That's right. I can now post an audio clip to my blog simply by calling a number on my cell phone from anywhere, recording a post, and hanging up. That's it. Look for that soon :)
Moved from GooglePages to here
Hey everyone,
I decided to move my blog from GooglePages to here, simply because it's so much easier to archive past entries here. I don't have the webspace to archive my own and I this interface is so easy to use when publishing. Also, you guys can post comments in here now. So from here on out, this is the official source of information from me if I don't talk to you regularly :)
Home-sick
Currently Listening to: Pink Floyd - Us and Them
Okay, I finally finished up the Europe update. Click each country on the left to check it out.
I also finished my program at work today. The only thing that's left to do is wrap it in an .EXE file so everyone can read it and I'll be done. Then I can use it to finish up analzying the data I downloaded awhile ago, and I'll be competely done at GM. Dad's coming here next weekend to check out where I work, then we're gonna pack up and head home. I'm super excited to see all the family again...
I guess this is the first time I've really been home-sick... Up at school I don't get it because I'm so used to it up there now... Cassie and all my friends are up there too, so... But anways, I guess we're going to start rebuilding the Honda Mini Trail 70 (1 of our mini dirtbikes). I'm really looking forward to that, too. Jeez, I'm just realizing how much stuff is going on right now. I got a new cell phone number and most of you should have gotten an e-mail about it. Just in case, the number's (906) 281-6019. I bought some tickets to the Tool concert on September 16th and I'm soooooooo excited about that! I've wanted to go to a show of theirs for so many years but they sell out instantly. They're supposed to be absolutely insane live, so it's no surprise. Hopefully it'll be Dan, Cassie and I going... although she has no idea I bought them yet, so I guess you can decide if you wanna go now Cass!! :D
France
Unfortunately, we were misinformed about train times and ended having to take a later, much slower, and sweltering hot train. We were all pretty pissed off about that because there was no air, the windows barely opened, we weren't brought food like they said we would be, and we were out of water for most the trip. Not only that, but now our reservations to go see Normandy were completely shot, which was a huge thing we wanted to do while in France. Anyhow, we made it to Paris after a long time and took a subway to a hotel we found. We all took a much-needed shower, and then Cassie and I took the subways to the Eiffel tower. When we got there, we were bummed to find out it was closed for the night and that we couldn't eat in the restaurant inside of it. We got some good pictures though and ran into some drunk French teenagers that offered us whiskey, lol. They informed us that the metro (subway) was closing at a certain time, but we'd planned on walking back to our hotel anyways. So we started walking, got some dinner at a place that charged 6 euros for a bottle of water lol, then headed back to the hotel. On the way back we got some awesome pictures of the Eiffel tower and of some statue on the bridge, then caught a cab after we realized it was going to be way too long of a walk.
The next morning, we headed to the most retarded airport I've ever seen in my entire life- Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport. There were no signs telling which terminals housed which airlines, which buses went where, which check-in facilities belonged to which airline, etc... Two people told us to go to the wrong terminals, then finally a bus driver knew the correct one. Then, some guy at the check-in line asked me where I was going...
Him: "Boston or Chicago?"
Me: "Neither... Detroit..."
That went on for about 5 minutes before some other lady realized he was being a moron and helped me out lol. So I said my goodbyes to Cassie and Allie (which sucked), then headed out.
The flight back was quite interesting... I lucked out and got Business (First) class, which is absolutely amazing on international flights. The chairs recline to a full sleeping position, you get realy nice headphones, an entertainment system complete with music, movies, etc... that flips out with an LCD screen from your seat, 2 full 4 course meals, the whole works! The guy sitting next to me was making small talk and I ended up telling him that I was flying standby because my dad worked for the airlines. He goes "Is your dad anybody at NWA?" and it confused me a bit, but I just answered yes. Well within 2 seconds I realized what the snob meant. The guy goes "Tell your father that the service on these European flights is TERRIBLE. The Asian service is okay, but Europe is bad," depsite the fact that the flight attendants could not have babied us more... They didn't bother us, yet they gave us anything we wanted. He went on an on complaing about how he had booked coach seats with his wife, then tried to upgrade them with their frequent flyer miles. Well they were on separate accounts, so he couldn't use his miles to help her our when she ran out. So he made her sit in coach alone while he took first class.... nice, eh? I was fed up with hearing him at this point so I just started to try and get him to stop talking to me. Eventually I think he got the picture and ended up moving seats to somewhere else in first class lol.
Spain
Oye, oye, oye.... we did so much yet so little in Spain. The vast majority of the time we were there was in Gandia, a small town on the Mediterranean Sea. Juan, a friend of Allie's, was basically our tour guide the entire time. He showed us around to various places (listed above), took us to good restaurants, etc... Also, he has a flat that's a block and a half away from the beach in Gandia. So needless to say, we swam a LOT. It was a blast being in the ocean again- it's been way too long. The water was super salty, but the waves were really fun to jump into and all that. As we were leaving the beach the first time, a sea shell cut a huge gouge into the bottom of my big toe, slicing about a nickel-sized chunk of skin out. Of course, I wasn't too happy about that considering I'm already recovering from a freak accident affecting my foot. So we walked back, got it all bandaged up and it was fine the rest of the trip. Haha one day Cassie and I were walking to the store though and I had my shoes on without socks- something I do fairly often, I never seem to get blisters. Well apparently this time was different... I couldn't even feel the blister forming on the back of my heel (since that's the leg with the messed up nerve) until it was huge lol, so then I had yet another thing wrong with my right foot... Anyhow, we took some walks along the beach at night, checked out the local night life a bit, etc...
After Gandia, Juan took us back to his real flat in Valencia for a few days. We toured the town a bit, saw a huge flower mural dedicated to the Pope since he was visiting at the time, and ate at a few cool restaurants. It seems I never got enough food there, but that could be because they eat so late.... Most Spaniards eat at like 9 or 10 at night, it's crazy. Another of Allie's friends, Jose, took us out on his sailboat. That was just awesome.... we went maybe a mile off shore, then just drifted and swam for a bit, ate some snacks, then dilly-dallied back to the harbor while we slept on the deck. We also got to see the America's Cup area, which was built for a year-long sailing contest. We visited this really posh, uppity bar/lounge place and had some fun, then went home.
We also got to see Juan's and the other Jose's university, which was cool. We watched Italy win the World Cup match there, then toured the town a bit more. The next day we all headed out to a pretty remote little town called Alcublas, where Renee (actually a Spanish guy's name) has a little place. There were flies EVERYWHERE but the countryside was beautiful. I got a few pictures of the flowes and almond trees out there, so I'll post those.The next day, we had to leave Juan and hopped a train to Paris.
Valencia
Well, currently I´m in Valencia, Spain. Sorry it´s been so long since the last update, but we haven´t had a decent amount of internet access until now. If you want to see if the entries for each country, click the link on the left to whatever country you want to see my entries for it. I wrote them based purely off memory today so they´re not too detailed, but you´ll get the picture. The first day, I flew out of Detroit and into Minneapolis, where Dad gave me my passport and a few other things I needed, then I flew out of Minneapolis after waiting for a few flights and into Amsterdam. Check out the Holland section for more. The order of my trip was: Holland, Italy, Spain, France. As of right now, we have a lot of pictures but can´t put them online yet. I´ll be posting a link in here to an online photo album later, along with posting a few key ones in here.
Italy - Third Day
After Venice, we caught a train to Milano. We spent the night in a hostel near the train station, which was okay. They told us we would have air conditioning and we didn´t, so we got our money back. It was extremely hot though, so it was sorta miserable sleeping. Now here´s the funny part: There were a couple people just going at it in the room next to us when we got there. So to distract ourselves from it, we watched Italy play in the semi-finals match for the World Cup. They won, and the entire city went ballistics. The people next to us stopped having sex, and anyone who had a car was flying down the streets, waving an Italian flag, and honking their horns non-stop. Everyone hung flags out of their windows and yelled, etc.... We got some good video footage of it, so I´ll post that. The next morning, we flew out to Valencia, Spain.
Italy - Second Day
The next morning we got up and headed to the train station in Tuscany, where we caught a train into Venice. Venice is an AWESOME city. The canals make the landscape completely different from that of any other. We stashed our stuff in the hostel (which was right by the train station), then took a little stroll while the sun set. The train station sits right on the main canal, so we got to see tons of stuff. We didn´t go on a gondola ride, unfortunately, because they´re suuuuper expensive. But we walked around saw some cool stuff, listened to some guys play music in front of a church for awhile and danced with some locals, then headed back. The next day was insane. In the morning, we headed out to the tour boats, which took us around to all the different islands in Venice. Each island had it´s own unique little characteristics. Murano had the glass shops, which were really cool. We got to see some glass blowing demonstrations and ne of the guys made a glass horse within a period of maybe a minute, like it was nothing at all. Another island specialized in making lace, so the girls bought some stuff there. I got pictures of the glass stuff and the lace island too, so those will be up later. After the boat ride, the girls shopped for HOURS. I about died of boredom, but some of the stuff was kinda cool, especially the glass from Murano. I also had the best pizza I´ve ever had in my entire life. So after a long, hard, hot day of shopping, it was back to the hostel.
Italy - First Day
The flight into Florence was beautiful. It went through some of the Alps, so I could see snow and some really cool cities that were up in the mountains. After arriving, I took a bus into the main train station in Florence, where I met Cassie, Allie, and Deb. Cassie and I were obviously really excited to see eachother. We all headed out into the town and walked around. We went to see the statue of David at a museum and as we were contemplating standing in the 2 1/2 hour line, we saw my friend Jonathan Hatch from Edina! I did a double take a first and when Cass, Allie, and Deb saw me say hi to him they were all sort of blown away I met a friend within an hour of being in Italy. So we all talked for a bit while we stood in line and then eventually, we got into the museum. It was really cool to see so much old art, but unfortunately we weren´t allowed to take pictures at all. After the museum, we grabbed some groceries at a local deli, then took the train back to Tuscany and had an awesome spaghetti dinner with the rest of the people staying at the hostel. Everyone there was really cool, so we hung out at the table talking for awhile, then went for a swim. There was a kid from Whales and another from Pittsburgh who were both pretty trashed from the wine. The Pittsburgh kid (Lee) decided to skinny dip in the pool since his swim trunks were a whole 100 feet away in the hostel. Then Owen (from Whales) decided to join and Lee had a ball pretending like he was hitting on Cassie´s mom. Then, before heading to sleep that night, we realized Allie had been stung by a scorpion the night before...
Amsterdam
Today was a loooong day. I got up at 4:45 a.m. and Isaiah drove me to the airport in Detroit. I ended up not getting on the first couple of flights out because they were packed for the 4th of July weekend. I met a couple people from Minnesota at the airport though and we all ended up flying to Appleton, WI together, then I got a flight before them back to Minneapolis out of there. Since I didn´t make it to Minneapolis at the intended time, Dad brought my stuff to me at the airport (my passport, some blank CD-Rs, etc...) and then it was off to catch a flight to Amsterdam. I ended up having to wait a few flights, but I made it on the last one and it could not have been better timing. The flight left at 9 p.m. and we had an awesome airplane (an A330) which had in-seat entertainment systems in every single seat. The flight got into Amsterdam at noon the next day, so I felt virtually no jet-lag whatsoever. The flight out of Amsterdam to Florence, Italy had already left at 10 a.m. so I booked a hotel for the night and took a walk around the City Centre. It was an awesome city and had a crazy social scene, but it was incredibly dirty. Garbage was everywhere in the streets. But I went and grabbed some food at a local pizza place, had a Heineken (after all, it´s brewed in Holland) and watched the England-Portugal World Cup match. The the morning, an airport shuttle picked me up and after heckling with the gate agents who knew NOTHING about the open-ended ticket I was using to fly standby, I finally got on the flight to Florence, Italy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)