Brussel Sprouts
Belgium, France on September 15, 2008 at 2:14 pm
So Nantes is nice. No monuments of note.
There was one that looked nice but it was mostly blocked by a carnival which I avoided. I don't like carnies. Imagine European carnies, pretty much legit gypsies.
The hotel owner is probably the best part he took 20 minutes explaining the city and how the slave trade worked. Then he gave me my key.
I guess Nantes is nice because of all the money they made off slavery. They made so much that when it was made illegal they just said fuck it and kept going.
I played Nantes in Nantes mission accomplished. Turns out they say it way different than I thought it was.
Link time! Read full post »
To Nantes
France on September 15, 2008 at 3:33 am
There's about seven train stations in Paris and I walked to the one that has trains to Nantes. I knew it's general area but I zigzagged for a long while.
Once I got a ticket I took the straightest road I could see and it leads back to the Louvre so I should be able to find it again.
Didn't go in Louvre just sat in one of it's courtyards to take a break and talk to Richie. Photo is of courtyard.
I thought about going to this famous cemetery, but who visits cemeteries? Only names I was familiar with were Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde.
Chose Nantes because I can play a song on the ukulele of the same name. It's suppose to be really nice though, it does have a song about it.
So basically all I did yesterday was walk a bit then ly down a lot and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The proper response to "Do you speak English?" is always "no hablo ingles." I've said yes a few times because it's a knee jerk reaction, but they are always looking for money.
If you ask someone if they speak English the response is almost always "a little" accompanied by their hand demonstrating what a little looks like.
Also stopped to have a drink in a park. There were people with clipboards cruising around but I think this guy legitimately wanted signatures.
I've thought about the clipboard thing, it's a poor choice people avoid people with clipboards because you know they want your signature. And no one likes signing anything they ultimately don't understand unless there's a promise of large sums of money attached.
They might do better with something enticing like candy.
I know, I know, you wouldn't come to my work and tell me how to do my job…
Just cause I can
France on September 14, 2008 at 3:44 am
Imma upload random images just cause I can. This attempt at washing my clothes went alright. Probably gonna need a laundromat next go though.
Francy Pants
France on September 14, 2008 at 3:00 amI'm not sure if you are aware but green skittles in china taste of green apple rather than lime as they do in America and it is by far the most delicious flavor EVER.
In France Sprite is more limey, less sweet, and more good. I'm not even sure if those are the reasons it tastes better but upon delighting my tastebuds I immediately thought, "this refreshment is far superior to the Sprite I normally refresh myself with."
So as the pictures suggest I found some monuments of renown. It's stupid hard to take a picture of something lit up at night. With flash It looks poor without flash it looks ok if you can manage to take a none blurred photo. My hands lack the steadiness of a tripod.
So I took like eight rapid fire pictures to get one that appeared clear on the display screen.
I was heading in the direction of the Eiffel tower when I saw the square the Pope was in that day. Just some stage was left.
So now that I'm off the road that follows the river I figure I'll just walk in the direction of the tower. But when you get close you can no longer see it over the buildings. So probably wandered in the general direction of it for 10-20 minutes til I found it.
Walking is pretty time consuming it took me like 4 hours to walk to all these places and back. They have a metro but I walked into one and right back out.
All subways should be modeled after Spain's because that is crazy easy to use and understand.
Once I get out of bed I'm gonna walk to the train station to make sure there's a train to Nantes tomorrow and then if my legs are up for it check out the inside of the Louvre.
A second note on mistakes you find on posts. iPhone auto corrects things for me or tries to finish words for you so often when I look back I see a word without errors but it's not the word I meant so the sentence reads poorly.
AND there's no comments on my blog because having comments means you need to moderate them for spam. But you can email me.
Notre Dame
France on September 13, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Oo works good. So I only pics I can upload now are from my phone.
In case it's not obvious already I am guessing hard at how to spell the names of these places.
I've found glaring grammar mistakes in older posts but fixing them would be too much work. I don't exactly have a cursor to let me zero in on what I need to fix.
Eiffel Tower
France on September 13, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Figured out how to upload photos with my phone. Need to email them to flickr and I guess I can post them to blog from here. Find out pretty soon.
On Barcelona from Paris
France, Spain on September 13, 2008 at 4:57 amIf you have a postcard in transit to you I would stop reading because the card will become far less interesting in just a few sentences.
The rest of us can carry on.
Hostel was decent, but I don't think I like hostels much. Half the kids are just trying to sleep and other half is trying to bring the hostel experience they had in mind to life and both sides are mad at eachother for it.
Had all day to walk around waiting for night train.
So I walked.
I saw a vampire on the subway. Long dark hair with a streak of white in it, pale as hell, and him and his bloodshot eyes were walking in slooow motion up the stairs. I took ten steps before he took one. Then I did the old look back to make sure he wasn't eyeing my veins and he turned the corner in a way only a vampire can. Like woosh. That pretty much confirmed it for me.
Obviously Dracula was a bad omen because I'm sitting talking to my Dad and when I finished 8 little clipboard totting assholes tried to get into my backpack.
They were asking for signatures and they put 3 clipboards at your waste and the rest of em are holding boards above my backpack, I will have none of that.
So Im thowing bows at like 13, 14 year old kids.
I got hold of one by the arm and I had a none too friendly grip on him. They cruised after that nothing lost.
Barcelona doesn't wait around for dark they just get to it. Dealt with vampires, asshole thieves, and saw like 6 prostitutes working the streets before noon.
Now at a best western thinking about going to the effiel tower and notre dame.
TV is stuck on the pope, I think it's live so maybe I'll run into the pope while I'm out.
Barcelona, why not?
Spain on September 11, 2008 at 10:16 amAfter much metro-ing between the main stations in Madrid I got my ticket validated.
Me (attempting Spanish): Puede validar?
-Give him ticket-
Him: Spanish, spanish spanish?
Me: Ellos tienen una oficina aqui, si?
-Pointing to EURail logo-
Him: Te quieres?
Me: Validado?
Him: Quieres validarlo?
Me: 
I found a decent looking hostel in Barcelona that I'm off to now.
In what I would call the first class of second class. It is a single window seat at the front of the train.
There's 8 seats to 3 people.
One of em started face to face with me and he moved which is less awkward but now he's hoping seats like none suit him.
This is suppose to be a high speed train it's boogying but now I'm worried about how slow the others are.
Gonna be dark when I arrive, spooky kinda…
Fuck You AT&T
Non Geo on September 10, 2008 at 7:41 pmFuck you for charging me a $500 deposit and billing me for international service then not working when I am international because you need to have credit. I paid for phone and gave you your exorbanant deposit. Your not selling me a house it's a phone. I gave you hundreds more than your service is worth and you gave me "no service" it is really frustrating to read that when you are surrounded by folks on the phone.
I have service now that the phones in my moms name but I'm still the one paying the shit bill.
Took 1 picture today because I was busy sorting out this phone nonsense.
Packing
United States on September 8, 2008 at 11:59 pmLaid out everything I think I'm going to bring.
[The picture I had of everything laid out is mia]
-Notebook
-Train Ticket
-Map
-Passport & Copy of passport
-First aid kit
-Toiletries
-Sleeping bag liner
-Book a friend wrote
-Some mega elastics
-Power converter
-Camera & Charger
-Iphone & Charger
-Backup mp3 player & headphones
-3 undies (edit: 4, 4 undies ah…ah…ah)
-3 shirts
-2 pants
-1 shorts, 1 short, 1 pair of shorts?
-1 bathing suit
-2 wool socks
-1 pair of cotton socks
-Windbreaker
-Chamois Cloth
-Ukulele
-Tuner for the Uke Read full post »