Pbase photos - http://www.pbase.com/johnhudson/johns_trip_to_europe

Flickr photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnhudsonphoto/sets/72157616146560114/

For now, here are some statistics about my trip. I think we all love some good stats every once in a while right? Right.

John's Europe trip:

- 24 days
- 8 cities
- 230,266 steps walked, 108 miles walked, 6180 calories burned!
- daily average of 10,456 steps, 5 miles, and 281 calories burned from walking.
- over 10,000 photos taken, averaging over 400 per day
- 15 flights on 10 airlines, totaling 12,851 miles on 7 different types of aircraft
- 5 books read, 2867 pages, an average of about 120 pgs per day (although I usually read each book in about a day and a half while traveling)

Another interesting link is my flightmemory page, which you can see here. I do love keeping track of these kinds of statistics. While my page is not that impressive in the grand scheme of things, its shaping up nicely.



Some final thoughts on the europe trip:

I will get a lot of the "how was europe" questions. I would prefer specific questions so I can give specific answers. Instead of saying how was Europe, ask me what were the taxis like in Germany, or something like that.

Europe is a great place to visit. Lots of interesting things to see and do. Tons of history. Overwhelming really. That being said I am glad I live in America. Europe is not somewhere I would want to live for any extended amount of time. It is too crowded, busy, loud, complicated, and generally just a pain to deal with long term.

Since I will probably get asked what my favorite places were, here they are in order, although its hard to make a list like this, and I really enjoyed every place I was.

1. Venice
2. Cologne
3. Rome
4. Barcelona
5. Madrid.
6. Malta
7. Mallorca
8. Bucharest

Don't ask me why the list is the way it is, it was a gut reaction.

I will do my best to get some photos edited and placed on the internet in a manner that is easy to navigate. Check back in a few days for that. Thank you for following this blog and for the comments as I was traveling. It was nice to know that people were keeping up with me as I was traveling.

I think despite the various setbacks that inevitably occured along the way, things went fairly well overall. I accomplished almost everything we set out to do for work, and was able to see a lot of interesting things and take some fairly decent photos for myself along the way. All in all a successful trip.

I'm home now, but I will be making one last europe related post soon giving a summary of some things, and giving links to more pictures, etc. Look for that soon.

last day

Last night I went to a small little tapas restaurant and had a small dinner of a spanish omelet and toasted bread with tomatoes. It was delicious.

This morning I did the last Hard Rock of this trip. It was a pretty large one, but everything went pretty smoothly and we finished on time.

I did a some walking around the city (over 8 miles!). I went to the largest city park in Madrid called Parque del Buen Retiro. It was a very cool park, large, very peaceful, lots of paths and greenery. I had a good time walking around and relaxing. The weather was about 65 and sunny, just perfect.


Tonight I went to a restaurant and had Veal. It was pretty decent.

Tomorrow I am flying back to New York at around 11:30am, 6:30am EST. Can't wait to get back home!

I will put up links as soon as I can to the edited photos when I get around to them.

John

Well Mallorca (pronounced May-your-cuh) went pretty quickly. It was not the easiest shoot I've had, but we got it finished with no problems that I am aware of.

Today I got up at 5am and flew to Madrid on Spanair again. When I arrived, one of my bags was missing. For once it was probably a good thing that I had such an early flight, as they should be able to bring it to my hotel later today when it arrives on a later flight.

Madrid seems like a huge city, similar to Barcelona so far. We'll see how much exploring and sightseeing I end up doing...at this point, I'm ready to be home. One more day of work, and then I"ll be leaving Thursday morning.

Today I got up about 6, and left for the airport at 7am.

I was able to check in without any hassle (or fees) whatsoever, and I was almost shocked that it went so smoothly.

I had breakfast at the airport, and our flight was the definition of routine and hassle free. It was pretty refreshing to not have any delays, etc. We took off quickly and powerfully in our Spanair MD-87 and enjoyed a very quick flight down to Palma de Mallorca. The island is actually pretty big, with a huge mountain range on the north side of the island. The population of the island is about 800,000 I think, which makes it about twice as populous as Malta.

Once I got to my hotel, I laid down and was able to take a nice long nap. I dont think I needed one, but somehow it just happened.

My room is very nice, which is also refreshing for once.

I walked around a little bit, went down to the HRC to see where it was, etc. This island seems like a nice place. Very mediterranean obviously. The weather was fantastic today.

Unfortunately, after several weeks of traveling through europe, the novelty has worn off, and I am no longer impressed with everything that is "different" than it is in America. At this point I am ready to be home.

So work tomorrow, travel tuesday, work wednesday, fly home thursday. Almost done

barcelona

I am getting behind on my blogging....

Thursday was spent traveling...it was a very long and somewhat frustrating day.
I flew from Malta to Rome on Alitalia, and then had about a 4 hr layover in Rome. Then I flew from Rome to Barcelona on Clickair. There were delays, etc, but it all worked out in the end.

Friday I worked in the morning, and walked around for a few hrs in the afternoon. I basically spent some time on Las Ramblas and down by the waterfront.



Today I finished up work, and then decided to do something that I have wanted to do for a while. I found out that I could rent a scooter for 25 euro...not bad at all. So, I did. And it was amazing. I spent 5 or 6 hours, drove all over, saw a lot of very interesting things, and felt like I was a native of Barcelona.

Tomorrow I am flying to Mallorca early in the morning. Mallorca is a large island off the coast of Spain. Its a very popular vacation destination apparently.

day 2 of malta

Today began early for me at 5am. I was able to get ready very quickly and get a taxi at 5:45 to get me to the HRC at 6am to meet "Ludvig" who I was working with today. He was friendly and helpful as most of the people I have met on this trip have been.

I was extremely thankful that we were not only shooting memo that was at eye level, but that the glass cases could be removed, as well as the memo actually could be taken off the wall! This would make things MUCH easier. With 10 items to shoot, I don't know if we would have finished it all in time otherwise.

We moved quickly despite my batteries for my flashes running out of juice. Ludvig was awesome though and went to the store to get me some extras. They also kept me supplied with plenty of coffee, easily the best i've had in Europe so far. Europe claims to drink a lot of coffee, but i have yet to see any evidence that they have ever even seen a real mug. They usually drink from doll sized teacups, sipping on bitter coffe. It's strange.

Anyway we managed to move quickly through a lot of different things, 4 guitars, some shoes, etc. I can't seem to care at all that I am holding a guitar from a famous musician worth thousands of dollars. They really just look like regular dusty old guitars.

We finished just in time to open the restaurant. I ate some lunch there and then came back to my hotel and worked for a while on some things. I went for a walk on the "beach" in the afternoon to scout potential photo spots for later that night. The beach is very strange, I want to say it is volcanic rock, but I'm not sure. Either way its incredibly sharp and very difficult to walk on, full of jagged holes and sharp points. The weather was nicer today, a little warmer and less windy.

I headed back to the beach around sunset for some pictures if possible. I found a spot i thought would work, and tried to get down there as best I could. The surf and slippery rocks kept me from getting very far, but I tried out a few pictures from that location. The waves were unpredictable, and a few times they splashed me pretty decently. Within a few minutes, I saw a wave coming that seemed larger than the others, and at the last minute I grabbed the camera so it wouldn't get wet, but my legs and feet got pretty good and soaked.

I moved around a few times to various parts of the beach to get some different perspectives. Taking these kind of photos is difficult for many reasons, but one of them is that unless you already have your location completely planned out, its hard to know how it will turn out. The other difficult part is that you can't control the elements. Some days you'll get lucky, others you won't.

Here's a few that I got tonight.



Tomorrow I fly to Barcelona.

John

the last few days

I need to get caught up from the past few days.

Monday I headed out early to get to the laundromat with my suitcase full of dirty clothes. It ended up being easier and more painless than I had expected. It still cost about $15 though. After that was finished, I packed and ate a very quick lunch before heading off to the airport. In hindsight, I probably should have tried to do something other than go to the airport so early. My flight wasn't supposed to leave until 7:30, but checkout was at 12. I just didn't want to leave my bags at the hotel and try to wander around some more. I won't lie, at this point I am starting to get sick of walking, and of sight seeing in general.

So I went to the airport, which was chaos. I eventually settled down with a book to wait out the long hrs until my flight started checking in. To make a long story short, everything in Italy is more difficult than it should be, and this was no exception with the checking in process. Lets just say something that should have taken 5 minutes ended up taking more than an hr.

But in the end it was worked out and I finally got to my plane and we boarded on time. We sat for a while though before pilot came on and said that apparently someone had checked in for the flight and checked some luggage, but then had not shown up at the gate or boarded the plane. Naturally that is a very suspicious security threat, and so they took all our luggage off the plane, and made everyone get off and identify which bags were theirs. This delayed us by about 2 hrs.

So I didn't get into Malta until about midnight. I took a cab to my hotel, which is quite nice actually. I got about 4-5 hrs of sleep I guess.

Today I got up, had some breakfast which was included in the room price thankfully, and took a cab to the Malta Bar that I was photographing. Thankfully, everything went smoothly due to its small size.

Tomorrow though will be a challenge as we have a lot of items to photograph and a short amount of time. I plan to start at 6am so that we have plenty of time to get everything done.

I haven't seem much of Malta, just what I have seen from my hotel and from the road. It seems to be a typical Mediterranean island. Hilly, rocky coastline, some interesting scenery, kind of strange city, old in some parts, ugly in some, somewhat unique style of architecture throughout. I'm not sure which it seems more like, Italy, Greece, Africa, etc. It is kind of in the middle of everything.

Supposedly they speak english here, but I have yet to meet anyone who speaks it well enough to have much of a conversation. Still, its an improvement.

this is the view from my room during the day:
here is the view at night:


I think I have been out of town every St. Patrick's day for the last few years. At this point I am officially sick of traveling and everything that goes along with it. I am not trying to complain, nobody wants to read that. I don't want people to get the wrong impression. This trip is a unique opportunity and that is why I am doing it. But it is by no means a vacation. Never underestimate how difficult it can be to travel constantly for weeks on end, with 100+ lbs of luggage, from city to city, in airports and taxis constantly, always a different hotel room, and always by yourself. It gets old quickly no matter how many interesting things you may see along the way. This would be an awful life if you had to do it all the time, and many people do. I am looking forward to going back home to my wife and my own bed, etc. The next time I come to europe, I hope that I can do it on my own time, with people I care about, and actually spend time enjoying things instead of rushing around. But of course I came here for work, which is what I am doing. I have to remind myself that sometimes. It always seems strange to me though that people sometimes express that they think I am lucky or that they wish they could have my job. I am indeed lucky, but not because of a trip like this.

first full day in rome

Today went pretty well. I ate my free breakfast, took a cab to the HRC. The staff was friendly and helpful, things went smoothly, and we accomplished what I wanted to. I took a few hrs to do some work, and eventually headed out to see a tiny bit more of Rome.

I walked a few blocks to the Parthenon, which is huge, and pretty interesting. I read that it is more or less the most well-preserved building of its age in the world. I believe it. It is totally surrounded by the city, but it stands out. Its incredibly unique looking. The interior is amazing as well. I will post pictures soon, but if you don't know what I"m talking about, google it.

I then decided that I needed to do laundry desperately, so I attempted to find a laundromat. It was no easy task. Just getting someone to understand what I was looking for was hard enough. I walked for what seemed like hrs but finally found it on a very shady looking street. If I do 2 loads it will cost me about 28 euro! Ridiculous. Its about $10 just to wash and dry one load. Amazing.

I walked down to the Colosseum again for hopefully a good night shot. It didn't go as well as I had planned, but hey, you can't get lucky every time.

I then had my last dinner in Italy for a while. Since I hadn't paid for food yet today, I splurged a little bit and got baked Sole in bread crumbs with butter and lemon, and roasted potatoes. It was quite good.

Once I do my laundry tomorrow, I will check out of my hotel at noon and head over to the airport, where I will sit for many hrs, and then fly on Air Malta to Malta. I am not sure what to expect of this tiny mediterranean island. I hope things go smoothly though, as we have 10 items of memorabilia to shoot, and no extra days! So I hope they are prepared.

Also I am very tired. I am walking an average of about 15,000 steps per day.

-John

When in Rome...

Yes, I am in Rome. I got up at 3am, took the boat to the airport, and was here by 8:30am. Napped until noon, and then explored the ancient ruins of the forum and the Colosseum for a while. So far it seems very interesting. I do enjoy ancient ruins. Work tomorrow, and I really hope things go smoothly. I also need to do some laundry very badly, so hopefully I can find somewhere around here to do that. Sorry for the short post, but I just don't have the energy for anything more. Pictures will be put up if I can get some time later.

John

Day 3

Today was the day they were supposed to be ready to go, so I headed over early after breakfast. They were in the same basic state of chaos as the day before.

So, I did some of the areas that were available, and decided to work on the memorabilia for the rest of the time. It proved to be difficult and frustrating. Much of it was very close to walls, which means I can't get a light stand and umbrella in between the wall and the memo. That leaves me with few options. I can try to use something to reflect light onto the subject, or bounce light off the ceiling or another wall onto the subject. But, because the memo is encased in a large plastic/glass case, any light source that flashes in front of it will be reflected off its surface. Needless to say, it took me all day to achieve results I wasn't even that satisfied with.

I did a night exterior, which should be halfway decent, but not perfect, because the area is extremely high traffic. After I had done this, there was still a small amount of light in the sky, and I decided to see if I could get anything interesting. I hit San Marco piazza, and then ran to the Rialto Bridge.

It was worth the effort. This is what being a photographer is ALL about people. Its not having the most expensive camera or the fanciest lenses, its about being in the right place at the right time, and knowing how to take advantage of it.
the composition on the above photo is awful, but I didn't have time to fix it. Plus I just liked the lights and the colors. I may re-do this tonight.

I will post more pictures as I can edit them, but the bulk of the photos won't be touched until I get home. I simply have far too many to even try to edit.





I am leaving extremely early (3:30am) tomorrow for the airport, so final thoughts on Venice:

Even though it is one of the most touristy places I have ever been to, everything is unique and interesting. In my opinion, there is almost no way you can miss out on the excitement and ambiance that is Venice (unless you go to Burger King or something). Every restaurant is run by Italians (well most of them), and every restaurant is actually in Venice, making it inherently interesting. The draw for me is the experience. Not necessarily seeing as many churches as possible in 24 hrs, or eating at the worlds best small out of the way pizza shop. I enjoyed seeing how life was lived in Venice. The city is entirely pedestrian or boat. All supplies and goods are brought into the city by small boats, and carted around by men with hand trucks and carts. The city runs on physical labor, much the way it probably did a thousand years ago. The lack of any kind of cars is also very refreshing. At night it gets very quiet, and the piazzas echo with your footsteps. It is almost reverent, especially in a courtyard with a church. People walk in small groups and speak in hushed tones as they make their way through narrow passageways lit by small lamps in restaurant windows. As I mentioned to someone, it feels almost "fake" somehow, yet it isn't, and that is why it is so unique. You can't find this kind of place anywhere else in the world. I have enjoyed wandering this city for the past few days.

I make my way to Rome tomorrow.

John

I added a few pictures to the post below. A few more can be seen at my pbase site.

I am working slowly on getting some more pictures up, but I can't justify sitting in my hotel room on the computer when I am in Venice!

The city of lights

On Wednesday I started out the day with the free breakfast at my hotel. According to wikitravel, my hotel is one of the nicer/pricier in the city. I'm sure it was picked for its proximity to the HRC, but it is pretty nice so far. The rooms are very small, but the rest of the hotel is nice. The breakfast had lots of food to choose from.

I went over to meet more of the HRC staff. When I got there, it was crazy. Men were working all over the place, people were working on their laptops, etc. To make a long story short, not only were they in the middle of trying to get things ready for their opening in a few weeks, they had no idea that I was coming, or that there was even a photoshoot scheduled. Translation: somebody somewhere screwed up big time, and it wasn't me.

So, I told them to try to have things ready on Thursday, and I would be back then.

I then headed back to my room and changed clothes, grabbed my camera, and headed out. I visited the Piazza San Marco, which is the plaza of Saint Mark. It is one of the more famous/popular places in venice, and there were a lot of people milling around. The weather was fantastic. High 50s, lots of sun. I didn't wear a coat. I wandered around and took an elevator to the top of the Campanile di San Marco, or the belltower (interestingly it was re-built in 1912 after collapsing. The original was around 1,000 years old). The views from up here were incredible. The pictures should tell some of the story.

I then proceeded to wander through the streets for a while, slowly making my way towards the Rialto bridge, probably the most famous bridge in Venice. The streets range from very narrow to almost impossible to squeeze through. I literally found an alley where I worried about my shoulders fitting through it, I kid you not. Its a good thing I went through head first, because if I had tried to go through sideways, there is no way I would have fit through.

Venice is full of shops of all kinds: clothing stores, very high fashion stores, candy shops, bakeries, coffee shops, pizza everywhere, lots of murano glass shops, and everything in between. The gondolas are everywhere, and their gondoliers (sp?) are constantly trying you to go on a ride. Who goes on a gondola by themself??

The most interesting things to me are the canals, the way the city winds around and has so many small passageways, of course the architecture, and the history of the island. It is extremely photogenic, I took over 500 pictures.

The nice thing about Italy is that I no longer need an excuse to eat pizza. Its Italian food! So I got some for lunch. It was pretty good. I have a theory about food in foreign countries, but I don't think the world is ready to hear it just yet. I also got some "gellato" which is supposed to be special, but from what I can tell is just regular ice cream. It was good though.

So I wandered for most of the day, took over 500 pictures, walked over 20,000 steps.

At dusk I went to one of the 3 main bridges over the grand canal to photograph one of the more famous views of venice. There were a few other photographers there and we talked about nerdy things. I am pleased with the results.



I then ate dinner along the grand canal. I had spaghetti. It seems to me that the atmosphere in Venice is what you are really there to experience more than anything. The atmosphere around the grand canal is very unique in my opinion.

That concludes my first full day in venice. I will post pictures as I can get to them. I will try to get thursday's blog up at some point too. It was much less exciting however.

john

Cologne Day 3

Please click on the photos if you want to view them.

I should have updated the blog last night, but I was too busy catching up with the rest of the world. Oh well.

Yesterday we photographed various items of memorabilia at the hard rock. Guitars, clothing, etc. It is a lot of work, and a huge pain. I have all kinds of flashes and tripods and gear, and its all fragile. And of course, I have to use tables and chairs and ladders to get to high places, so needless to say, its not fun and it gets old. But, everything went very well from my perspective, so I felt pretty good about everything.

I didn't do anything extremely exciting yesterday. I walked around the cathedral some more, but the lift to the top was closed, so I couldn't go up there. I went back to the hard rock for a night shot, which I think should turn out alright despite some rain that threatened to interfere with me.

here is a photo I took on my way back to the hotel:


I stopped at a very german looking restaurant and had a delicious meal of curly kale with potatoes, a sausage with mustard, and some apple pie.

here is what the inside of the restaurant looked like:

This morning I slept in due to staying up late last night, and the fact that my flight left in the afternoon. I ended up sleeping till 10, and since it was raining, did not do any more sightseeing. by the time I had some food and packed it was time to leave for the airport.

I spent most of the time in the airport reading a book. My flight on TUIfly to Venice was nice and short, and flying over the Italian alps was very cool to see.

Once in Venice, I took a water taxi to the island. It took almost an hr because it was so slow and we made a few extra stops on our way around the island.

After checking into my hotel I found some food and met the people at the hrc, which is only a few hundred feet from my hotel. I am looking forward to exploring this extremely unique city.

Pictures will be taken tomorrow i hope.

John

Day 2 of Cologne

EDIT: I added a bunch of new pictures, but for some reason its cutting them off, so click on the picture to see the full image.

I Spent the morning working at the HRC. The people there are great, just like Bucharest, for which I am very thankful. With 2 good shoots so far, I don't know how much longer this will last, but I hope the rest are half this helpful.

Spent a lot of time talking with one of the girls I was working with about life in europe, politics, america, germany, history, culture, etc. It was encouraging to hear more positive things about the US and Americans, as well as the state of the minds in Europe. Sometimes I think that America is the only sane nation left, but its good to hear that many of the people I have met are just as rational as we are, and want most of the same things we do. And the differences in our cultures are what makes the world an interesting place.

On my way back to the hotel I stopped at a small restaurant called Pfaffen Brauerei to get some lunch and get out of the rain. I had a meal that included sausage, and some kind of potatoes with fried onions I think..either way it was delicious.

I decided to take a guided tour bus around the city for 10 euro. It lasted about 1.5 hrs and was a good way to see a lot of the city and get some history at the same time. I took a lot of pictures, some of which I will post if I can, but most of which I will try to put online somewhere else. Cologne is a very interesting city with a unique history and place in Germany. The old city, which is where I am staying and visiting, is my favorite part of the city. I am having a blast walking all over and exploring.

here is the Cologne Cathedral
another church near my hotel
inside of the cathedral
candles in the church
a famous square near the HRC
more of the inside of the cathedral
more of the inside of the church
looking up at the front of the cathedral
a famous building designed by architect Renzo Piano
the outside of my hotel
the inside of the hotel

I went to another bridge over the Rhein to get some more photos from another perspective of the Cologne Cathedral and some other churches along the western side of the river. Here is one that I shot tonight:
On the way back to the hotel I stopped at another restaurant called Rheinland Koln, and had a meal of blood sausage, mashed potatoes with onions, and homemade apple sauce. Naturally, it was outstanding.

I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to get a bad meal here. I am enjoying Germany a lot so far. It has friendly people, beautiful scenery and architecture, tons of history, shopping for the wife, and amazing food. It is a country that I would have no problem visiting again sometime.

I will attempt to post more pictures of my travels around Cologne, but I am finding I have less and less time to edit photos. I will try to put some more up tomorrow.

John

Koln

I wanted to get that out of the way first. That is the kind of image I was hoping to be able to capture at some point, and I am pretty pleased with the result. The cathedral is the Cologne Cathedral, quite famous and easily the most dominant presence on the skyline of Cologne. There's a secret to getting this scene to look the way I wanted it to ;-) I won't divulge that, but the fun part is that this picture is totally unedited, except to merge two images into one to make it wider.

Today started off with me waking up at 3am and not being able to go back to sleep. My taxi came at 5am and we got to the airport quickly. It was a different airport this time, Banaesa Airport. An older, smaller airport, it was surprisingly very close to the larger international airport. Checking in was total madness. The terminal was tiny, old, and full of people. It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. When I finally did check in, I found out that this airline (Blue Air) had a limit of 1 checked bag per person, weight not to exceed 20kg. Well I had 2 bags, whose combined weight was about 38kg. So, I paid the fee of 6 euro per extra kg, plus a fee for an extra bag, amounting to about $150. Amazing.

Boarding was accomplished by bussing everyone about 100 yards to the plane, where we piled on. We had some incredible turbulence on the short flight to Sibiu, where we stopped to get more passengers (I guess?). I slept most of the way to Cologne.

Got into Cologne, got my luggage, took a taxi to my hotel, and took about a 2 hr nap because I was so tired.

Woke up, grabbed my camera, and headed out to check out the location of the HRC and maybe meet some of the staff. On the way I would check out what Cologne looked like. I spent some time in the Cathedral. It was very cool. Huge. I took a lot of pictures.

I wandered through the streets until I found the HRC. There are tons of restaurants, shops, small narrow cobblestoned streets, etc. I find it all fascinating.

I ate a very late lunch at a small restaurant along the river (The Rhein). I had marinated porksteak. It was pretty good.

Eventually I went back to my hotel and got my tripod and headed across the bridge to attempt the shot I posted above. I had to wait quite a while in the cold, but I think it was worth it.

That's pretty much it for today. If you don't see as many pictures as you think you should, check back because I add more sometimes. I also updated photos and captions to my last post about Bucharest.

- John

Day 2 in Bucharest

I will attempt to recap the last 24 hrs. Also, if you would like to leave a comment on the blog, you can use your google account to log in if you have one (gmail, etc).

Last night after I made the last blog, I went to a restaurant down the street called The Harbour - here is the website. It was small but that was what I was looking for. It had a lot of old wood in it, supposedly it was opened in the 1800s or something. I got some sort of thing that was like beef, wrapped in pork, wrapped in bacon. It was pretty good.

I decided to go check out the concert at the Hard Rock since they said I should check it out, and I didn't have much else to do. Besides, how often can you say you have been to a concert in Romania? So I took a taxi over there. I only stayed for about 15 minutes. It was very crowded, I dont speak any Romanian, so nothing made much sense, and I got the feeling I had already seen the best of them during sound check anyway, so I left. I had to walk a bit to a large intersection to find some taxis, and I ended up finding the same guy who had taken me over earlier.

Friday

I had much the same breakfast today as I had yesterday, but added a very good omelet to the mix. I like to take full advantage of free breakfasts.

I then headed back to the HRC to finish things up. We were able to get everything done that I wanted to, and it went quickly.

After I had finished with things this afternoon, I decided to try to see more of the city by using the Bucharest Metro. For 8 lei, I could purchase 10 stops. not bad for about 2 bucks. It was by no means easy to figure out my way around the city using the metro. Their concept of "map" leaves a lot to be desired. I got off at a few different stops, walked around, and then would get back on. I found a gigantic park and walked through that for a while. Eventually I figured out how to get to the one thing that seemed interesting, a gigantic building called the Palace of the Parliament. Supposedly it is one of the largest buildings in the world. It was built by Nicolae Ceauşescu, former ruler of Communist Romania.

an intersection near my hotel

heading down into the metro
more of the metro
same kind of cars as Atlanta and DC...made by Bombadier :-)

that large building i talked about
colorful fence

vagabondul...hey i found it funny.
who buys a Ford when you live in Europe???
I guess this guy couldn't live without his PT Cruiser....(check out that parking job! crawl out the passenger side much??)
average street in residential area
graffiti in the park
walking in the park
corner of the park looking towards a large intersection
another large intersection near my hotel.
crossing the street
another metro stop
interesting way to get onto the metro...

I then headed back to the hotel, and got a taxi back to the HRC to finish up some evening shots of the exterior. On the way over, I realized a few errors I had made: I had only enough money to pay for the ride there; I did not bring my debit card, only my credit card; I left my room key in my room. Yes, 3 stupid things all at once. So, after I was done taking photos, I found another taxi, and had him drive me to the hotel. Right before we got there, I told him I would need to get some cash from the ATM before I could pay him. He didn't look thrilled. So I had to get a new room key. It didn't work. Finally I got into my room to get my ATM card, ran outside to an atm, and paid the guy. From now on I carry the ATM card with me.

After talking to Katherine on Skype (best invention ever quite possibly), I headed out for hopefully a quick meal. I walked a few blocks and found some kind of restaurant with a large courtyard. I went up some stairs and found a very small restaurant called Case Veche that was not busy at all. Just the way I like them. I decided to have a traditional Romanian meal before I left. I chose Sarmale, which is essentially minced meats wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves. It came with some kind of corn meal, which I ate with it. It was good. Not something i'd eat every day, but not awful either.

Then followed a fiasco where the waiter informed me I could not pay with credit card. When I asked why, he said it wasn't working. Well then, how can I pay you? I don't have enough cash (again!). He shrugged his shoulders. Ok, well, I can either give you 10 lei, I can leave, or I can go to the ATM, get money and pay you back. He didn't seem to want me to leave. Eventually we went to another restaurant that they owned I guess and paid using their machine. So much drama.

I have pictures that accompany this post, however it is getting late, and my flight to Cologne leaves at 7am. I will need to be up by 4:30 am at the latest, so I need to wrap this up.

Some final thoughts on Bucharest, Romania, and the Romanian people.

- Bucharest is not the prettiest city ever. A stereotypical example of a post communistic regime in eastern europe. Interesting certainly, but not tourist material.
- This city is home to one of the largest populations of stray dogs. They are in packs. They are everywhere, and it is extremely strange to say the least. The barking gets old.
- It is easy to see why Coca Cola is the worlds most recognizable brand name. It is everywhere here. On the buildings, on the streets, on tv, on the radio, in the airports. I have seen tons of people drinking it. I have seen exactly one Pepsi ad. Of course, this pleases me.
- The Romanian people seem like genuinely good people. Everyone I have met has been helpful and courteous. They go out of their way to provide good service and are very polite. Perhaps this is just Europe and I am used to America, but either way, its great.

I probably had a few more things to say, but I can't remember them now. I will add things to this if I think of them. I will also add pictures, so check back tomorrow, hopefully I will have internet at my next hotel.

If you are reading this, please feel free to leave a comment about anything, I would love to hear some feedback as to who is actually reading this (if anyone at all).

And now, I will begin re-packing everything.

- John