You might be wondering why I only have some of my trip journals up. Well, if you know that I've been to more places than are here you also probably know a bit about me and that I'm a little lazy when it comes to writing these things. The following journals are missing or incomplete.
- London to Istanbul 2004 - didn't write one and now probably won't although it would be pretty interesting considering how clueless I was. Highlights would include - French pastries rock!, guidebooks exist, it's true because I found out near the end of my trip, the French people are awesome!, people in the Riviera speak English, missing your chunnel train can be expensive even with a Eurail pass, Rick Steves backpacks suck, Europeans don't have clothes driers so you need to plan ahead, cruise ships are not for me (really really not for me), geek cruises are NOT training!, Italians are rude,always bring your memory cards with you when visiting ancient greek ruins, some toilets don't let you sit down, "I don't speak German" is more useful than you think when you're trying to get out of a train in Germany and you have a line of Germans behind you, Neuschwanstein is fake - Dachau is not - you figure out which impacted me more, sleeping all night in a doorway in London is not that comfortable nor is sleeping on a bus "bench" or in a train terminal or airport or on a bus, you should alternate which sides of airplanes you ride on in case you'd like to use your neck within 2 weeks of arriving home and lastly sleeping whenever you're tired when crossing 9 times zones is not a great plan to beat jetlag.
- Caribbean 2005 - First trip with kids to Orlando, Key west and Cozumel. Major things life happened to us here but too long ago to worry about.
- Europe/France 2005 - That would be a great trip journal, maybe some day I'll write it when I get time. We learned a lot this year, like how missing cheap Ryanair flights get really expensive, the 35 different ways to get to mainland Europe from England, how some "palaces aren't", what bed bugs feel like (somewhat related to the previous item), how wonderful American cheeseburgers taste after being in England for more than 24 hrs, what a constant supply of eggs will do to my digestive system, how to sleep in Italian train stations, how to sleep on hard ferry berth floors, how to sleep on Italian trains, how to sleep past your stop and then find another train back and lastly how to get stranded literally in the middle of the adriatic. So yes, there's probably a trip journal there somewhere.
- Washington DC 2006 - Smithsonian is a joke, Ethiopian food is the bomb as are Chilean empanadas, you can't buy a sweater at the mall but you can get plenty of FBI tshirts, Washington monument is not a tribute to Bill Clinton. Relatively short trip but enjoyable anyway. I started the trip journal but didn't finish it.
- British Colombia 2007 - Um, interesting but usually I write trip journals during the trip and about the time I got started the trip was over. Maybe I'll copy out of Natalya's since she has a brutal overlord forcing her to write while on the trip.
- Western Europe 2007 - it's just not that interesting to have a trip journal 45 days long and half of it we stayed in the same spot, more of a synopsis is in order I think. We did spend a week in Slovenjia, went to Ireland (finally), Amsterdam (I think I was there), Brussels the cul(cough)- culinary cap(cough) - culinary capital of Eur(cough cough)ope, and Vienna where we ate nothing but sausages and apple strudel because it's all we can say in German, that was nice and should be written about.
- Yucatan Peninsula 2007 - bad food, listen to Piper yammer, great ruins, listen to Piper yammer, bad food, - repeat as necessary. Highlights would be snorkeling, swimming with dolphins, meeting new friends from Barcelona and Argentina, trying to convince them that Mexican food really does taste good and Taco Bell (ew!) makes better Mexican than can be had anywhere on the Yucatan Peninsula, hurricanes are best avoided during vacations and lastly Latinos airlines would kick our domestic airlines tail fins if allowed to compete in this country.
Thats about it. I guess there probably would be some entertaining trip journals in there somewhere.. If I only had the time.
