Tag: Europe Posts

I left Vancouver approximately five weeks ago, and headed for Malta via Paris. My ultimate goal was to end up in Serbia, but I thought I would stop and visit two friends of mine that I met in Kuala Lumpur last year: Krisztina and Debbie. Here’s a summary of my one-week visit to Malta. Despite all the travel I do, I actually really hate flying, and would say I have a mild phobia. To counteract that, I usually have a bottle of Ativan (anti-anxiety medication) with me on the plane. For short haul flights (generally less than an hour or so), I typically don’t bother, since I’ll end up feeling a bit loopy after the plane lands. But anything over that amount of time and I usually pop a pill to calm my nerves on the plane. That’s why for the most part I generally stick with bigger name schedule […]

This is the first post in an ongoing series where I’ll be featuring a few of the travellers I’ve encountered on the road or whose web sites I’ve frequented during my travels. First up is Alexandra Kovacova, also known as the CrazySexyFunTraveler. I’ve chatted with Alex a few times on Twitter about travel, and asked her a few questions which she graciously answered for this post: First, what’s your name and where are you originally from? My name is Alexandra Kov·Ëov· and I was born in a small Slovak town Snina. People at home call me Saöka, but abroad I’m known just as Alex. Where are you now, and what made you decide to visit there? It is very weird as I have been living abroad for 8 years already, but right now I am back at home, in Slovakia, for the summer. I came to visit my family and […]

As many people know, I’ll be heading to Europe right after my trip to New York City. I officially arrive in Ireland on April 6th, and will be spending the next few weeks around the United Kingdom. Europe is expensive, there’s no doubt about it. Most hotels are around $150 a night for anything decent, and many hostels get bad reviews for what they charge. Since I’ve been living pretty cheaply in Argentina, I’m going to live it up a bit in April. Ireland was definitely on the schedule, as was London (briefly, as I’ve been there before) and Paris. But given that I had a full week to kill in the area prior to Dublin, I thought I would head north and visit Scotland. I’m flying from Shannon to Edinburgh at the start of the week and then from Edinburgh to Dublin at the end. Together those two flights […]

I booked my ticket across the pond tonight. In April of 2011 I’ll be leaving New York City and heading to Shannon, Ireland aboard Continental airlines. My friend Andy is living near Shannon with his girlfriend right now (she’s in med school over there), and I told him recently here in Chilliwack that I’d like to come for a visit. So, now it’s official! While I’m not much of a golfer, I’m eager to play a game of golf with Andy in Ireland, for the geography alone. I really haven’t seen much of Europe. I spent a week in northern Finland at Nokia a few years ago, and had a brief stop over in Helsinki. Other than that, and about 6 hours of time I had in London, I haven’t seen anything else. So my plan is to spend April until June or July bouncing around Europe with a backpack. […]

So I gotta jet.. Here are the photos from London.

Now that I’m officially done what I came to do here in Finland, it’s really time to let loose and party it up a bit… I just demolished my first beer here in the Oulu airport, and am now working on beer #2 waiting patiently for my plane to board. I’ve spent the last hour researching cool spots to go drink beer tonight in Helsinki, and I have a few in mind that I’m going to check out later.. I can’t be too drunk or out too late tonight since I have lots to do in London tomorrow, but I’m going to do my best to drink as the locals do. Jari and Seppo impressed me with their drinking ability the other night, and I imagine the locals might be able to keep up with me tonight (perhaps even best me, although I haven’t been bested in years). I remember […]

I approximately 24 hours, I’ll be stepping off a plane at Heathrow and rushing madly to see some of London before my connecting flight to Vancouver leaves in the early evening. I think I’ll probably only have about 3 and a half hours to see London, which I’m sure doesn’t give me much time to see very much. With the time constraints, it looks like I’m gonna shell out $100 for the express train that goes from the airport to Paddington Station near central London. From there, I’m really not sure what I’m going to do. It still seems like quite a haul to get to any of the attractions, so I imagine I’ll have to take “the tube” to go see something. In terms of what I really want to see, I really am not sure. I’d like to take a ride on the London Eye, but if there’s […]

I’ve been in Oulu, Finland for a few days now, and thankfully last night I actually got to go out and see a few things. Jari and Seppo were nice enough to take me to a pretty fancy Russian restaurant last night where we had some great food, nice wine, and of course some type of random vodka shot. Afterwards, we sort of started our own mini pub crawl, checking out a few of the bars in the Oulu downtown. I really love the architecture over here. I’m not sure how you’d really describe it, but everything is really quant and different looking. Last night was pretty cool because there was this fog over most of the city, and it made everything feel slightly dreamy (or maybe that was just the beer?) Poor Jari had to get on a plane at 5am, and around 1am (after ample amounts of liquor) […]

So my body decided that it would take a brief unscheduled break from sleeping at around 2am this morning.. I decided in that time I would throw a few photos up from yesterday (I don’t have that many). Oulu is pretty quaint so far, and I’m actually really eager to walk around and see some things (since the architecture looks really cool from my hotel window). I have to be on-site around 9 this morning (which means I need to get back to sleep), but afterwards I think my hosts are all taking me for dinner. For the most part, my digital SLR has been in my backpack most of the time. I took a few shots with it in Helsinki, but my little powershot has had more use on this trip. I should be able to post some photos from dinner later, and maybe a walk around. I was […]

When I lived in Ottawa, there were times when I used to get a little homesick and miss Vancouver and Chilliwack. When that happened, I was fortunate enough to stumble across a little website called KatKam.ca. It’s a live webcam that points into the direction of the evening sunset, only a block or so away from my apartment in Vancouver. To this day, I always religiously check it out from time to time when I’m out of town, just to see what I’m missing back home. Here’s a shot of the sunset tonight that I missed. I’m heading to the airport now to fly up North. See you guys in about a week.