Two Days of London and already a Lifetime of Memories

Just a couple of Frimonds under the Tower Bridge

I just love the Parliament building !!

So Hil and I finished up our second full day in London and have already made many life memories. The most exciting for me was yesterday when Hil and I got to sit in and watch The House of Commons and then the House of Lords (equivalent to US House of Representatives and Senate respectively) debate in the Parliament buildings. It was completely unexpected and totally a highlight for both of us. The ornate grand architecture and design inside both the houses is enough to make anybodies jaw drop. I could not help but think that I was sitting in the room where it was decided to send Britain into both World Wars, the US Revolutionary War, to black out the city to protect it from German bombers during the war and much much more over the last five hundred years.

Today we spent about three hours touring Westminster Abby. It was another experience which will be hard to ever forget. Hil and I both stood, as a church wide prayer was going on, looking at the burrial tomb of Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scotts. (point of information: Mary Queen of Scotts, Elizabeth's sister, didn't even get her own tomb she just got burried under her sister!) The history that the walls of the Abby have seen can truly be felt by the incredible energy of the building. History came to life as we strolled past the graves of King James I, Henry III, Edward the Conqueror, Henry VII, Milton (Author of Paradise Lost), and over a hundred more titans of history from the last 1,000 years.

On a final note for today I can say with some great guidance from Hil and Ross I can safely say I have figured out how to ride the tube with confidence.

Stay tuned for our next post. same blog, same website, same people discovering the world!

We Just Touched Down in London Town

Flying by radar on account of the thick, thick fog, we landed not really sure that we were in fact in London. However, when my brothers friends met us at the airport we were ready to roll. After a lovely 1 hour tube ride to his flat we dropped our packs off and went to grab some food. Since England is so well known for its fabulous cuisine, we knew the food was going to be better than what we were basically forced, out of desperation, to consume on the plane. Oh wait...

Since it was 4:30 in the morning out time when we landed, we decided a power nap was the best use of our time. After waking pleasantly rested, Ross took us out on a lovely walk about central London. It was raining slightly but despite that I was as happy as a pig in poop. Trevor was as giddy as a school kid as he kept jumping up and down singing, ''I'm in London! I'm in London!''

It's an absolutely lovely day today so I think we are going to head over to the London Eye and get a birds-eye view of the city we will be calling home for the next weeks. Cheers!

Gone-a-Travelin'

We took off yesterday from LAX and landed at London, Heathrow 10 stuffy, turbulent, rotten-food-filled hours later. So much for loving Virgin Atlantic...

A Great Way to Travel for Longer

Through the magic of couchsurfing.com Trev and I are going to conserve some major fundage. If you haven't heard of couch surfing, it's this amazing site which aims to hook up young travelers with couches throughout the world in an effort to prolong the traveling experience. When I told my parents about this, they were so jealous that it wasn't around when they traveled since they mainly slept in train stations, parks and caves. On couchsurfing.com users create detailed profiles (similar to Facebook) outlining their traveling experiences and future plans; users are then verified and vouched for through existing friends and surfing experiences thus increasing the security and validity of the site and the surfer. The hosts are required to offer you a couch at the very minimum but most are so stoked on meeting new people that they often take their surfers out to show them the town and meet other locals. This is the part of the trip that we are most looking forward to - getting that local personalized tour of some of the crazy-small off-the-beaten-path towns we plan on visiting. Most couch surfers have an intermediate or expert grasp of English so that eases some nervousness. Anyway, long-story-short, it's an awesome way to save 15 Euro a night and I can't wait to tell you all about our first surfing experience.

A Few Details Before Departure

With less than a week to go, we've finally nailed out a general plan for the next few months.
We're flying into London on the 27th where both Trevor and I have friends. After some sightseeing and general merry-making throughout the UK, we are going to head over to Paris to see the sights and lights. From there things begin to fuzz out somewhat but our general plan is as follows: Barcelona, Crete, Malta, Greece, Egypt if possible, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium and then back to London once more before heading back to the States. I'm glad I'm writing this down now, cause I can't wait to see how much (more or less) that we accomplish.

Looks Like a Very Cold Winter

Ok, this is getting a little frustrating; it was announced earlier today that Russia has closed off it's natural gas pipeline to Eastern Europe because of a pricing dispute with Ukraine. Russia supplies one-quarter of Europe's natural gas, and about 80 percent of that is shipped through pipelines crossing Ukraine. As a result Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey all reported a halt in Russian gas shipments.

Let's hope this gets resolved quickly because the countries listed above are pretty much EXACTLY where Trevor and I are planning to travel. There's a Chinese proverb: "May you be cursed to live in interesting times." Truer words were never spoken.

A Slight Change of Plans

I'm sure you have all heard by now as it's almost impossible to escape, but fighting between Israel and the Hamas erupted earlier this week after a six month cease fire expired. The missiles fired by Israel are aimed at the Gaza Strip, a narrow area of land sandwiched between Israel and Egypt. As a result a large sect of the Egyptian population is rising up in protest calling for Egyptian aid to the Palestinians, their Arab and Muslim brothers, both financially, and unfortunately, militarily. Since the U.S. is one of Israels biggest backers, this obviously means the the U.S. government, and in turn it's citizens, face potential danger when visiting these areas.

Although we are incredibly bummed that we can no longer see the great Pyramids of Giza, the place we were both looking forward to seeing the most, we are still very excited for our travels; we simply have to re-tool our route a bit. Trevor is fluent in Spanish and has been wanting to see Madrid for years now, so perhaps we will head south before heading east. On the positive side, this means that we get to spend a longer time in each of the other places we choose to visit. Plus, now we'll just have to go back...

Political insight provided by Trev, the Political Science & International Law student.