Your Pal Bill

Europe 2004

January 15, 2004

Well, I'm on my way to England now... watch for me to keep all of my loyal readers up-to-date here. Although I don't know I'll be able to do it every day, I will try to fill in every day at some point (a la Road Trip 2003).

And here are some of Brent and Trevor's related entries:

08:52 AM


Europe 2004 Day 1

January 15, 2004

Today was pretty short, what with flying 500+ mph away from the setting sun all day. I checked in online yesterday,and was carrying everything on, so my Mom just dropped me off at the airport and I walked right up to security, made it through relatively quickly, found the gate, and cooled my heels for a bit before boarding the plane. The flight into PDX was a bit late, so we were as well, but nothing terrible.

I had a window seat, whcih would have been better had there been less cloud cover. But I can assure you that Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota look awfully snowy right now. I got into Minneapolis and made a beeline for the connecting flight, on the other side of the airport. Luckily, unlike PDX, you can get from one side to the other in MSP without leaving security. They had been boarding already when I arrived, but I wasn't too late... I guess they just start boarding DC-10's earlier since there are so many people.

My seat was awesome. I love my travel agent so much! It was in the front of the cabin, with about 5 feet between my seat and the bulkhead. Tons of legroom, which is nice for a 8+ hour flight. We left Minneapolis and headed north over Canada toward Greenland.

11:59 PM - Comments (1)


Europe 2004 Day 2

January 16, 2004

So we pick up from yesterday on the plane somewhere over the North Atlantic. I did get a few winks of sleep, not as much as I would have liked. I wasn't really sleepy enough to zonk out, I suppose. So I read a book and watched the little map update itself with our current position. Soon the sky began to lighten outside and we made our approach into Gatwick.

As near as I can figure that airport is a series of halls with little passages connecting them with no apparent organization like you would find in most airports. The route was well signed, but very circuitous. I made my way to the train hall, got on the train, and in short order found myself at London Victoria station. I took a few pounds out of an ATM, and headed for the Tube station. Luckily, Victoria is on the District and Circle Lines, as is Tower Hill, which is the station for Brent's flat. So it was a pretty straightforward (but awesome!) trip on a District Line train.

At Tower Hill, I found Brent's Flat without too much diffculty and managed to get in and settled and refreshed a bit. After a while, I took Brent's advice and went out for a walk to St. Katherine's Dock. It was neat, but there wasn't a lot going on there, and it was cold and breezy along the river, so I headed into the tube again for a trip to Oxford Street, which Brent had also reccommended.

Oxford Street must be the big shopping street in London. It was pretty cool, although I wasn't really in the market for anything, it was cool to see the different stores, and how the street worked, and people-watch. Also, there are more buses than I've ever seen in my life that run up and down this street. It is practically bumper-to-bumper red double decker buses. I walked up and down a fair ways, walked down a few smaller side streets, had a light lunch at a sandwich place, and made my way down Charing Cross Street to Trafalgar Square, which certainly is grand.

I then headed down to Embankment, as by this time I was getting quite tired and Didn't want to walk a ton more. I hopped on another District Line train and made my way back to Brent's Flat. After spending some time on updating this site, I took a short nap at about 5:30. By this time I had been mostly awake for 24 hours. I got a few winks in before Brent arrived and it wasn't too much longer after that that Trevor showed up.

We made our way on the tube back to Embankment, where we walked up to the Leicester Square area. We went to a few nightspots (not really my thing, but whatever) and caught the last train of the night back to Brent's place.

Some general observations so far:

11:59 PM - Comments (2)


Europe 2004 Day 3

January 17, 2004

Bon soir from Paris! Early- too early this morning we caught a cab to Waterloo Station in London to catch the Eurostar to Paris. The train ride was dark in the beginning, lightening as we approached the Chunnel. Transversing the Chunnel only took 20 minutes, and soon we were in France, which is where the trip got a lot faster- I thought we were moving at a good clip in Britain, but when we got on those wide open TGV tracks... daaaang! A very fast, scenic ride through the French countryside and soon we had arrived at Gare du Nord in Paris.

First we made our way via the Metro to our hotel on the East side of the city. This did not take long and we took a short nap since the night before was much too short. Soon we were back on the Metro (and RER!)heading for the Champs-Elysses and were soon gazing up at the Arc d'Triomphe.

We walked down the Champs-Elysses all the way to the Louvre. Of course by this time the museum itself was closing, so we'll be checking that out at a later date. We crossed the Seine to the left bank, and wandered for quite a long time in the Latin Quarter. We each had an eclair from a small patisserie and eventually found a small French restaurant for dinner.

That brings us to the present, at an internet cafe on Rue Soufflot. The french keyboards here are an interesting challenge. It took me a bit longer to type this in than it usually should.

11:59 PM - Comments (3)


Europe 2004 Day 4

January 18, 2004

I guess we were really tired from the day before, because we accidentally slept in a bit too late. No matter, we were soon on our way to the Tour Eiffel. We got off the Metro across the Seine from the Tower, and crossed to get over to it. It was quite an approach. Underneath, we saw that we could take elevators to the top, or pay a little less and take the stairs. So we got a bit of a workout out of the deal. It was chilly and windy out, though, so before heading up we each bought a knit cap, which helped my ears out tremendously. We didn't end up going all the way up, just to the 1st "story" of the tower, which was plenty high for me. There were a lot of neat exhibits and things up there, on top of the great view.

After making our way down, we headed for the RER and it brought us close to the Louvre. We had lunch in the pyramid area before tackling the museum. Of course that place was huge so we couldn't see it all, and I don't think any of us really wanted to, so we did the touristy thing and basically made a beeline for the Mona Lisa.

Although I had been told beforehand, it sure seemed small! I don't think it helped matters that many of the other paintings in the area are freakin' huge, so by comparison... Not to mention the building itself. Not being a huge art person myself, I was very very impressed with the building, particluarly the portions that were not modernized- the old palace ceilings and walls were magnificently detailed, which is no small feat in such humungous spaces. Several times I was taken aback by the grandeur.

We poked around for a while longer, Trevor was particularly interested in seeing the Van Der Meers. However a few hours of a museum goes a long way so we soon headed out and made our way up the banks of the Seine to the Ile de Cite. We wandered around a bit and came upon Notre Dame. We didn't go in, as it looked like mass was about to start. However, it was quite grand to behold from the outside.

We headed south again into the Latin Quarter and wandered around for a good while again, went into some interesting-looking stores, and finally stopped for dinner at an italian restaurant. The menu had a mix of French and Italian names. I was pleased that I knew that champignions are mushrooms. Like many things in Paris, this meal seemed awfully expensive. I mean, cokes are at least 2 or 3 euros everywhere. I stuck to l'eau!

After dinner, Brent had to get back to Gare du Nord to get on the Eurostar for London. Trevor and I saw him off at a Metro station and wandered some more, back across to the Ile de Cite, wandering there, then across to the Hotel de Ville, which I think means "City Hall." On the plaza in front of the Hotel de Ville, they had put a temporary ice rink out. We enjoyed watching Parisiennes of widely varying skills skate for a while before continuing our wanderings.

We walked past the Centre Pompidou, which is the building with all of its systems on the outside. A modern piece of architecture houses a collection of modern art. We continued wandering around this neighborhood, and around some area called Les Halles, where some guy was trying to sell us something saying "hashish? hashish?" And I was all, "non, non." and Trevor was all "We don't speak French." That was very funny to me. It was late so we hopped back on the Metro and went back to our hotel for the night.

11:59 PM - Comments (1)


Europe 2004 Day 5

January 19, 2004

This morning I was up quite a bit earlier, somewhat to Trevor's dismay. We enjoyed a leisurely complementary continental breakfast provided by the hotel. This was my first true continental breakfast, I suppose, since it was actually on "the continent." Anyway it involved a croissant with jam, I think I used tomato jam. I'm not sure. It wasn't bad though. I also had hot chocolate and orange juice, and some pain au chocolat while reading the international edition of The Guardian.

We checked out and had the hotel store our bags while we went out for our last day about Paris. We hopped on the Metro and went down to the Ile de Cite, where we first went to Sainte-Chapelle, which is in the middle of an old palace which is now the Palais du Justice, which is probably like the French Supreme Court or something. Anyway, Sainte-Chapelle is on 2 levels, a small, close first floor chapel and the tall, light upper chapel with over 6,000 square feet of stained glass, most of it original to the 13th century! The king built it to house relics of Christ. That room was certainly up to the task.

Next we headed across the street to a larger religous structure, namely Notre Dame. When we had visited the night before, we had decided not to go in, but today we headed in. It was certainly expansive. With the main hall and side wings, it seemed much larger inside than out, if that was possible. It was very big, but not as detailed or constructed with as fine materials as say, Sainte-Chappelle or the fancy rooms in the Louvre. There were two humongous rose windows on each end of the transcept, but they were so far up that any details could not be made out. Still, the scale itself was enough to inspire awe.

After some quiet contemplation, we hopped back on the Metro and went to Montparnasse station briefly. They have a long hallway there that uses this fancy travelator that I read about a while back, so of course I had to give it a try. It was interesting, they certainly give you enough warnings before hopping on the thing. We saw more than one person wobble a bit at the transitions, and we wobbled a bit ourselves. But it was wicked fast... 9 kph vs a lowly 3 kph on your standard slidewalk.

After that, we hopped back on the Metro (we actually didn't even have to leave the station to use the travelator) back up north to the Montmartre part of town. We made our way up the hill via funicular to Montmatre hill topped by Sacre Cour. We then wandered around the neighborhoods back down the hill. One fun place was a square filled with artists at their easels painting and selling their art. Back near the bottom, we found a small shop where we each had baguette sandwiches (I had Jambon et Fromage), then went up to a small patisserie where Trevor had a tasty eclair (I had the hiccups at that point unfortunately). Then it was back onto the Metro to the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, which was cool to walk around in general, and we saw the graves of two famous musicians in particular- Frederic Chopin and Jim Morrison.

We wandered a bit more and found another entrance to the cemetery and headed down that street, and realized it was the very street our hotel was on, what luck! We were stilll a ways off, so we headed on, stopping at a small grocery for snacks for the train back, and to get some bottle of french wine. The prices in the store were almost ridiculously cheap when compared to what we had been paying at restaurants. Soon we were back at our hotel, where we rested in the lobby for a long moment before retrieving our bags.

We caught the Metro one last time. Seriously, it was so easy to use and really was the fastest way to get around the city. This particular trip was the only one we took which was close to rush hour, and the trains we took were filed, and the trains were arriving less than 2 minutes apart in each direction! It was very impressive. Anyway, we had arrived at Gare du Nord a bit early for our train back, so we found a small internet-place, where we caught up on things a little bit before having to leave to catch the Eurostar back to London. The trip wasn't quite as interesting because it was dark the entire trip back.

Back at Waterloo, we caught the tube to Brent's flat, where I gathered my things and we were soon in Trevor's car on our way to Bury St. Edmunds. It really was odd sitting as the passenger in the front left seat. The whole driving on the wrong side of the road hasn't bugged me as much yet, mostly I think because it was dark while we were driving. I imagine had I been the one doing the driving my perspective would have been quite different. We arrived in Bury late, and went to bed straight away as Trevor had to work the next day.

11:59 PM


Europe 2004 Day 6

January 20, 2004

Today Trevor had to go to work, so I was on my own during the daytime. I slept in a little bit, then went out for a little walk on my own around Trevor's hometown of Bury St. Edmunds. At first I didn't use the map but it was easy to get kind of turned around. But I didn't get too lost and hey, i was just wandering around anyway, right?

Bury is a very cool little town. The town centre is made up of small lanes, many of which are given over to pedestrians. There are many small shops of every stripe. I stopped at a bakery of sorts for a light lunch of a chicken & mushroom pastie. Not too bad and somewhat British, anyway.

At the foot of the hill are the Abbey Gardens, which is a park set among the ruins of the abbey started a millenum ago. It is really quite magnificent. In the US, this would be a National Landmark. Here, they build tennis courts and a playground.

Unfortunately the mist soon started turning into more of a rain, so I was compelled to come back to Trevor's after a few hours. On the way back I found the railway station and poked around inside there for a time. I was happy to find my way back with ease.

When Trevor returned, we immediately began preparations for a dinner party we held tonight. I was little help in the kitchen but Trevor's preparations ahead of time ensured we were ready with our Mexican feast ahead of the guests' arrival. Originally 10 people were invited, but many of them (all Americans!) cancelled at the last minute. So in the end, we had a coworker of Trevor's, his wife, Trevor's three British next-door neighbors, Trevor, and myself. It was a lot of fun, everybody was quite sociable, and the party was a success!

11:59 PM - Comments (1)


Europe 2004 Day 7

January 21, 2004

Today Trevor had the day off, so after breakfast we headed off into Bury again, so he could show me around instead of my aimless wanderings of yesterday. As it turned out, I had done fairly well for myself. What was cool is that Wednesdays and Saturdays are market days in Bury, so there were market stalls in the streets today. It was very fun, we got a bag of very small donuts made hot and fresh right in front of us, 10 for 1 pound.

We poked around a lot of the market stalls and stores. He showed me the local brewery, and in general gave me a better idea of my orientation in the town centre. Soon, however, he was off to do his thing, so I went back to the Abbey Gardens and explored a bit more. The ruins are reallly quite extensive and it is amazing to imagine the great Abbey that was once there. In addition, it is quite a nice park and I sat for a while near the River Lark with the ducks.

I headed back to Trevor's after a time and he soon joined me. We had leftovers for dinner, poked around for a bit, then headed down to some of the local pubs. We visited the Ipswich Arms, the Linden Tree, and the Rising Sun. Each pub had a different character, but I could see how they were so popular and an important part of the British social makeup. It was also great that each of these pubs (and several mmore) were within easy walking distance of Trevor's house. My favorite pub was the Linden Tree.

At the Rising Sun, we decided that I would go for my first drive tonight, since I had only had one ale. We came back and I hopped in the right side of the car, and immediately reached in all the wrong places for the seatbelt, then the shifter, so on... Eventually I got going and went for a drive around central Bury a bit, then farther out through several roundabouts to the "supercenter", which is simply a supermarket. I then navigated safely home, without having run into anything. It was certainly different, and I'd like to try again. I suppose it might come in handy someday?

11:59 PM - Comments (1)


Europe 2004 Day 8

January 22, 2004

It doesn't seem like I've been away from Oregon that long. I guess moving around a bit helps. Annyways, today we actually headed out of Bury for Cambridge. I got to drive all the way there, including on the A14 dual carriageway! Very exciting, and sometimes befuddling, especially once inside Cambridge, but we got to a car park okay. We explored the center of town, had some lunch, and went for a 2-hour walking tour of the town. Of course any tour of the town includes the University.

The way it was explained to us, the University of Cambridge is a public institution, but a student needs to be the member of one of the 31 independent colleges to matriculate. The University essentialy handles the instruction, while the colleges provide housing and other support for their students. Each college enrolls students from a variety of disciplines. The system sounds very comforting to me, it has worked well for hundreds of years here, it is confusing then why it hasn't been replicated more widely.

Our tour included a look around three colleges. Trinity College, which is the largest college, was the first we visited. Each college has a chapel, a hall where meals are taken, a master's lodge, and one or more courts and/or greens. It was quite lovely. The second college we visited was Trinity Hall, which is different than Trinity College. You can blame the confusion on Henry VIII. We actually went in the Trinity Hall chapel, which was quite nice, but nothing compared to what we were about to see.

The last college we visited was King's College. As part of the tour, we were granted admission to the King's College chapel, which was simply outstanding. The interior hall of the chapel is huge, with amazing fan vaults that I guess aren't equalled anywhere. The enormous expanses of stained glass windows are almost entirely original to the 13th century, with the upper course telling stories from the old testament, and the lower course from the new testament. The stories adjacent to each other are complementary- for example, Eve giving into temptation is above Mary's obedience to God. And there are hundreds of these panels. It was as impressive as Sainte-Chappelle, on a much larger scale.

After Cambridge, we drove to RAF Lakenheath, and Trevor showed me around. It was interesting to see "Little America," as they call it. There were a lot of British things about the base, like driving on the left, but everyone was American. At the gas pump you pay in dollars, but you pay by the liter, not the gallon. Things like that made it a strange combination.

11:59 PM - Comments (2)


Europe 2004 Day 9

January 23, 2004

Today I woke up later than I meant to (Trevor's guest bed has magic sleep-inducing and maintaining properties... also the alarm did not function) and packed my things, and headed off on the train from Bury St. Edmunds. After switching trains at Ipswitch, I arrived at London Liverpool Street. I stopped in at Brent's flat for a bit, then headed off to the London Transport Museum. Now, I realize that I am quite nerdy in matters of public transport, but this was really a cool museum. I imagine all sorts of people would really enjoy it. I, of course, enjoyed it immensely!

I think I was close to the last person out of the museum as they closed- and I didn't even get through it all. I didn't realize they had such an extensive section on design until the end, though. I kicked myself for not spending more time there instead of looking at buses or something. I love the design of the tube. The roundel is just instantly recognizable, and of course the tube map is a design classic. So I'll have to make sure I get over there first thing next time.

After that, I wandered around the Covent Garden area for a bit before cutting across to Charing Cross Road, down through Trafalgar Square, and all the way down Whitehall this time. I walked past a lot of government buildings, and even saw Downing Street. There was quite a bit of security presence visible there, as you could well imagine. I walked down to across from the Houses of Parliament, and went down and caught the tube at Westminster back to Brent's.

While I was in Bury, Brent's pal Jimiane had arrived from the States, so the 3 of us hung out for a while and visited the local supermarket to gather provisions. Soon Trevor arrived and we all pretty much just hung out for a while, having dinner in. Later we visited the pub across the street for a few pints.

11:59 PM


Europe 2004 Day 10

January 24, 2004

The four of us had a leisurely morning with eggs and orange juice for breakfast. We went out and met up with another one of Brent's pals at the Tower Hill tube station, then walked over to the Tower Bridge. We took the tour, which included going up to the top and walking across the walkways, then going down below to see how the bridge was originally raised. It was quite a feat of engineering at the time.

Next we headed back to the tube for a short trip up the Thames to the Millenium Bridge. This is a new pedestrian bridge that had been beset with some troubles (earlier being nicknamed the "wobbly bridge") but all that seems to have passed and it was a lovely stroll across the river to the Tate Modern.

The Tate Modern is a newly opened facility within a historic powerstation building. The scale of the building provides powerful opportunities for the exhibition spaces within the museum. I think some of the strangest, most excting rooms that I have ever experienced were here at the Tate. The first thing we did was check out the Weather Project in the main turbine hall of the building. This was a very unique communal experience, it is interesting how much a few elements added to a monumental space can change it so much and make it so odd, fascinating, and alive. It is almost too bad it is a temporary exhibit.

Next we went into the actually gallery spaces of the museum. There are three floors of exhibits, I only had time to make a thorough investigation of one floor. It was plenty though, as there were several interesting installations, one I particularly enjoyed was called "Five Angels for the Millenium." It was composed of a completely dark room with five large video projections on the walls, each with a different image of waters, with different figures passing through the waters at infrequent intervals. It is a dificult experience to put into words.

Oh, and I saw bunch of art by the likes of Matisse, Rodin, and Mondrian. There were entire rooms just for Picasso and Warhol. I'm not a huge art person, but I enjoyed the Tate Modern very much.

Next, we walked to a nearby tube station on the Jubilee Line, which was fun because as the newest Underground line, many of the brand new stations were designed by leading architects. Not to mention the nice new train carriages themselves. We only traveled one stop to Waterloo, where we crossed one of the Jubilee bridges flanking the Hungerford Rail Bridge. From here there were lovely views of the London Eye and Houses of Parliament.

We walked up from Embankment to Covent Garden, where we went into the London Transport Museum store- I didn't have the time to visit yesterday before they closed. I know that I'm totally biased, but it is such a cool store. I could spend a lot more time shopping there. Alas, it was near closing time again and suprisingly enough I wasn't the only person to get anything! We met up with another pal at the Covent Garden tube station and walked around for a while trying to find some place that wasn't packed before deciding to just get out of there.

We went back down to Embankment and headed one stop farther than usual on the District Line to Aldgate East. From there we walked to Brick Lane, which is the center for Indian food in London. We stopped at a modern bar first, I was very pleased with the interior design. When we were ready to eat, we made our way down the street turning away various offers for deals on our meal until Brent found someone he could deal with and got us a bargain. We had a tasty Indian meal, I had a chicken dish that was sweet-spicy, not hot at all.

The place was nice enough but a little dodgy in some ways, they didn't bring us everything we had ordered. I also managed to lock myself into the 3x6 foot men's room for almost 10 minutes when the deadbolt latch fell off into my hand as I was trying to leave, and the mechanism got pushed too far in. So I kind of waited for someone to come by, eventually some lady did and she was able to push the thing back to I could turn the bolt. Heh. Kind of an odd situation. I'm just glad I'm not claustrophobic! The restrauant staff didn't seem too concerned about the incident, or the possibility of it happeneing to someone else in the future.

Soon we were back at Brent's flat again and everyone made preparations to go out clubbing. I was planning to go along, with the idea that I could slip out early if I wanted to, but apparently the place they were going ran 15 quid for admission, so I saved everybody's time and money and saw them off. I guess I feel kind of lame sometimes about not liking that sort of thing, but I'm 27 years old. By now I know what I like and what I don't like, and I don't like loud, dark, and smelly clubs. If that makes me a fuddy-duddy, so be it!

11:59 PM - Comments (3)


Europe 2004 Day 11

January 25, 2004

With some sadness, today is my last full day in Europe. We had a nice breakfast of pancakes and bacon in Brent's flat, then headed off on the bus! Of course, we rode on the second level. It was quite a view of crazy driving through London streets. We saw a huge Chinese New Year celebration as we passed by Trafalgar Square on our way to Oxford Street for some shopping. After awhile they all headed back while I made one last stop at the London Transport Museum gift shop, the third time in 3 days! I guess I couldn't decide what I wanted before. There is still stuff I wanted, but I guess it will have to wait until next time. Then I headed back to Brent's in time to see Trevor off to Bury.

By now it was Sunday evening, and nothing much was going on, and I had a weekend travelcard, so I headed off to ride some transit for a bit. I was particularly interested in seeing the Canary Wharf tube station on the Jubilee Line. I ran into a problem where one branch of the Docklands Light Railway had been closed for the weekend, so I changed my plans and made a different way there via the East London Line. It was a fine station, and I'm sure the park above it is a nice place for the workers in the nearby office towers to come on pleasant days.

I made my way back to Brent's, and we went for dinner at a nearby pub down the street.

11:59 PM - Comments (2)


Europe 2004 Day 12

January 26, 2004

Well, I suppose every holiday must come to an end eventually. Although I had a throughly enjoyable time, I am certainly ready to go back home. I started the day early as Brent woke me up on his way out to work. I got ready, packed all my things, not so neatly this time, and headed out the same way I arrived, in reverse. At the airport I managed to find my way around (I found Gatwick to be supremely confusing in its layout), had some breakfast at the airport pub (a "bloomer" sandwich... More like a "heart attack" sandwich!) and eventually got on the plane. Not as good of a seat this time, but a window seat, which I actually prefer to an aisle. As we flew over Britain and Ireland I did get to see some of the countryside through the clouds.

We landed early in a cold & snowy Minneapolis, and made our way through Customs & Immigration. I didn't have any problems getting through, and since I had carried on everything, I zipped through quite quickly. I found it odd and annoying that we had to go through security again, but I had three hours to kill in the airport this time, so I had a bit to eat, then headed down to the gate and read while waiting.

There was a gentleman chatting with the gate agents as the plane was beginning to board who looked an awful lot like Senator John McCain. I don't know why a senator from Arizona would be flying from Minneapolis to Portland, though. Particularly in January. We had to be de-iced before taking off, a first for me! The flight was okay, the overheads were the tightest yet so I almost had to check my bag. The service wasn't as great as the other flights had been, but the older fellow sitting next to me was kind of nerdy, like me, so we had fun chatting about the airport approaches and stuff. We arrived at PDX a bit late, but I was just happy to be home after such a long day.

11:59 PM


Europe 2004 Wrapup

January 29, 2004

Well, now that I've been back in the flood-y environs of greater Tillamook for a few days, I suppose it is time to give my general impressions of my trip.

First of all, mad shout-outs to my boys, Trevor and Brent. Without them putting me up, and putting up with me, the trip would have been a lot more scary. Thanks a lot for having me at your places, and often paying for things, and being overall lovely travel companions.

Europe is pretty awesome! I enjoyed the vibrancy. I enjoy studying the built environment, and how different places "feel." There were so many more great places there than what I've experenced here. This was not unexpected, but was wonderful to actually see for myself. I think it makes me realize that we aren't necessarily stuck like this.

For these reasons, I liked London a LOT. It may be just that it is the biggest city I've ever been to, and the fact I live in a city of 4,400, but I really envy Brent right now. Even in January, there was a great energy to the city. There are so many people, so many places, so many opportunities. I don't know if it showed, but I was having a grand time just walking around.

Paris was also lovely, although I liked London more. I don't know if it is a language thing, or what. Trevor actively disliked Paris, but I cannot say that. I would like to visit again someday, perhaps another season of the year. One thing I was afraid of, and people have been asking me about: people were not rude to us at all in France. Quite the opposite, in my experience. It was enjoyable.

Bury St. Edmunds! What a neat little town. I'm sure that there are many like it all across Europe, but this is the place I got to experience for a few days. While certainly not as large as London, I came to enjoy the lifestyle in Bury as well. The level of activity in the town centre, the places we coulde get to on foot, the abbey gardens, the pubs. What a rich experience.

I think what I'm trying to say is, I enjoyed experiencing each of these places. I didn't get to all of the tourist spots, or plan my time out to the last minute, or take a gajillion pictures. I think the time spent there was quite rewarding in itself. I'd like to take a month or 2 someday and rent a flat, and just live somewhere else for awhile. That would be a great "vacation."

Oh, I have lots of other things to say. But I can't remember them now and I want to get on with it. So perhaps you'll see some more ranting in the future. So that's something to look forward to.

05:55 PM