He even let me wear his scarf, one of those striped and dotted ones that are really popular with the European-hippie types. Turns out his name was Jesús. No joke.

All in all I was actually quite lucky. I didn’t get hurt at all or get physically harassed in any way. I hadn’t brought out my new digital camera because it was low on batteries from the day before. I didn’t have my passport or any credit cards, and was only carrying about 35 Euros, plus my two cell phones. (My home cell number is now defunct… by the way)

Last weekend Mom and Dad came to visit me during their vacation. It was lots of fun, and a quintessentially DeLuca traveling experience. If you are unaware of this style of travel, the following description should give you a good idea of what I mean.

Saturday morning I caught a bus to Málaga, where Mom and Dad had flown into a couple days before. Due to the nature of nightlife in Granada, at this point I am painfully hungover and running on just a few hours of sleep. Upon meeting them at the bus station, we then had to head straight to the free internet computers so that Dad could find the address of the hotel at which we had "reservations" (this was a lie).
Once that was all figured out, we embarked on a historical walking tour of the city. Walking through a city with Mom and Dad, I was soon to find out, is not as simple as it sounds. Imagine Mom, with a firm grasp on the free tourist map at all times, marching 20 paces ahead of Dad, who, with camera and palm pilot in hand, was stopping without notice every ten steps to examine some innane detail on road sign or shop window. My job was to balance myself between the two, kind of like a wolf herding a couple of wandering sheep. Continuing in this fashion, we saw Malaga's Cathedral, which was big and impressive from the outside, the Alcazaba, an old Arabic fortress, and the ruins of a roman ampitheater. The highlight for me was the Picasso museum that included some stuff by Miró, Mattisse, and a few other modern artists.

The next day we headed out of our hotel bright and early to Granada to do some hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. As we were operating without a map, we soon found ourselves lost on curvy roads surrounded by olive groves. If you are ever in southern spain, don't assume you can get anywhere within 2 hours by means of side roads.

Around 2:30pm, We finally arrive at the visitor's center of the Sierra Nevada national park, to discover that the office is closed for siesta. We are thus stuck without a map or any advice. The sky is looking intimidatingly grey, and the temperature had decreased considerably from what it was at the bottom. To make matters worse, as I was lacing up my sneakers, I noticed a little sprinkle of rain. Nonetheless, Mom and Dad are roaring to go. I then encountered this situation:

Mom, while examining a map outside the center: "Hey, this trail looks great. Ready? Let's go! DAAADDDDD!!! (whistling) DAAADD!! C'mon hurry up we're doing this one!"
Me: Mom, that one is 300 kilometers.
Mom: Perfect, we'll be there and back by 4pm!

After we managed to find a trail, Dad began to quiz me on my Spanish. Since christmas, he's been studying by means of my old textbooks and a 17-disc audio CD on his way to and from work. My job as tour guide in Spain was also to explain some details of Spanish grammar His first question of the hike regarded a sign saying, "En esta zona no se permite hacer fuego". So Dad asks me, "Hey Ude, what does that sign mean? Fuego, that means a fiyha, right?" To which I could only respond, Yeah Dad, that sign means "yous guys can't make fiyhas heah".

Later that night, we came back to Granada so they could drop me off before they went to their hotel. When I got home my family was all there, cooking donuts with the grandparents. Mom and Dad wanted to meet my family so Teresa invited them up to have coffee and try their donuts. This was a funny experience, as my family does not speak any English and Mom and Dad don't speak Spanish. Somehow, they chatted about having exchange students, the american university system, and about me being a giant mess, which Teresa politely refered to as "desorganizada". Dad took a bunch of pictures, and Mom lost a button to her sweater.


All in all it was a really fun and satisfying visit, allowing me to remember why I am the silly, disorganized, american that I am.

The past two weeks I have been running around from here to there, and I have a lot to recount. First of all, last Friday I left Granada to go spend 5 days in a small village an hour north of here. My program arranged for us to stay with a different family in more isolated villages so that we could get a better idea of “rural Spanish life”. My program has a lot of these romantic sounding ideas about inter-culturalism that turn out to be a bit different from what they seem.

Anyway, the pueblo (what these small villages are called in Spanish) that I stayed in is called Montejicar. The name is said to come from the Arabic word “Shicar” meaning sacred, and the Latin “monte” which together is like sacred mount. Back in the 9th century, the area was inhabited by the Moors who built a castle out of the caves inside the hill overlooking the town. I got a chance to hike up to the top where you can see ruins of the tower. In 1486, Ferdinand and Isabella, Los Reyes Católicos, reconquered the town for Spain and expelled all the Moriscos living there, so the town was basically abandoned for decades until the Spanish slowly started repopulating the area.
Today, the primary livelihood is the harvest of olives and production of extra virgen olive oil. This is what the family I stayed with does. The family was Aurelio, the father, Sacromonté, the mother, and their 4 kids, Jose-Manuel, Marie-Angeles, Enrique, and Jeniffer (Yeni, for short). As we shared a room, I spent most of the time hanging out with Marie, who is 24 and studies special education at the University of Granada during the week. She was really fun and friendly, and brought me along everywhere she went. The whole family was home because it was the beginning of Semana Santa, which is Easter week. I will get to that later.

I actually got a chance to tour the “cooperativa”, which is the cooperative oil processing factory. I found their system to be really interesting
Almost every family owns a chuck of land on which they grow olive trees and sometimes cherry or almond trees as well. The size and quality of the land varies, so the quantity of olives that each individual brings in during the winter harvest season is measured upfront before being processed, which dictates how much of the final cut you end up bringing home. (You can actually elect to be paid in money or in oil). First they clean the olives and remove any leaves and sticks. Then the olives are squished by big machines and mixed with water. They then put this into a giant centrifuge where it is purified. Just a few years ago they used to then ship the olive oil elsewhere to be bottled and labeled. Spain is actually the world’s largest producer of olive oil, in spite of the fact that most of what we use in the states seems to come from Italy. It turns out that Spanish olive oil is often just bottled there and stamped as a “product of italy” because they can buy it cheap from farmers in Spain and hike up the prices. Spain finally realized their stupidity and now have a lot of regulations in place on how much olive oil you can ship outside the country. While at the cooperative I saw tons of these enormous vats, that hold 2 million liters of extra virgin olive oil. At 3-4 euros a liter when its sold in Spain, just one of those vats holds the equivalent of at least 7.8 million American dollars. They were nice enough to give me some free mini samples when I visited, so if you remember to ask me when I get home perhaps you will get a special prize (!!) for reading this far into my blog.

With all this money floating around, you would think that the town would be doing well economically. However, due to the problems of global warming Spain has been experiencing what they refer to as a 26-year long drought, which has huge implications on their economy because it is so strongly tied to the production of olives. What was more of a shock to me than the “rural Spanish culture” was the economic status of my family. I ended up feeling sheepishly over-privileged at the end of many conversations. I ended up lying about my travel plans after explaining where I had been so far. Many of the people I met in the town had never been to Madrid, never mind to Amsterdam and London and Prague. One girl asked me if I commute from Canada to Granada everyday for school.

Aside from not having the money to travel, the mindset in the village was very much inwardly focused. My sisters both love coming back home every weekend from studying in Granada, I think because there they get a much more comforting sense of community. To them it is comforting, but I don’t think I would last much longer than the 5 days I spent there. If you think your white suburb of 20,000 is suffocating, try this one with barely 2,500 and nothing but olive trees within a 20 minute drive. Going to bars with them I was always introduced to cousins and girlfriends of cousins and uncles and sisters-in-laws. Despite there being so few people, the town had about 6 bars, 5 pubs, and 2 discotecas. My family lived on the second floor of a building right across from both of them, so that on Saturday night the blue florecent light came streaming into their living room and the base buzzed up through the floor. It wasn’t exactly the goat-milking, lemon-grove-wandering experience that I had imagined with the description of a “rural Andalusian village”, but I still had a really good time there.

On Monday morning I did have a fun experience learning how to make a special cake with my madre. This cake is traditionally made on April 25th when they have a fiesta celebrating agriculture and they all go out to a family member’s house outside the pueblo. We had to wake up at 6am to make the cake, because the kitchen in the house does not have an oven with an adjustable thermometer and we were going to go use the wood oven at the panadería, the bakery, while it was still hot after they finished their morning batch. (If my real Mom ever saw this kitchen, she would never have complained about our lack of counter space. In this one it was impossible to have a drawer open and walk from one side to the other. If you were chubby you couldn’t want through it at all) Here is the recipe, according to the description (in metric, and translated from Spanish so bare with me)

Torta de San Marcos

1 liter of milk
8 eggs
1 kilo sugar
½ liter olive oil
the grated peel of one large lemon
64 grams of baking powder (8 per egg)
flour as needed (about 1 ½ kilos)
one apple, sliced thin.

Separate the white and yolks of the eggs. In large bowl, add milk to whites and beat until soft peaks form. Beat the yolks separately, then add to milk mixture, along with the oil and lemon peel. In separate bowl, sift together baking powder, sugar, and 1 kilo of flour. Gradually add into wet mixture. Continue beating with whisk, adding more flour little by little until the mix feels firm and forms another soft peak.

Pour mixture into greased baking pans. Arrange apple slices on top, and sprinkle with a few pinches of sugar. Cook for 15-20 minutes at 215 Celsius. You may want to put some parchment paper over the top to prevent the apples from burning, but she might have just done that because we were using the wood-oven. Makes about 3 cakes. Serve cold with coffee, for breakfast of afternoon snack.

Last weekend I went with my program to a tiny little village called Sorvillan. It was about a 3 hour bus ride from Granada, nestled into the Alpurrajan Mountain range. We were staying in a big house in the village with two guys named Enrique and Domingo, some friends of our academic director. Domingo is actually Swiss, but speaks Spanish fluently as well as French and German. He worked for many years as a panadero, which means that he made his own brick oven bread and sold it while walking from village to village. He was a very cool guy. When we first arrived we got to explore the village for a while, which didn’t take very long, as there are only 200 residents (including only 6 children) and to walk from one side to the other takes about 10 minutes. The streets were all very steep and windy, paved with cobblestones, like a lot of the older villages I’ve seen in Spain so far, but here a lot of the houses had mule sheds instead of garages. Normally with those tiny streets you have to be careful because the cars and scooters come whizzing by come very close to running over your toes. Here, we didn’t have to worry so much about cars, but instead were almost overtaken by a herd of goats. Although there was no one urging them along they seemed to be in quite a rush and we literally had to jump out of the way.

Fortuitously, that night was a full moon, and from a point at the top of a nearby hill I got a chance to watch the moonrise/sunset against the background of the mountains on one side, the village on another, and the Mediterranean to the south. That night also happened to be a lunar eclipse, which we got to watch from Domingo and Enrique’s rooftop. That night they cooked us a delicious dinner accompanied by their local wine and homemade flan.

The next morning after breakfast we went on a hike from the village down to the coast. Along the way Domingo pointed out some wild pig tracks and subsequent mud puddle. He also showed us some wild herbs growing along side of the trail, such as lavender, rosemary, fennel, and sage.

Along the ridges of a lot of hills they have recently installed wind turbines, called molinas in Spanish, which sounds prettier. Also from the roads we traveled along the bus ride, you can see tons of these giant white, shiny surfaces clustered together along the hillsides. At first, I thought they must have been solar panels for accumulating natural energy just like the molinas, and was very impressed. I later found out, however, that they are not solar panels but giant sheets of plastic that form makeshift greenhouses. Apparently they are used illegally to grow tomatoes and lettuce year-round, in order to compete with the low prices of tomatoes imported from warmer Morrocco. This is a big problem for local farmers whose prices are being driven down or are left without a market.

When we arrived a the sea, we came across a guy with a papaya tree in his backyard. After chatting with him for a bit he offered us two of his papayas that were about to be over ripe. We cut them up with my trusty swiss army knife (thanks dad) and ate it while sitting on the rocky beach. But don’t worry I waited the full 30 minutes after the papaya to jump in the water. A lot of people didn’t want to go swimming, but being used to the ocean in the Cape, I didn’t hesitate to 1-2-3 it right in, and proceeded to stay in for a while longer soaking up the salt. The locals were looking at me like I was crazy for swimming in February.

Last weekend I went with some friends to Cadiz, which is a city on the south western coast, on the other side of the straight of Gibraltar. This time of year, in the first two weeks of Lent, Cadiz is famous for hosting a fiesta called Carnivale. It is basically the same concept as Mardi Gras in new Orleans (although my guide book said that carnivale puts mardi gras to shame). It’s apparently really common for big groups of kids my age to go down from Granada for a night, so a bunch of the kids of my program and I hopped on a bus leaving for Cadiz at 4pm and leaving to return to Granada at 7am the next morning. The custom is that everyone dresses up in elaborate costumes, usually in big groups, and everyone runs around in debauchery singing and dancing and drinking in the streets until the sun comes up. I threw together a quick costume as an orange and black spider, equipped with a headband that had light up antennae. It was a lot of fun, definitely an experience of the Spanish lifestyle.

Today a group of students went to my director Julia’s house which is a bit outside of the city. Julia, he husband Juan and their 3 adorable little children live on this beautiful spot of land in the middle of some farms. They converted from an old building used for drying tobacco leaves. We were there to have a lesson from Juan in how geometry is used in Arabic tile designs like the ones that decorate the Alhambra. Juan is a professor at the university of Granada and also an artisan of ceramics. He was very friendly and helpful. We had a little arts and crafts session where we cut out tessellations in clay, which we arranged into a pattern. While our tiles were baking in the sun we had a big delicious lunch outside on the patio.
After our session we went with Juan to a town a few minutes away where they were having a carnivale parade in which he was playing the saxophone. It was a really cute little event. They seem to have fiestas here at the drop of a hat. On the calendar in our kitchen there is a different patron saint written for every single day of the year. I guess normally everyone celebrates their birthday and also the saints day for whom they are named. I had a funny conversation with my little sister on this topic. I asked her if she knew anything about St Partick’s day (el dia de san patricio). She didn’t because st Patrick is apparently a protestant saint and doesn’t get much cred over here in the land of the catholics. She hadn’t heard of the holiday and was conivinced that I was asking because Patrick was the name of my novio, (my boyfriend). This coming Wednesday is a fiesta called Día de Andalusía. My mom keeps mentioning it to me but I’m not quite sure what it is going to entail. You will have to wait in suspense until my next entry to find out…

Yesterday was my first full day here and everything went really well. Teresa woke me up in the morning and we had breakfast together and then she came with me on the bus to my first day of school. It was all very cute and I felt like I was in fifth grade and Mom was walking me to the bus station again. As childish as it might seem I was so glad to have someone there telling me how the bus worked and which direction to walk. My school is situated in an old house in the historical district of town way up on the hill. Right down the street there is a beautiful plaza overlooking the Alhambra. I haven’t had a chance to actually go inside it but I’m hoping to go this weekend. The staff at my school are really friendly. There are about 5 of them, and 14 of us, and I think that the ratio is going to be really good for my spanish. Because none my classes here are transferring in away way to McGill for course credit, I feel like I am doing an interesting experiment in motivational learning. I think I have had the most spanish instruction of anyone in my group, and at first I was worried that the level wouldn’t be challenging enough and I would would sort of stagnate into “spanglish.” This may still be the case, but yesterday we had placement tests and they are going to split us into even smaller groups based on our level.

The day is split here into two sections, everyone goes to work around 8 or 9 like at home, but then returns home around 2 for a few hours in the afternoon for lunch and a bit of relaxing. Our afternoon sessions go until about 5, and most people don’t have dinner until around 10. The main meal is in the afternoon and in the evening its usually something lighter. Yesterday we only had morning classes so I decided to explore a bit in the city. On my way there I managed to get pretty lost and was heading in the complete wrong direction when my two sisters happened to drive by in the new car that the family bought yesterday. They both yelled my name out the window and I jumped in at red light. Later on the older sister, Teresa, walked with me to the city to help me find my way. They have all been so helpful, I am really thankful to have been placed with such a great family.

My first night with my host family was a success! My family consists of Teresa, the mother, her 19 year old daughter, also Teresa, and another 14 year old daughter whose name I think is Jesus but I’m kind of confused about it. (note: turns out her name is Maria-Jesus, pronounced Maria-Heysoo) Teresa is separated and owns her own hairdressing shop. Teresa the daughter is studying translation at the University of Granada, of Spanish, French, Greek, and English. She’s not really allowed to speak any enlgish with me but it’s nice to have her help for translating sometimes. We live in an apartment about a 20 minute walk from the center of the city. The apartment is beautiful, everything is really nice. They even have wireless internet if I bring my computer into the living room. Ive been speaking Spanish with them and they seem to understand me pretty well and said that I speak with a good accent. I think they are used to students who have almost no spanish at all. They have had a couple other exchange students, from what I gathered. One for 3 months through SIT, from California, and one for just 15 days on a summer program.
So I have my own room, with an armoire and a desk. Its about the size of a dorm room, which is perfect for me. The food we had for dinner tonight was delicious, definitely not scary spanish food like I was expecting. We had sopa, jamon y queso tortilla, and ensalada: broccoli soup, an omlette kind of thing with ham and cheese in it, and a green salad (with kiwi!) I was really happy not to have seafood paella with the anchovies and whole crabs like I’ve been getting at the restaurants in Madrid. It’s been tough but I have been really forcing myself to try different types of Spanish food. They eat a lot of pig product and seafood (with exoskeletons) The other night I ordered something with tuna and I was just sooo relieved when it arrived and didn’t have its eyeballs attached. But I did eat an entire small fish whole the other night. Baby steps.

So far I've made the acquaintance of various people in my hostel, who have then left after a night or two. Currently I'm rooming with two middle aged men, one spanish and one french. The french one snores. It's a bit creepy but they have been nice enough.

My first couple days in Madrid were uneventful due to my coming down with a mysterious illness leaving me more or less bedridden. I woke up with what I thought was just a bad sore throat. Later in the day I was on my way to a pharmacy to replace the toiletries that were lost along with my backpack, I had to detour to a McDonalds and take a breather for a half hour because I felt as if I was going to faint. I'm feeling a lot better today, not 100% but getting there.

I have managed to explore a bit, in spite of my illness. Yesterday I went to the Reina Sophia art gallery, which has an impressive collection of 20th century Spanish art, with a lot of Dali, Picasso, and Miro. I arrived just in time to catch the free tour that was going on. Although it was in Spanish, I managed to catch the jist, or so I think. There was a lot of pointing and gesturing which helped. The highlight was most definitely Picasso's Guernica. It's a lot bigger than I thought, and what's interesting is that they also have a lot of the sketches and offshoot paintings that came before and after Guernica, so you can trace its evolution. A modern art section included some really bizarre instalation pieces that were over my head.

Today I saw the Royal Palace, which was pretty much just another giant, overly ornate monstrosity highlighting the monarchial culture of excess. Those places all tend to blur together after a while. Then I wandered through some skinny cobblestoned streets for a while, just as you would imagine, with balconies and plaster walls. Being alone in a new city is a very strange experience.

My first impression of Spain came as we were desceding towards Madrid. The view from the plane was amazing! The land looks so different from the flat green checkerboard that I saw over England and Wales. I had an aisle seat, so I was peering over 2 other people to get a glimpse outside. The land looks so much more reddish-orangey, with lots of big open rocks that look they would be fun to climb on. So out my little window I was enjoying the sight of some beautiful couple of mountains which I thought looked huge, when I looked in another direction and saw the even HUGER mountain range that was about twice the size of the ones I was appreciating. They are funny because they seem to just pop right up everywhere. Spain would be a wonderful place to go skydiving, there is so much to look at from above. Too bad my SIT program prohibited me from skydiving. As well as scuba diving and bungee jumping and the world outside the EU... hmm...

So, everything was going well on my first solo trek until my backpack didn't show up on the luggage belt. I had to check that as well as my suitcase because there are new rules in the EU about only one carry on item. I was also hugely overweight, but they let me by without paying, which was amazing, because it would have been about a $200 fee.

With very much effort and language confusion I finally ended up at my my hostel here

They have free WiFi which is nice, and it seems to be very busy with people in similar situations to my own. Tune in later to hear more about my adventures in the next 5 days here in Madrid.

Cardiff, or Caerdydd in Welsh, is the capital city of Wales, located along the south-western coast off the British Isle. Wales is technically just a principality of the UK, like Scotland. We stayed 2 nights in a nice hostel there with very friendly employees. One of them, who we took to calling "the Kiwi" as he was from New Zealand, was pretty cute and seemed to take a liking to my friend Jessie (she fed him a french-fry, it got pretty intesne).

One of the things I was most excited for in Wales was to see these adorable things called Lovespoons. A lovespoon is an ornately carved wooden spoon that was traditionally given as a token of affection, kind of signifying that you want to go "steady". It's like a promise ring, or a frat boy giving his pin to a girl in the 50's. They have all sorts of symbols that can be carved into them, like a celtic knot, meaning everlasting love, or a dragon, meaning protection, or a little cage with any number of wooden balls that means how many kids you want to have (eek). According to legend, the lovespoon is where the term "spooning" came from. So, I had big plans to go buy all sorts of lovespoons for people back home. Unfortunately, as they are hand carved they turned out to be in the range of 25-80 pounds per spoon. It's the thought that counts?

Cardiff was a bit tricky for us to figure out. After seeing the Cardiff Castle and numerous lovespoons, we were a bit at a loss for where to go. January is definatly not the tourist season in the UK, and a lot of things were closed. Through reading some pamphlets and tourbooks, we came across a neat sounding thing called Big Pit an old coal mine-turned museum. Up until about 25 years ago, Southern Wales's economy was largely based on coal mining in the hills of the Brecon Beacons. Normally you can descend into the actual mine and tour through it to see what it was like, but that part was closed and so we went into a simulated version (boo). It was very interesting though, I enjoyed getting a better understanding of a process that I felt very removed from. Also, to get there we had to take a 45 minute bus ride to this tiny town called Blaenafon, which was beautiful but really cold and up on a hill. Then after we had finished touring, the 3:55 bus never came to pick us up. (apparently the bus systems around here aren't too reliable) after waiting for 40 minutes, totally freezing and becoming delerious with Hink Pinks, a bus came by going in the other direction which we jumped on and rode full circle. Even so, it was well worth the trip.

BRISTOL

Along the way to Bristol we stopped in Salisbury with the intent of seeing Stonehenge. Turns out our train was delayed for a couple hours as the island of Britain was attacked with torrential winds that kept blowing trees over the train tracks. Turns out about 12 people died in various wind-related accidents that day. We tried to go to Stonehenge but the bus must have gotten scared away because it there never came to the stop. While waiting, Elaine and I performed some spoken-word renditions of Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff”, ala William Shatner. Hilarity ensued. (imagine: Don’t you know I pack a chain saw…)

Instead of Stonehenge we used our time to see the famous Salisbury Cathedral. Built in the early 13th century, it is the oldest cathedral in England and houses one of the 4 remaining original copies of the Magna Carta. It was pretty sweet. It made me wish (momentarily) that I had listened more thoroughly to Ms. Dunton in my 9th grade Latin class.

Afterward, we continued on to Bristol in South-west England where my McGill roommate Miriam is studying for the year. She helped us out a lot by letting Elaine and I, and later Jess, sleep on her floor for 3 nights. It was really nice to have a tour guide, we walked through a really cute part of town that we wouldn’t have thought to seek out. One of the nights we were there we went to this bar/club on called Thekla which is on a boat, where there was some interesting if slightly hard core band playing, during which, I got a bit too enthusiastic and became stuck in the moshpit. No permanent damage done...

From Bristol Elaine and I took day trips to Stonehenge again (which was very broody) and also to Bath, where there are some really old Roman baths that we got to observe. We also had traditional English tea and delicious buns in Sally Lunn’s Buns, the oldest tea shoppe in England, which is located in a building that was used as a monastery in the early 12th century and was converted to a bakery around in the late 1600’s.

London was huge and I don't even want to think about how much we missed seeing in our whirlwind tour in 1.5 days. Elaine and I arrived on the early morning of the 16th and spent our first 5 hours there in an early morning blur of customs, tube stations, and extraordinarily lengthy escalators. When we got to our hostel we collapsed onto the floor and had baguette and cheese with delicious black current juice, which would come to be a staple meal for us in the next 2 weeks.

Later we met up with my friend Jessie Knutson (heh...) who is on exchange in London for the semester from McGill. She was nice enough to let me store my 66 pound suitcase in her room. We had some nice Indian food and then headed out to a pub where we tasted our first StrongBow (of many more to come) which is a hard cider beer. They have it on tap at most of the pubs we went to in the England and Wales. Elaine liked it so much that she risked everything by smuggling a 4-pack to America in her backpack. (shh don’t tell the authorities)

In the morning we hit up the National Gallery, which was one of my favorite things from the whole trip. With free admission we were able to see some really awesome paintings that I had only seen in textbooks.
We went to Camden town, which is apparently the hip place to hang out. It’s has the Harvard square type feel to it, but it has all sorts of little crafty shops and trinket stores.

And of course, we posed in front of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminister Abbey, etc. Westminister looked amazing from the outside, but costs 12 pounds to get in, way too much. I learned that it is the site where William the Conqueror was crowned.

JAN 16 arrive at Heathrow around 8am. Spend two nights at

Smart Hyde Park View hostel
11 Craven Hill Gardens
p. +44 20 7262 3167

JAN 18- leave London in the AM by train, heading to Salisbury to see Stonehenge. Arrive at the Bristol train station in the evening.

spend night at Miriam's in Bristol
january 19th- spend day touring Bristol
january 20th- day trip to Bath

JAN 21- leave Bristol in the AM by train, heading to Cardiff, Wales. Spend day and (2?) nights. Day trip to Swansea

JAN 23- AM train from Cardiff, across mid-Wales. Sleep at www.knightonbedandbreakfast.co.uk and see sheep and cute little town

JAN 24- train to Aberystwyth

JAN 25 - train to Oxford

JAN 26- train back to London.

JAN 27- Elaine departs for USA. Danielle departs for Madrid