Well, I’ve had some more crazy experiences since I climbed that mountain on Ios, including the most interesting one happening later that day.Cam, Billy and I were walking up one of the many bar lined streets of Ios when walking towards me about 20 feet away was a woman (not an uncommon event in Ios). At first glance I thought “Hmm, she looks familiar.”  But not giving it much more thought we continue walking towards each other.  Then suddenly, she stops dead in her tracks as if hitting a wall and with her head cocked slightly to the side a look of almost bewilderment washes over her face.  I abruptly stop as well as the reality of the situation hits me.

“Mike?!?”  she says to me with her eyes wide, not sure if she believes it herself.  “Holy crap is this for real???” I reply in an obviously surprised (and perhaps somewhat intoxicated) voice.  Then, still stunned, we approach each other and she holds out her hand for me to shake.  Disregarding any sort of formalities (again most likely due to the alcohol) I go straight past her out-stretched hand and wrap my arms around her in a tight embrace.  We laugh and then talk about our unlikely reunion in such a remote location, making quick introductions to each of our respective friends.  After a bit we then parted ways, and promised to stay in touch in the future.  It was a happy reunion and one of those “crazy” situations you sometimes hear about from others traveling.

So who was this person?  Well, after my 3rd year at university I had a 9 month internship.  It was one of the ladies from there, who I had come to view as a friend, that I saw that fateful night.  Halfway around the world, after not having seen her for over a year, I run into her in Greece.  It was as though Douglas Adam’s Infinite Improbability Drive decided to lend its services for a brief moment and make the near infinitely improbable scenario suddenly possible!
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The remaining two days on Ios were mostly uneventful, more relaxing on the beach, a bit of climbing some smaller rocks for fun and swimming.  We then jetted over to Naxos on the most ridiculously, super-fast, jet-ferry, catamaran (how ya like them adjectives!).  Staying at an amazing hostel, “Pension Irene II”, it was actually better then pretty much any hotel I’ve stayed at and the owner Mrs. Irene was almost like a mother to us!  It is definitely another place I highly recommend to anyone traveling to Naxos.

More beach days were on order in Naxos, throwing the frisbee around in the water, moped rides along the coastal roads, finally windsurfing in the Mediterranean, and meeting amazing people in the evenings who we ate food with and talked with until the wee hours of the morning.

On our third day on Naxos we all decided to climb Mount Zeus!  At an elevation of 1008m it is the tallest peak on Naxos and looked to be quite fun and it was a must-do tourist attraction.  Billy and I took our little scooters, and Cam on a 4-wheeler, to the mountain.  Starting at around 500m probably we only had 508m to climb.  Now the funny part is that since this is a tourist attraction, there is a marked trail that goes around the side of the mountain in a wide loop making it easily hikable by pretty much anyone in any kind of shape.  We however, decided to not take this “touristy” trail and go up the actual front of the mountain.

Ok…wait…I’ll be honest…we completely missed the trail and in fact didn’t even know that there was one marked as it was!  We were just following what appeared to be a trough in the mountain that we assumed would take us to the top fairly easily.

The first 150 meters or so we had to madly scramble up what would be similar to a highly inclined loose-gravel surface, which kept giving way underneath our feet.  This is far more exhausting then you might think.  The next 50 meters was then spent climbing over rock boulders accursed with those damned thorny bushes I had the previous pleasure of experiencing on Ios.

The next 200 meters to the top of the ridge was quite interesting.  By that point we were actually free-climbing up the side of the rock faced mountain.  At one point, wild mountain goats kept moving in the direction of the route we were travelling, as if to cut us off and then most likely to ram us with their massively curled horns.  We had to keep adjusting our routes to avoid them.  In hindsight, I’m sure they were quite pleasant creatures, more afraid of us than we were of them, but you put yourself on a side of a cliff with a hundred meters to fall behind you and trust me, you’ll think the goats are possessed by the devil and coming after you too!

Needless to say after we reached the ridge line we found the path and the last 108 meters to the top was a breeze.  There, we took many “Zeus-like” pictures and celebrated our ascent of the mountain.  The view was spectacular with mountains and small villages surrounding us, definitely worth every ounce of required energy.

On our way back we took the easy touristy route and it was indeed, very easy.  We were all very glad to have missed the proper trail as it made the climb that much more rewarding.
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After Naxos we then went to Mykonos where I am currently.  It is wayyyyy too expensive for stuff here so we’re had a pretty chilled night yesterday.

I also found out yesterday night that my flight from Athens to Amsterdam on Saturday was changed from 4pm to 9am…this makes it rather difficult to make the connection with my flight from Mykonos to Athens being at 2pm.  Thankfully I was able to scooter over to the airport and found a 7am flight on Saturday morning so I can still make my connection in Athens.

However, Olympic Airlines were very rude about their own screw-up and then they actually charged me 20Euro as the only seats available on the 7am flight were a higher class than what I paid for.  So here I am, 2 days before the flight informed of a huge time change, and then they want to charge me b/c they don’t have the same class of seat available…I talked, then argued, then eventually gave in.  And you know what, I’ll never fly Olympic again.  Their lack of understanding and acknowledgement of their own mistake didn’t gain them 20Euro, it cost them hundreds if not thousands of dollars in what could have been possible future visits.
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As my time here in Greece comes to a close, I think back to some of the more peculiar aspects:  freshly baked spanikopitas on Ios, two frape’s a day, mountain climbing, partying until 5 in the morning (then going for more spanikopitas), rakomalo shots, scootering around every island, and loving those white and blue themed buildings ever-present throughout the land.

I just finished reading a book the other day while traveling here in Europe.  It is probably one of the most incredible stories I’ve ever read.  The book is entitled:

A Long Way Gone: memoirs of a boy soldier 
By: Ismael Beah

All I can say is wow…

Here’s the description from the official site:

A gripping story of a child’s journey through hell and back.

There may be as many as 300,000 child soldiers, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s, in more than fifty conflicts around the world. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. He is one of the first to tell his story in his own words.

In A LONG WAY GONE, Beah, now twenty-six years old, tells a riveting story. At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. Eventually released by the army and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled to regain his humanity and to reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion. This is, at last, a story of redemption and hope.

If I can recommend one book to you this year, it is this one.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always had a fascination with mountains.  Whenever I see one the first thought that inevitably pops into my head is “I want to climb that mountain!”  Sadly in most cases I do not actually get the opportunity, for one reason or another.  I’d like to believe the desire stems from my greek ancestors who lived in the mountains of Greece, and so on some subconscious level I long to go back to my roots.

When we arrived in Ios our first day, the view was striking.  Small mountains dotted the landscape, villages built on the sides of some of the smaller ones.  The white and blue buildings perfectly capturing the picturesque post-card image that we’ve all so often seen of Greece.  As we headed down to the beach for the first time, that same thought kept forming in my head “I want to climb these mountains!”  Now normally I would just suppress these thoughts, yielding them to fanciful thinking, but it was different now, I was on a once in a lifetime trip, had a lot of time to spend here on the island, and now actually had some rock climbing experience from the previous year.  I decided then that before I left Ios I would conquer one of the mountains.

I talked with my two travel friends, Cam and Billy, about it, and they showed a bit of interest but definitely not the passion that I was hoping for and that I had myself.  I knew I’d be attempting it alone.  So, surveying the mountains while we lounged about on the white sand by the crystal clear water of the Mediterranean, I chose one and mentally mapped out a route.  You can see which one I chose here (see the poorly drawn arrow), it has small radio tower at the summit, so I would always know what to look for during my ascent and Billy and Cam would know where I was headed in case anything should happen.  I decided that I would make the climb in a couple of days.

The morning (*cough2:00pmcough*) of our third day on the island, I awoke and knew that it would be that day.  I donned my Tiva sandals, put on a touch of sunscreen, stuffed my camera, a 1.5 litre bottle of water and my first aid kit into my backpack and headed out.  Jumping on my little scooter, I zipped down the windy road to the beach which was near the base of the mountain.  Parking my bike I started walking.

This was actually one of the scarier parts of the trip as I had to travel through some residential properties to get on to the actual mountain.  Having been chased by dogs two days prior, I was not looking forward to a similar experience, so I maintained a constant state of weariness.  Thankfully the worst that happened was a donkey slowly clambering towards me as I passed it.  However, its leg was tied with a rope to a peg in the ground so I knew I didn’t really have to worry.  At last passing by all the houses I reached my mountain.  Checking my watch, 3:30pm,  I started climbing.

I was given a rather nasty surprise very quickly.  Almost all the bushes that covered the mountain were thorn bushes.  Now these are no regular thorn bushes.  The bushes themselves are extremely stiff and the thorns are about an inch long and razor sharp.  It was essentially similar to having thousands of pins sticking out from a bush, just waiting to draw my blood.  Suddenly shorts and sandals didn’t seem like the best idea, but it was too late to go back.  My path was quickly being dictated by the openings between these thorny bushes as it was impossible to walk through them.  As the hillside was also used by greek farmers for their goats to graze in, their small paths often aided me in traversing certain areas.

Dividing up the land were stone walls created by stacking flat rocks on each other until they were a sufficient height.  You can see a picture of them here.  What was amazing is that these walls were miles upon miles in length, along the side of the mountains through some pretty intense terrain.  It would have taken very long to build all of them all, and so much labour to find all the proper stones and make it all fit properly.  The quality of the walls was incredible too!  There were several sections of the climb where I had to actually scamper across the top of the wall to continue my ascent as there was no other alternative.

The climb had many interesting aspects.  Although I tried my best to avoid the thorny bushes, I was still being stuck and scraped.  I was continuously stopping to pull out thorns from my exposed feet and legs.  After a while I got used to it and would just ignore the pain.  At one point I looked at my feet to see three one inch needles sticking out of my left foot.  The wounds however were similar to a pinprick you might get on your finger by a doctor so they do not bleed for very long or that much.  I came to both respect and resent those damned bushes.  They did however make for some interesting technical parts.  Often I was jumping from one exposed rock to another over the bushes with the cost of a mistake being a hell of a lot of pain.

The sounds of grasshoppers filled the air, but as I approached they would quickly silence and only continue once I had passed a fair distance away.  To my annoyance, a few small flies also accompanied me on my trip, but overall they were not too much of a bother.  Small lizards always dashed away when I approached, my eyes only catching the quick flash as they scurried deep into a bush or underneath a rock.

A few times I had to jump across a chasm which was always a little precarious.  Thankfully I managed to do those successfully and am still able to write about it.  Several technical climbing parts presented themselves as well.  They were probably the equivalent to about a 5.9 – 5.10 if you know the rating for rock climbing gyms.  They definitely provided some excellent challenges.

The views and scenery as I ascended was incredible.  Often I would just stop and admire, sometimes taking a few pictures.

I finally reached the top after about two hours of  walking, running, climbing, scampering and jumping.  It was worth it.  I stayed up there a good twenty minutes, just relaxing and drinking some of my water.  You can check out the view here and here and see the beach where I started.  Here’s another picture taken looking the other way off the mountain, it gave quite the view as well.

After getting my fill of the view and regaining my energy, I began my descent.  I took a different route down that was mostly through a flood trough, that probably filled up during heavy rainfalls.  There were less of the thorny bushes, as there were mainly just very large, water-worn rocks.  I was often jumping down distances of 7-8 feet and climbing down the rock faces of longer drops.  The decent took about an hour and half and had it’s own unique challenges.  It went mostly without incident however and was a bit more relaxing than the ascent.

Finally reaching the base of the mountain again, I stopped and looked back.  Smiling to myself, I wondered if my ancestors would be proud.  Hundreds of years later, a city boy from halfway around the world at last went back to his roots.

Well we’re in Ios, it was a long trip to get here but in the end it was definitely worth it.

The hostel were staying at, Franchescos, is awesome.  Its more like a small villa in itself.  Everyone on Ios is either Canadian or Australian.  Its nice b/c most speak english, however it sucks in that were not meeting people from crazy random places like we did in Barcelona.

They party hard here, similar to Barcelona.  Beach during the afternoon, late dinners, pubs from 12-3ish am then 3-7am at one of the main clubs here, and then finally we get to sleep until from 7 – 12..lol ¦its quite a difference from back home.

Went on a run with Cam, Billys friend that joined us for Greece.  We ran up to a little monastary at the top of a small mountain which was quite nice, then when we were running back we got chased by two dogs. lol I guess we were running on their territory.  Nothing like two barking dogs running full tilt towards you with teeth bared to put a little spring in your step!

Billy and I have little mopeds (dont worry mother were very safe and responsible on them), and yesterday we went to the other side of the island to watch the sunset.  We discovered a deserted beach with a huge rock formation facing west that we climbed all over and took pictures on.  It was gorgeous as the water was crystal clear, reflecting the sunset and allowing a view of the coral reefs surrounding us.  It was all so romantical, except that I was with Billy hahaha.  It was pretty cool though still.  At least the rock climbing made it manly, so its all good.

Were staying on Ios until Sunday, and then headed out to Naxos, Paros and Mykonos for next week.  So that should be fun, and hopefully well get to meet people from other countries as well.  Until then!

Well my time here in Barcelona is coming to an end, the hostel we’ve stayed at, Saint Jordi Alberg, has been amazing, very friendly staff who make you feel extremely welcome, and a good vibe to the place.

Some of the highlights from the trip:

La Ramblas
This is THE strip in Barcelona.  It’s about a 2km long street with a massive center walkway where there are street performers, little shops and sweet patios for which to eat Tapas and have a few drinks.  The highlight of the strip are the people that dress up like statues and then there are actual statues, so you can’t really tell which are which, and you start approaching both with a large amount of caution for fear of them moving at the last second to freak you out…

The greatest was when I was trying to take a picture of one, and my camera screen washed out white, and I got all confused, then tried to take another picture and the screen went white again, then when I looked up I saw that the statue man was reflecting the sun with a mirror into my lense and then we both burst out laughing and he pointed down for a small donation.  I thought it was such a hilarious tactic that I went and gave him some money and he let me take his picture in peace and even did a little celebration thing =)

Beach
The beach is great because the weather is amazing and there´s nice scenery to look at too .  Also there were tons of windsurfers and kite surfers out every day so I enjoyed watching them.  Sadly the rental places didn’t start for another 10 days so I was out of luck, hopefuly I’ll get out in the greek islands.

There are also people trying to work the beach which are hilarious.  There are a bunch of Indian men that carry around beer and water and about every 20 seconds someone comes by saying “Servosas, beer, agua, cola” and they just walk up and down the beach repeating that over and over and over in the most monotonous tone you´ve ever heard.  Then there are also the Chinese ladies that are always walking by, a little less frequently though saying “Massage?? Massage??”  and then they smile at you when you look at them and offer a 5Euro massage.  I only saw one person ever actually get one though, so I’m not sure how much money they actually make.

El Gato Negro
This place rocked.  It was a shot bar that has over 150 shots or so with a giant list of them on the wall.  We did many, many shots here.  There was even some crazy one where they vaporized the alcohol with fire and some crazy method with a bowl and glass, so you do the shot and then you breath in the alcohol, very crazy and burns a lot hahaha but fun none the less to see who can breath in the vapour the longest.

City Design
The architecture here is beautiful.  The little parks surrounding the Gaudi building are very nice and everything in the city is laid out very well.  The sidewalks are all tiled and add a nice touch to the ambience of the city.  It’s also nice that they don’t have any skyscrappers so everything just seems so much more open.  Combining that with tapered corners at intersections and little monuments in the middle of intersections randomly throughout the city, it really is a stunning place.

Siesta
When they say they have a siesta from 3-5pm…they have a siesta from 3-5.  Literally the entire city shuts down, it’s crazyness.  Only a few places are actually open, like a few of the supermarkets.

Parc Guelle
We went to this park today on our last day here in Barcelona.  It´s essentially a park designed by Gaudi that was supposed to be a private and isolated residential garden with around 60 houses.  Josep Guelle hired Gaudi to design the infrastructure but when it was time to sell the houses a few years later, there was a lack of interest and then the city bought the area and turned it into a private park.

Now what´s cool is that off the main paths, there are smaller trails, almost like goat paths through forested parts of the park.  Billy and I took a lot of those, and kept climbing higher and higher on the mountain the park sits on.  Eventually we found a trail to the very peak of the mountain that was actually far away from the park and way off the beaten path.  It was a stunning view and no one was there as you had to do some rock climbing to get up there.  It was a truly satisfying moment with an amazing view of the entire city.

Once we got our fill of the view, instead of returning down the path we came we decided to take another small path that dropped down over the other side of the mountain and into the real Barcelona, not the tourist areas that we were accustomed to.  We wandered around for a bit, appreciating what Barcelona is really like and then went into some little restaurant for a meal!  We just chose things randomly off the hand-written menu as no one there spoke any english and we had no clue what the menu was saying.  We ended up getting some crazy soups, then a main meal of meat, fries and fried eggplant, a coke, yogurt for dessert and then when we tried to ask for the check we ended up getting espressos instead as there was a hilarious breakdown in communication between us and the guy working there.  So we had our espressos which turned out to be quite good and then finally got the bill.  It all only cost 9 Euro each, which was awesome, because a similar meal in the touristy area probably would have been around 15-20 Euros each at least!  We then caught a bus back to the hostel and now here I am typing up this post!

The End
Tomorrow we leave for Greece and it´s going to be a long day of airports as we first fly to Brussels, have a 4 hour layover and then another 3.5 hour flight to Athens.  So it´s a 7:30am – 8:30pm day…not going to be fun, especially since we´re going to be tired from partying tonight =) but ah well, I´m sure there will be lots of time to sleep and relax when we finally get to the islands of Greece.

There’s something just really different about taking a run in Barcelona.  Awaking at 12:30am, I don my shoes and head out.  I hit the streets hard, the perfectly laid tile of the sidewalks thudding with each stride I take.  A warm Spanish sun radiating down on the beautiful tree lined streets, each block promising new and interesting facets of this amazing city.

The sounds of scooters fill the air, where everyone from old ladies to men in business suits can be seen on them, a pleasant departure from the grosse use of SUV’s in our North American culture.

I run without direction, taking random turns down side streets and letting the street lights dictate the direction I travel.  Gaudi´s influence becomes apparent in so many of the buildings here, even subtle touches on some of the lamp posts.  Small parks surround the main architectural attractions, I often run through them and admire the interesting statues and buildings which they hold.

By chance I happen upon La Sagrada Familia, one of Gaudi´s most famous works that is continuing to be built to this day.  I stop and admire it for nearly 5 minutes, truly appreciating the masterpiece in progress.

It then comes time to start making my way through the streets back to my hostel.  Not wanting the run to end, I slow down my pace and let my mind wander. I think of all the interesting sites I´ve seen, the facinating people I´ve met, and all the things I´ve already done.  Then the realization hits me, I´ve only been in Europe for 7 days, I smile to myself…two months left.

Day 2 – Partying with the Locals

So after my previous post I went back to the room and played cards while drinking with Billy and one of the other guys in the room. The crazy group of Americans left in the morning so needless to say it was a bit quieter in the dorm, but not nearly as interesting. Four of us from the dorm went out to the pubs in the evening and drank some 14% beer. It’s only brewed one day a year, and I understand why, it was friggin’ disgusting, but…when in Ireland….

We wandered around to a few other pubs and then met some local Irish and partied with them in the Temple Bar area. They were fun, friendly and we hung out late into the night. Learned some new words, such as “locked” which is similar to our “hammered” or “smashed”, so you might say “We got locked last night” in reference to how drunk one was as they were “locked out of their own head”. Also a “skanger” is someone who wears all the sports apparel, such as jerseys and things, but yet doesn’t actually play any sports or know anything about it.

We got back to the hostel by around 2:30 and crashed. I sadly had to be up at 8:00am the next morning for my trip down to Wicklow, although I didn’t mind b/c I was quite excited about it.

Day 3 – Wicklow Tour

The Wicklow tour was the fulfillment of a promise to myself that when I came to Ireland I would go and see the countryside. On the Monday evening I signed up for a “Wild Wicklow Tour” and was excited to get on the bus in the morning even on such little sleep. What made it better was the perfect weather, especially since the previous two days in Dublin were dreary and rainy. The tour ran from 9am – 6pm and our guide Dennis O’Reily (how’s that for Irish?) was awesome, knowledgable, funny and a great story teller. I’d highly recommend that tour for anyone visiting Ireland. The tour was broken up nicely with frequent stops for pictures, small stories about the history of different places and also some really good food. For lunch I had a traditional Irish dish which was a Guinness Stew. Definitely get it if you come here. We saw the sights of a bunch of movies such as Braveheart and Excalibur.

We eventually ended up in Glendalough, which is a monastery built around 600AD set in a valley among mountains. It was stunning, with two lakes in the area. I would love to come back to the area and do a 5 day hike around. There’s apparently a 60mile trail that would be awesome to do, I’m speaking to you Team Trail Mix!

When I finally got back from the trip I had a nice 2 hour nap and then met up with Billy and his god-brother for some drinks. Once they left me and Billy had an easy night, just went to Temple Bar for couple drinks then back to the dorm. So now here I am, typing this up as we burn some time before our plane to Barcelona at 5:30.

I should have pictures up soon, so be sure to check out the links on the right over the next few days as I post them!

Trip so far

It’s bizarre, it’s only been 4 days, but I feel like I’ve been traveling forever. I’ve almost forgotten what Canada is like hahaha. My liver seems to be holding up so far, hopefully it will continue to do so over the next couple months as well, time will tell I guess.

People are very friendly, especially those in hostels which is great. Initially I was worried about the 8+ person rooms, but now that we’ve done them, I think I actually prefer them. It’s such an easy way to meet people quickly, Billy and I were talking and we might actually transfer from our 3 person room in Barcelona to a larger one, but we’ll worry about that when we get there. Hopefully they will have a large common room where people hang out and we can meet others. I’ve heard nothing but good stories about Barcelona so it should definitely be a good time.

Oh, and I still have my fake wallet with Canadian Tire money in it as it has yet to be stolen from my back pocket. I’m not too impressed with the thieves of London or Dublin in this regard. I’m hoping Barcelona will pull through and it will get taken there. I’ll keep you updated on that =)

Cheers!

We’re now settled in Dublin.  Got in yesterday, nice hostel but the rooms are about made for about 2 people and instead they fit 10, so it’s quite cozy.  Partied hard last night with some Americans and Canadians, so that was fun.  Although I slept in until 2:00 in the afternoon today, so not seeing much of the city so far.  I’m hoping to get onto a tour tomorrow and see the country side.

I’ll be uploading all my pictures at some point when I have a higher speed internet then what we have here.  So expect them up at some point, probably once in Barcelona.

I’ll update more details later, Billy’s cooking dinner and I must go and eat!

Until then!

Well it finally arrived, Europe 2007 wohooo!! I guess I’ll start from the top. We headed to the airport Friday evening, no real glitches in that. While waiting for our plane Billy and I played cards, bought alcohol, bought coke, mixed that rum and coke in the bathrooms in the airport and then when we boarded our plane and were safely in the air, we drank those rum and cokes to kick off the Europe trip properly! And to be honest, it was pretty much necessary as we needed them to make the in-flight movie, Wild Hogs, bearable. We were hoping to be able to pass out after and get some shut eye to be refreshed for our day in the UK but alas, sleep evaded us both. No other real complaints about the flight, we sat beside a pretty cool guy and the seats weren’t horribly cramped.

Anyways, we flew into London, and went through immigration and such, slightly hungover and with lack of sleep, but for the most part eventless, which is what you usually want. Then we made our way to the hostel from Gatwick airport (about 50 minute train ride) with only getting lost a little bit. Once we checked in and dropped our luggage off we hit the streets of London baby yeahhhhhh!!!

We decided to just freestyle it and walk everywhere. We hit up Trafalgar Square, Oxford and Picadilly Circus, the Soho and Covent Garden districts, and a bunch of other places. There are such cool little pedestrian only shopping areas that are kind of hidden away just by some random sidewalk leading away from the main roads. We didn’t shop, because manly men don’t shop, but I imagine people who do such things would enjoy it.

We got some grub at some place called Garfunkel, it was 6.95pounds for all you can eat salad bar that had eggs, and some meat and such things so that was alright. Then we headed to Buckingham Palace, which is some crazy big building and quite pretty.

I think my most favourite thing in all of London though are the parks. Now, we have parks in toronto, but these things are HUGE. Like Hyde Park is probably near 2km long by a km wide, and it’s in the middle of the city! and there’s more of them in the city too!  We ended up taking a small nap in Hyde Park actually.  So it brought our total amount of sleep to about 30 mins from Friday to Saturday lol…but we had amazing weather, some random guy playing guitar near us to serenade us and some soft grass to lie in so we probably stayed in for about an hour and half.  Then we headed back to the hostel.

Ok out of minutes on my card, so I’ll update about the evening once we get to Dublin and settle in!

Final thoughts: London is amazing, beautiful city, caters to pedestrians, puts Toronto and Montreal to shame =)

And now we’re off to Dublin! WOHOO!!

In approximately 22.5 hours I’ll be flying out of Toronto on my way to London, England.

It’s finally here.