An introduction, Day 1, and Day 2

Hello Everyone. Greetings from Europe. If you know me well at all, you know that sometimes I have a tendency to procrastinate. So, it should come as no surprise that I have taken a few days to get this blog set up. It is now ready to go, though, and I have every intention of writing on it as much as possible. For those of you that don't know what I am doing, I will tell you right now. I am traveling around Europe for the next six weeks with a good friend, Josh Hargrave. We are roommates in Dallas, and also are going to be opening up a coffee shop when we get back with another great friend David Johnson. I am going to be keeping all of you up to date on what we are doing, what we are eating, what random things are happening, and hopefully will be posting as many pictures as possible. If you would like to take a look at Josh's blog at any point, go to joshhargrave.blogspot.com

So, without further ado...


June 15, Day 1 - The trip across the pond
I am going to combine days 1 and 2 together in this posting since the basically ran together. From here on out, I will do my best to post every day or at least every other day. So, today was an interesting and exhausting day. Since my flight was leaving at 6:00am, I decided that it would be a bad idea to even try to sleep. So, I got a nice American fast food meal (Jack in the Box in case anyone is wondering) around midnight, and then finished packing. Of course, I had all night to get to the airport, but somehow decided to arrive about 45 minutes before an international flight. Anyway, boarded the plane around 6am, and I was off. One nice thing about having a job in the past where I traveled is having hoards of miles. So, I went ahead and booked the flight on business class. This turned out to be an excellent decision for a number of reasons, but mainly because the seats turn in to beds.

Once I arrived in London around 12:30am, I referred to the directions Nick (my American friend in London) gave me before I left. I was told to take the tube in to the city, and then go from there. One problem... the tube was closed. So, after doing a little research, I found that I had only one option... the bus. Having only 2 credit cards and a passport, I was screwed. The buses only take cash, and I couldn't find a money exchange. Finally, I found a place to get some cash, and once 1:30am rolled around, I was finally on a bus to Central London. After finally finding my way to Liverpool street, the only other thing I knew was to find Swanfield Street. Since I had no map, and it was 3:00am by now, it was getting fairly ridiculous. Luckily, I randomly ran in to a construction worker who happened to have a huge map of London (thank you God for that random blessing) who was able to point me in the right direction. So, here I was, a 25 year old American dude, walking down the streets of London with a brand new, huge North Face backpack on just asking to be robbed. All I knew at this point, was I needed to find Nick's place pretty quick. So, after a few stops along the way to hotels and convenience stores, an hour of wandering, and a pay phone call to Nick I arrived. Safe and dead freaking tired, I said hello to Josh and went to bed for a few hours.

Day 2, June 16
Today was a pretty chill day by most accounts. It started with a brunch at a place called Giraffe. I am not sure how many of you are reading Josh's blog, but he is, at least for the time being, a vegetarian. I, however, am definately not, so I went with the tortilla with cheese, chorizo, black beans, and avocado. Josh got waffles.

After a good breakfast/lunch, we made a trip to the key cutter, so Nick could make us a copy of his key (which of course didn't work when we got back to his flat later on). After the key cutting adventure, I opted for a long nap, since I had only slept about 5 hours in the past 48 or so. After the nap, we had dinner at a Vietnamese Restaurant. Nick and I had beef and Josh had rice. We all shared some veggie spring rolls, and the best thing on the menu - fried squid. I know it sounds awful to some of you, but it was amazing. After dinner, we went to Watch a Euro '08 match at a bar nearby. If you don't know this about me already, you will soon learn that I am a pretty big sports fan, and even more so, a Soccer fan (Football over here). Anyway, I am thrilled that our trip fell right during one of the biggest tournaments in the World - Euro 2008. Basically, the 16 European teams that qualified, compete in a tournament which concludes on June 29 in Vienna, Austria. I am pumped about this, because we are going to be in Vienna on that day. It should be an amazing time, but I will wait until then to write any more about it.

So, after a few beers at dinner and a few more at the bar, we were feeling pretty saucy. Next was a trip to a 24hr bagel shop to sober up a little bit. This place sells, in addition to great bagels, tons of amazing pastries. For those of you that know the Czech Stop in West, TX - just imagine that but a lot smaller without Dr. Pepper or A&M and UT paraphernalia. After a good Apple Turnover and some cheesecake we are off to bed.