6 Hours in Salzburg

I got to Munich early, grabbed a quick breakfast (A really good german pastry and a litre of orange juice) and got on the train to Salzburg. Having a railpass is really nice because any train that doesn't require reservations I can just jump on. I just have to write the day on my railpass and the conductor just looks at it and stamps it. Unfortunately I can only ride second class, but that is really not that bad on the trains here, for the most part they are pretty nice. I got to Salzburg a little before noon, Justin had said he was going to pick me up. I waited around for him for about 30 minutes but he didn't show up. It was a pretty nice day so I decided just to walk to the center becasue I really didn't want to pay for a cab even though I had tons of luggage. The walking directions to the center were horrible, I wandered around for about 15 minutes with all my luggage before I just turned around and went back to the train station. Then I tried to follow the directions to get a cab, which were also wrong. Telling you to go upstairs instead of downstairs, left instead of right, etc. I found a cab eventually, and it cost 7 euros. I got to the center and everyone was gone, I guess it was a daytrip day. I found Geoff and Justin eventually and discovered why Justin didn't come pick me up. Well, he had discovered the hard way that he was allergic to something in wheat beer, and had been throwing up for the last 8 hours. Geoff had tried to get me at the train station, but showed up about 5 minutes after I left. I used the internet at the center to update stuff here and my pics and then hung out in Porter's room with Justin and Geoff. Took a shower too because overnight train travel, and lugging around 100 pounds of luggage just makes you sweaty and disgusting. Justin said he was starting to feel a little better which was good. We left around 6 for the train station, enough time to eat at Burger King before our train left, I was really hungry. We got to the train station and our train was delayed 25 minutes, surprising because German/Austrian trains are almost never late. This was bad becasue this train went from Salzburg to Munich, and we needed to connect to a train in Munich to get back to Paris. Unfortunately, our connecting train was to leave only 20 minutes after our original arrival time. We got really lucky and our connecting train was also delayed, although we made a full out sprint from rail one to rail 16 where our other train was as soon as we could squeeze our way out of the train. This train was great because it wasn't very packed and we ended up getting a 4 person sleeper, which is the same size as the 6 person one I took previously, just with less people. At first it was just me, Justin, and Geoff; but after about 10 minutes a guy about 40 or 50 years old, from paris, showed up to take the last bed. We were pretty tired and just read ant talke for a little while and went to sleep early. We woke up a few times during the night because there was a buzzer going off in the train, I guess it is like a little alarm that is in all the sleeper carriages, but we couldn't figure out how to turn it off. It was going off in everyone's little rooms too not just ours. Finally, it went off and I fell back asleep. We woke up ar 7:00 and freaked out, rushing to get our stuff ready. Our scheduled arrival time was 7:03, and it was not the last stop so we really had to be ready to go by that time. Stanley walked back into the room and saw us getting ready. He looked at us and said..."maybe 8:00 one man dead" Apparently our train hit someone in the middle of the night, needless to say we were a little confused at first." He came back in about 10 minutes later after apparently talking to one of the conductors and said, "maybe 9:00 one man dead" We couldn't really figure out exactly what happened because his english was not so great, and none of us knew any french. With the extra time we had me and Geoff went searching for breakfast. We walked all the way to the back of the train through about 5 cars, apparently there was a party on one of them because there was a group of about 15 german guys with about 50 empty cans of beer scattered around their car. Anyways, we made it and got the last coffee and butter biscuts they had. Unfortunately on the way back to our car the train was rocking a lot and I reached to stabilize myself and knocked Geoff's coffee out of his hands and all over him. It was pretty messy, and he went back and changed. I threw away my coffee anyway, it was terrible. We finally arrived at about 9:00 and found our hostel and checked in.

First Last Day in Paris

Well I woke up late on Monday and got my things together and packed up. I went into town to go use the internet and get this stuff updated a little bit before leaving to meet Ethan at his school. I got a little bit lost from his directions and it took me about 15 minutes to find the right street, Deguarre. I was walking to 77 Deguarre but found Ethan before I got there. I went and grabbed a wuick lunch at a nearby Vietnamese place and we went and sat in the park to eat. While we were ther the kids on the bench next to us got busted by the police for smoking weed. That was interesting. We left there and went to the Pompideau center. We had been planning to visit the Musee National de Art Moderne exhibit for a while, but today was our first good chance. When we got there though the museum was closed. Me and Ethan decided we would go when I came back to Paris with Justin and Geoff. We left and walked around for a while and I grabbed a quick snack, and said bye to Ethan. I had to head back to the hostel and get all my stuff together so I could catch my night train to Munich. I made it to the train station well in advance and waited in the info line, it was my first time using my railpass and I was not really sure what to do. I got to the counter about 25 minutes before my train left and got the necessary info about my railpass. I thought I had it made, but then the lady at the ticket counter highlighted the departure time and informed me that i was at the wrong station, I was at Gare de Nord instead of Gare de l'Est. Oops! Luckily it was noly one metro stop away. I made my train with 10 minutes to spare. The night train was surprisingly good, it worked out fine even though I was crammed into a closet sized space with 5 other people. Somehow I managed to get a full 6 hours of sleep.

Updates

Sorry it has been so long updating, I can't believe it has been 25 days since I wrote anything, it has been a really busy time traveling, so here goes, I will try to get caught up today, although the pictures will have to wait. Check out www.flickr.com/photos/jamiequint they will be up as soon as I get the chance.

Notre Dame and La Defense

I met Ethan at 10:45 on Sunday morning, we decided to go to Notre Dame for church and just guessed that the service would start at 11:00. We got there late though, at 11:15, but lucky for us the service didn't start until 11:30. It was pretty cool, just your standard catholic mass, except it was in one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world. I also could not understand it because it was in French. The did have the verses in English however, so I read those, and I tried to sing the songs in French. After mass we went to an internet cafe to try and catch up on some stuff we had been lagging behind on. For me, it was updating this. I went back to the hostel for a while and Ethan left to go do some other stuff. We met back up a few hours later to go to La Defense to see the Grande Arche. When we got to La Defense we found a lot more than we expected. They had a lot of interesting sculptures just scattered around. It is a business park area, but the skyscrapers there are all designed unconventionally, and even the office buildings look like a form of art. We took lots of pictures of weird artpieces, you should go check them out on my photo site (www.flickr.com/photos/jamiequint) Anyways, we also saw what we thought was a garden but it ended up being a French World War II graveyard. We walked down the long foot bridge you see in the pictures above, and there were some great pictures of the Grande Arche to be had. One more thing that was that too the right of what you see in this picture there were buildings that were new construction but they had been designed to look as if they had been bombed out, they were even painted weird. It was actually pretty cool to see. We walked around some more and took some funny pictures of a sculpture in the shape of a big thumb, then left. Ethan had to go do some homework, and I went back to the internet cafe to keep working on these updates. After I was done with that I went back to the hostel and was going to go to sleep but found someone in my bed instead. They had screwed up and given my bed away. Actually when I had come back earlier in the day I had also found someone sleeping on my bed, but just moved to another bed in the room. Now there were no more beds in the room. I went and talked to the management guy, who also happens to work the bar, and he took a while to take care of the situation, but I got put into another room eventually. The situation turned out good actually becasue instead of being in a room with 8 people I was in a 6 person room with only me and one other person in it. The other girl that was in the room was a little older and from Spain, so I got to practive my Spanish because she spoke almost no English. It was actually pretty fun. I talked to some guys from Ireland for a while who were in Paris on a quick 4 day trip, their accents are so funny. I finally headed off to bed around 2:30 and got a great night of sleep.

Eiffel Tower At Night

After catching up on some much needed sleep I met Ethan again and we met up with Nicole and Ashley at the Eiffel Tower. We paid 3 euros for the priveledge of climbing up over 600 steps to the second observation deck. Nicole and Ashley bought tickets to walk up and then take an elevator to the top, but ended up passing on that becasue the lines were way too long. The views were absolutely incredible, we got to the first observation platform as the sun was setting and took a bunch of photos from there, and got to the second platform as it was getting dark. We got to see fireworks going off in a couple of places around Paris, although we could not figure out why. This is a shot of the Champs de Mar from the second observation deck. We stayed up here for quite a while and watched the tower light up and flash as it does every hour at night, then we walked back down to the bottom. I caught the metro back to the hostel and went to sleep, this time our snorer had left. YES!

A Day In Versailles

The next morning I borrowed an alarm from some other guys in the hostel and woke up at 7:30. I met Ethan at 8:30 along with some of his other friends from IES (His study abroad program) and we caught the train to Versailles. From the train station it was just a short 10 minute walk to the Palace of Versailles. We stood in line and bought tickets to get in. (20 Euros!) The palace was absolutely amazing, we got audioguides with our admission and it described a lot of the history of the rooms in the palace and how they were used when the French kings lived there. The artwork was incredible, every room had incredible paintings or some other form of expensive decoration. The most interesting parts to me was the Hall of Mirrors. It was partially undergoing restoration, but half of it was on display. It was fascinating to actually be in the room where World War II was officially ended. There were two other things that were especially cool. There was a huge hall with paintings lining the walls all depicting Napoleon's war victories with busts of other famous leaders in his army in between them. However, the most noticably magnificent part of the whole palace were the gardens. They extended as far as the eye could see from the palace, and were incredibly well kept. We walked through some of them, but the entirety of it was just massive. We ate lunch in a cafe in the middle of the gardens, and my water cost 4 euros. I guess France is almost as expensive as the UK. The other IES kids left while me and Ethan walked around the palace grounds some more. We walked back to the train station a little later and both went back and napped because we were dead tired.

First Night In Paris

I finally found Ethan after looking around for about a half an hour. We had decided to meet by a circle of rocks in between the Eiffel Tower and the Champs de Mar, although the circle of rocks turned out to be a circle of pebbles under the Eiffel Tower, so I was thoroughly confused. I ended up just finding Ethan walking down the Champs de Mar. We went back to the place where he was staying and he got permission from the lady who he is staying with, "Madamme", for me to come in. Luckily I got to take a shower there, which was great after a long day of travel, then we called Nicole and Ashley and arranged to meet up with them as well as some other students in Ethan's summer program. We met outside a Starbucks of all places and just started walking. The picture above is of a market we were walking through. They (Ashley and all of the other students) bought some wine and decided to sit on a foot bridge across the Seine by the Louvre and hang out. We stayed there for a while but me, Ethan, and Nicole decided to walk around. We walked around by the Louvre and down the Champs l'Elysses but unfortunately the Arc de Triomphe was not lit up. We ended up just walking around Paris for quite a while and walking by the Eiffel tower so we could see it lit up at night. We didn't realize the time and I made the last metro to my hostel at 12:59, but Nicole was not so lucky. Ethan ended up walking her back home, and getting home really late. The hostel was not bad, although I had a New Zealander who's snoring was amazingly loud in my room, I managed to sleep anyway.

Getting to Paris

I got up on time on Friday morning, but packing took me longer than I expected. We began walking towards the train station at about 11:15 for my 12:09 train. I got to the train station about 10 minutes before my train was to leave and rushed through security. Some people were nice and let me cut in front of them. I ran all the way down the platform to my car which was pretty far back on the train and got in, thinking I was ok, but then I realized I didn't have my backpack. I asked one of the workers standing outside the door of my train car and he said I better talk to the train manager, and quick. I ran down all the way back 10 cars to the 5th car and told the train manager I had left my bag in security. He told me I had better hurry and get my things off the train because I would not make it to security and back and he said I had one minute. I ran all the way back down the platform again and dragged my big backpack and suitcase off the train just in time. They moved me to a train that was departing an hour later without a problem, and I even got a nicer seat, one with a table! Although, while waiting to board the train I almost passed out from exhaustion sitting in the station. The train ride was pleasant although my tiny chicken caesar salad with a coke cost almost 8 euros. I guess that is to be expected. When I got in I bought a 5 day metro pass with the help of a Londoner who was standing behind me in line and happened to speak french. I made it to my hostel on the metro (It is about a one minute walk away from my stop) and checked in, it didn't look to be as trashy as I might have pictured it after reading all the online reviews so I was relieved. I left to go meet Ethan at the Eiffel Tower.

Jack Dee

I was supposed to meet Fabio at the Notting Hill gate station at 7:00 but I got there a little bit early and just walked around the Notting Hill area. It is a nice area of town, but there is not much to it. I met Fabio a little while later and we went into town a little more to where the show was happening. He had got 8 free tickets. Me, Fabio, Serge, Ann Marie, and Melissa, along with 2 of Fabio's other friends went. The show was pretty good, although he was making fun of people from different parts of England which I didn't understand. After the show we left and went to an Italian restaurant and had some spaghetti which was really good. Then we went home and I got to sleep becasue my train was leaving the next morning for Paris.

Madame Tussad's

I made it to Madame Tussad's Wax Museum with plenty of time to spare. I had also bought this ticket earlier at the London Eye so I went right in. You first enter into a large room with a lot of people milling around in it. It is really weird becasue the statues are inter-mixed around the room so you kind of got to look for whatever is not moving and take a look at that. The statues are really lifelike and the one of Morgan Freeman you could get within inches of and he still looked real. It was interesting to see the famous people you always see on TV in their real proportions. For example, Brad Pitt's life size wax modeel did not look nearly as big as he did in Fight Club. They had Julia Roberts, a couple of supermodels, movie stars, etc. in this room. I looked around for a while then moved on. In the next room were more of the same. In here I found the Hulk and took a picture with him, but there was also Indiana Jones and James Bond and some others. I walked down some more stairs and into another room where there were a lot of more diplomatically famous people. Abraham Lincoln, Winson Churchill, the Regans, and the Royal Family. My favorite was Hitler, and I had someone take a picture of me fake punching him in the nose. We left this room and went down into the chamber of horrors, you walk in and see Vlad the Impaler and some other infamous murders and the like. I walked through this maze with people dressed up as hungry prisoners, zombies, monsters, etc and they try and jump out and scare you. It was pretty fun. They had a life size model of the guillotine that fell and a head kind of fell into a basket and other kind of grusome stuff like murder scenes and heads on poles. This part of the musuem was significant becasue Madame Tussad originally took death masks and she sometimes had to find the heads after people had been guillotined to complete this process, later she brought her work to London and that was how Madame Tussad's Wax Museum came about. From here we went into the planetarium which is attached to the museum and you look up a huge screen in a half dome shape. They played a show about the planets and the solar system which was interesting, but the entire ceiling screen was probably cooler than the show. Then I left. I walked through Regents Park on the way back and looked at the Queen's Gardens, it is pretty peaceful in the London parks and a nice break from the noise of the city, but I soon left to go meet Fabio for the show we were going to later.

Greenwich

Thursday I woke up early and went out to Greenwich. I had to switch from the tube to a light rail system, but it was still pretty fast and easy to get there. I walked around in the Maritime museum for a while which had a lot of interesting exhibits about how sailors navigated in the past along with plenty of antique sailors tools: globes, compasses, sextants, octants, and the like. I also walked around a large building where they used to house sailors coming in from sea, which was later converted into a large eating hall. The paintings on the ceiling were pretty incredible. Right across from this building was the Cathedral which had paintings of many of the saints as well as a lot of incredible decorating. There are photos of both of these on my other website. (www.flickr.com/photos/jamiequint) After looking around for quite a while I walked up the hill to see what I had really came for. The Royal Observatory, where the Prime Meridian is defined and time officially starts. This is a photo of me on both sides of the line standing in front of the sculpture which officially marks where it is. On both sided of the line are names of cities and a degree of reference to them from the Prime Meridian. There were some great views of the city from here because it is right at the top of the hill. After looking around the Royal Observatory I walked down the hill a little ways to One Tree Hill. I thought this was funny because it made me wonder where the name for the TV show originated, so I took a quick picture of the one tree and the inscription and made my way back to london so I could see Madame Tussad's before it got too late.

Wednesday Night

I was trying to find food after walking over Tower Bridge on the way to the tube and ran into a McDonalds, which I don't particularly like, but I was hungry. A meal at McDonalds was 5 Pounds! That is like 10 dollars. London is so expensive. Anyway, I made my way back to Fabio's house and just laid on the couch for 3 hours. I was so tired from walking around the past few days. Me and Giulio (Fabio's brother) hopped on the tube and met Fabio and Ann Marie (One of Fabio's friends who I also met the other night) and went to some club. It was pretty fun the served cool little apprtizers and I tried caviar for the first time, but I dont know what the big deal is about it. We were there for about an hour and then we were going to go to another club that Fabio had special passes to, but when we got there there was some big fight outside between one really angry patron and the bouncers. So we just drove home, and I went to sleep. Still really tired from so much walking.

Tower of London (Part 2)

After walking around inside the White Tower I went into the Jewel House where the crown jewels of England are kept. There was a soldier standing guard out front and I took a picture of him. The crown jewels were inside a room that had huge bank vault doors on either side, and you stood on a moving walkway which slowly went by them so you could look. I couldn't take pictures and they are almost indescribable in words, basically it was the most ornate thing I have ever seen. After looking at the crown jewels I looked in some of the smaller towers within the castle depciting what life was like under a king in the castle and walked around the walls. There were some great pictures of Tower Bridge from the walls of the castle too. Unfortunately the castle closed a little bit early so I am not sure I saw everything. I left the Tower walked across Tower Bridge towards the tube stop.

Tower of London (Part 1)

I took the tube over to the Tower of London and went right in because I had bought my ticket the other day at the London Eye. The tower is an amazing piece of English history, it has been around for hundreds of years and is still relatively intact. I walked around inside just looking at the walls and how the castle was built, you could see Traitor's Gate a gate from the moat leading into the castle where prisoners who were condemed to be executed entered the castle. I walked into the center of the castle and into the White Tower which you see in this picture. This is where all the gunpowder was kept for the castle, they had a lot of great displays about the armor that the knights used to wear and all the weapons that were used in the battles that took place in past English history.

St. Paul's (Second Try)

After the changing of the guard me and Nicole grabbed lunch at Marks and Specncer and ate in the park, then I left and went back to meet Fabio at St. Paul's. This time there were tons of people there all sitting on the front steps. I waited in line for a while and Fabio met me. We got in and used our 2 for 1 pass that we got since it was closed when we tried to go earlier. The cathedral was magnificent and we got to go up into the tower. There were two levels, one called the whispering gallery, and then the tower at the top of the cathedral. The whispering gallery is cool, it up in the dome looking down into the cathedral. When you put your head against the wall if someone else whispers into the wall you can hear them even if you are far away because the way the sound travels around the wall. There was a large wooden spiral staircase we took to get to this level. We then went up to the next level, this time there were a few very narrow passageways and a long and narrow metal spiral staircase that went straight up pretty much. After a little climb we reached the top, which is ouside and you can walk around. There were awesome views of the entire city from the top. After looking around for a while we walked down and looked at the cathedral some more. There were also some people buried there, but not nearly as many as in Wesminster Abbey. After about 15 minutes of looking around I left, I had to get to the Tower of London in time to be able to look around.

The Changing of the Guard

I got off the tube and walked through Hyde Park to Buckingham Palace. I got there right at 11:30, but the procession had already began. I got a couple of nice shots of the guards marching around the palace with one on horseback leading them. I made my way around the outside circle of the palace and crossed the street to get to the front gates. It was an absolute madhouse, there were at least a few thousand people there. On Sunday when we walked by the palace there was almost nobody, but I guess the changing of the guard brings all the tourists out of the woodwork. I got a lot of pictures throught the gates at first, but then there was a short part in the ceremony where riders on horses marched out of the gates and around the statue that is in front of the palace. I took this opportunity and went the other way, fighting through walls of people to make my way to the front. Part of the ceremony involved guards setting up their music stands and instruments and playing a score, this pictue is before that while they were marching around inside the palace gates. I am not really sure what the significance of everything in the ceremony was, but it was sure fun to watch.

Tate Modern

Before running off to the changing of the guard at 11:30. Me and Fabio walked over to the Tate Modern Museum. This is a shot of the Millenium Bridge facing St. Paul's Cathedral. Tate Modern is right behind us. We went in and walked around the museum for a while and there was a lot of cool stuff to see. They had interesting art that formed optical illusions, as well as some famous pieces. We only got the chance to walk one of the 4 floors though because I had to meet Nicole over at the changing of the guard.

St. Paul's (First Try)

Me and Fabio decided we were going to wake up early and go see St. Paul's Cathedral before he had to run off and do some work. Unfortunately when we got there they were having some some special service and we could not go in. They did give us a 2 for 1 coupon that was valid later in the day, so we decided to meet back up at 1:30. This is a great picture of me in front of the doors at St. Paul's. They were huge!

Tuesday Night

Tuesday night I met up with Nicole at the place where they are staying for the London Summer Business session at UP. It was a pretty nice place, a penthouse apartment in a nice area of town. You could even look out back and see Paul McCartney's house. I just hung around for a couple of hours and talked to Nicole and a couple of the other people I know that were staying there, then we went to "The Sports Cafe" for about an hour or so, they stayed later, but in London the tube stops running at about 12:00-12:30 so I had to make sure I caugt my ride home. London taxi's are ridiculously expensive, so I didn't want to have to resort to that.

The London Eye

After visiting all those other places I walked across a bridge over the Thames River and went over to the London Eye. The lines, or queues as a proper Londoner would say, were pretty long, but it only took a half an hour for me to get to the front. The tickets were so expensive! One trip around (Which takes 30 minutes) cost me 12 Pounds (23 Dollars). It was worth it thought, the views from the top of the eye were incredible. I will have to upload some more pictues of it when I can.

Walking Around London Tuesday

Tuesday I woke up and took the tube to go see Wesminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliment. What you see is a pictue of the front of Wesminster Abbey. When I you come out of the tube station that I took you look up and to the left and Big Ben is right there. Then I crossed the street and looked at the Houses of Parliment, but what really took a while was Wesminster Abbey. Unfortunately they do not let you take pictures inside, but there is so much English history there. There were tons of kings and dukes and many other famous people buried in there, and it was really interesting to just walk around and see all of it.

Monday Night

When I got back to the house from the musuems me, Fabio, and Giulio (his brother) went out to a little club to see one of Fabio's friends perform. We were there for only an hour or so and got to listen to a couple of acts. The music was actually pretty good. We left to go back to Fabio's place but stopped and got some Lebanese food on the way back. It was really good, and I went back and fell asleep. I was pretty tired from so much walking!

Science Museum

This is the first thing I saw when I walked into the Science Museum. It is the landing gear for the Airbus A340, the plane I flew over to Europe on. The tires on this are huge, semi-truck size. They never look that big from the window at the airport gate. There were a lot of cool things to see at this museum and I stayed for a few hours. Some of the highlights were a massive space exhibit that contained rockets used in some of the space programs, as well as the capsule of Apollo 10. They had the original Wilson and Crick DNA model, which was amazing to see. They had a CLAY Supercomputer, I took a photo of the wiring because it was a huge tangled mess and made me realize that the circuts I have so much trouble with for engineering labs are actually really easy. Hopefully I will get these pictures all posted soon, but they take so long to upload.

Royal Albert Hall

On my way to the next museum I was walking around looking for somewhere to eat because I was really hungry, and happened to walk by Royal Albert Hall. I think it is part of the campus of one of the London universities. It is a huge hall where they hold concerts and the like, but looks amazing, so here is a shot of it.

Museum of Natural History

Monday Fabio had work to do so I walked to the tube stop (Canada Water tube stop on the Jubilee line is only like 10 minutes away) and made my way over to the Museum of Natural History. The museum was really cool. I think my favorite was the asteroid display, which talked about how they were identified and had some of the larger ones that had hit earth recently on display. They also had a gold nugget that is the biggest I have ever seen. The rest of the museum was interesting too, they had a special display on of the faces of monkeys, so they would take a close up of these chimpanzees or gorillas and write about how they were rescued from captivity, we weren't allowed to take pictures though. They had exhibits on the human body that was interesting, although the most impressive was the full size model of a blue whale in the ocean exhibit. So I looked around for a few hours and then left to the next museum.

Late Dinner

After we went all around town we met up with Serge and a couple of Fabio's other friends and went to Bar Ciao Cafe. I had a great spicy pasta dish, and a milkshake. Then we went back to Fabio's house and I went to sleep.

Walking Around the City

This is St. Martin's in the Fields church right by Trufalgur Square.

Nelson's Column

This is Nelson's column in Trufalgar Square where I also was on Monday. It's a little bit dim because it was just another cloudy London day.

Piccadilly

After church Fabio was just showing me around London some. This is a photo of me in Piccadilly Square.

Church in London

After lunch me and Fabio and his friend Serge (who is from Africa and is also very cool) went to church. This is a picture of the inside of the church. Everything here is so old, the architecture is awesome.

Me and Fabio

Woke up on Sunday the day after I came in at 11:30. I slept almost 13 hours but I guess thats what it took to adjust to the 8 hour time difference. When I woke up I was fine! This is a picture of me and Fabio (The guy I'm staying with) we went out for some Chinese Dim Sum and it was excellent.

Internet Troubles

I am having some trouble with the internet where I am staying and haven't been able to update with pictures...I think I will have this solved in the next 24 hours or so. Meanwhile check out the pics at www.flickr.com/photos/jamiequint there are photos from today at the museums and yesterday just walking around London. Talk to you all soon! ~Jamie

Great River Views

A friend of a friend named Fabio (No, I am not making that up) came and picked me up at the tube station and drove me back to his house...sitting in the "drivers" seat while someone else drives on the wrong side of the road is definitely a very interesting experience. What you see in this picture is one of the windows in the room I am staying in at Fabio's house. It is right on the Thames river. Pretty sweet! I didn't really go out and do anything tonight, I think I really needed the rest after all that travel and no sleep anyways. I am going to sleep now for the first time since I left. (It is 9:15 PM in London now) Talk to you all tomorrow.

The Underground (The Tube)

So I went straight from the airport down into the tube. It is amazingly efficient and seems to go everywhere in London. I waited about 10 stops on the line out of Heathrow Station (Picadilly) before changing to the Jubilee line to get to my stop about 10 minutes and five stops later.

London Airborne

Here is a shot of London I took right before we were about to land. It was way greener than I expected.

Frankfurt Skyline

Here is a nice shot I took of the Frankfurt countryside after we took off.

Signs

Here were the signs in the Frankfurt airport, very bright, easy to recognize, and the fact that they were in English too saved me a lot of time.

Arrival in Frankfurt

Here is my arrival gate in Frankfurt. Their airport is weird in the way that when you get off on the jetway thing you have to go up a flight of stairs to get to the terminal level, just thought that was a little strange.

Over the Ocean

We boarded the plane...first class first of course, then business class, then us. I ended up with a middle seat (Think middle right of a four person row) behind two screaming babies. It wansn't too bad, I managed, but didn't get any sleep. They fed us drinks, then dinner, then mutiple snacks and beverage runs. The service was excellent. This picture was taken as we flew over Greenland and by Iceland. The average temperature outside the plane was about -50 Degrees Farenheit, and they displayed that on the screen a lot along with the distance left to go. They showed us two movies...Coach Carter and Spanglish...both of which are good movies, although I had seen Coach Carter before.

Portland Airport

We were departing from Gate D14 which I think is the furthest possible gate you can go to in the Airport. I wanted to take a picture of the plane, but we couldn't see it from the waiting area.

Got My Tickets

I got my tickets and made my way to through security to the gate...

Portland Airport

Well, I got all my stuff ready and we headed off to the airport at about 1:00 PM. This is a picture of me and my Mom right after I checked in and she was about to leave.