Brussels is the town where I spent most of my time while I was in Europe. Tyler and I flew into Brussels, and spent the entire first day trying to find the place we were staying in Waterloo, which is a town about 10 miles south of Brussels. This is where Tyler’s girlfriend, Aly, was staying, and she had arranged for us to stay there for a few days during our trip (as well as leave our large suitcases at the house so we didn’t have to carry them around all day).

Leading up to the trip, Tyler and I hadn’t really done any research at all as to where we were staying. In our defense, we were both working 14 hour days trying to get enough work completed so that we could justify leaving the country for 2 weeks. We were so ill-prepared that we didn’t even know the official language of Belgium! We soon learned that it was French (with Flemish also being spoken), but that didn’t help us much, since neither of us knew a single word of French. Yes, we were typical stupid Americans, but we were determined not to propel that stereotype, so we did our best to fit in. This didn’t always work very well.

(Continue Reading This Story )

So, I was in Denver last weekend visiting my friend Bill. He moved out to Denver from Minneapolis last October because he wanted to go snowboarding all the time. Like me, he works as a web developer, so he is able to work from pretty much any place with an Internet connection. I thought about visiting him earlier in the winter, but I have a general rule of travel: don’t intentionally pay money to visit a place that is cold. Only warm vacations in the winter; that’s just how I roll. That made April about the earliest that I could visit him, so I took advantage and booked travel arrangements for a long weekend (Thursday - Sunday) in the mile high city.

I have been traveling a lot recently (Here’s my travel log from November through April: Phoenix, Los Angeles, Florida, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Denver), and as a frequent traveler, I am starting to learn how to maximize my efficiency while traveling. One major thing that I have learned is that if I take a 11 AM weekday flight, I lose an entire day of productivity (need to leave for the airport by around 9 AM and don’t arrive at destination until about 4 PM). I have been so busy with work recently that I can’t really afford to lose an entire day to travel, so I have been forced to get creative with my flight booking. Some times this works out well. For my Denver trip, it didn’t.

I ended up booking a flight for 7 AM on Thursday in order to maximize my productivity. This meant waking up around 4 AM, and being at the airport by 5:30 (mad props to Brandon for letting me park at his house and driving me to the Lindbergh terminal). Given my normal bed time, that gave me about 3 hours of sleep (not the best sleep, either, I had a sore throat and felt like I might have a cold coming on). Not a big deal, since I can always sleep on the plane. In fact, the lack of sleep proved to be the least of my problems.

(Continue Reading This Story )

Today was the last of consecutive days of bus tours. Overkill, I know. The only reason why we booked this particular day tour was the destination; Loch Ness. Although I’m glad that I was able to say “I went to Loch Ness”, I really didn’t enjoy the tour very much as a whole and it really seemed like a waste of time (12 hours) and money (37 pound/$73 US).

With that said, I’m committed to tell you a diary of all the events of my trip, both good and bad. Perhaps after I give my explanation, you’ll see why I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I would have liked, and perhaps it will help those planning on visiting Scotland in the future.

(Continue Reading This Story )

Today I was booked to take a tour with a touring company named Haggis adventures. Unlike the St. Andrews tour from Day 9, which was filled with folks over 60 years old, this tour catered to travelers in their 20’s, and took a “hip” approach to traveling. I was sort of apprehensive to this “hip” approach at first, because usually when someone tries too hard to make something fun; it backfires and doesn’t work well.

This was not the case with this tour. It was actually pretty hip, not pretentious, and a hell of a lot of fun! Our tour guide was named Disco Dave (from this point forward we’ll call him Disco), and he was absolutely hilarious. He was very well spoken, even though he had a very thick Scottish accent. Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent the last week talking to Scotsmen, but I didn’t have any problems understanding him along the way. He was energetic the entire trip and really knew his history! He was shouting out facts and dates left and right, and I was impressed with his narration style.

(Continue Reading This Story )

Today was the day that we were to go to St. Andrews. This was probably the single most talked about destination of my trip between me and my friends back home, and everyone wanted me to take some pictures while I was there.

Waking up Sunday morning was NOT FUN. If you recall my story from Day 8, I didn’t get home until very late at night; 5:30 AM to be exact. I woke up at 7:30 AM Sunday, and felt like a million bucks! No, I didn’t feel like a million dollars, but rather like I was attacked by a million male deer. (As you can tell, I was so hungover/still drunk from the night before that I’m at a loss of wit, and I’m reduced to telling jokes that are not funny.)

(Continue Reading This Story )

Today was the day of the Hearts. Well, at least today was the day where we went to see the Hearts to play. I was fully decked out in my Hearts stripes, and also fashioned my hair into a football faux hawk (the less risqué version of the European Soccer Mullet), and we took route 44 downtown at around noon. The game was at 3PM, so we had some time to hang out before the game started.

The first thing Becky and I did to fill time was go to the box office for the two bus tour companies we signed up for online (we’re touring St. Andrews, Loch Ness and the Highlands by bus). We booked with one of the tour companies online, but the other required us to book in person. So, we went to their offices and booked the trip. I must still look young, because I got a student discount! We confirmed our reservations with the second bus company, and we were on our way.

(Continue Reading This Story )

Today was the calm before the storm; the last day of relaxation before 4 days of travel, tours and football games. It was also Becky’s birthday, and she wanted to take it easy on her special day. We decided to go downtown once again, and shortly after we arrived, Becky said she wanted to go shopping, alone.

Since we had no plans, Ed and I decided to take a trip to the Tynecastle Stadium, the venue where the Hearts play, to pick up the tickets we ordered for Saturday’s game. Tynecastle is located about a mile or two from downtown, in the opposite direction of our flat. Rather than take a bus to the stadium, we decided to walk, which was a good choice.

The walk was like most other walks I’ve had in Edinburgh: surprisingly relaxing, and always entertaining. It’s also nice to get a little exercise in, since I don’t have a workout facility at my disposal. Add that to my daily diet of either Fish or Chips, and many a pint of beer, and I am glad that I’m able to walk a lot!

(Continue Reading This Story )

We’ve been running out of sights to see around Edinburgh, so we decided to travel to a new area that we hadn’t been to previously. We took the 44 train into the City Center and then catch another bus to an area of town named Leith.

Leith has served as the port for Edinburgh for hundreds of years, and has a rich history, much like Edinburgh. It also went through some rough times after WW2, and until recently was regarded as a very “dodgy” part of town. Within the past several years, though, there has been a massive effort to clean up Leith, and it’s actually becoming very “posh”.

(Continue Reading This Story )

Becky woke me up super early today, so I only got a total of like 4 hours of sleep. I’m not a very fun person when I get woken up prematurely, so I wasn’t too happy when this happened and I was grumpy all morning.

After a while I finally woke up enough to be functional, and I got ready for another day of laid back tourism and hanging around the city center Edinburgh. We made up a list of things that we wanted to do on this day, and we did a pretty good job of sticking to it. Our plan was to visit the national art gallery, climb Arthur’s seat (a very large extinct volcano just outside of downtown Edinburgh), look for Hearts jersey’s and then attend the Hearts match vs. AEK Athens for the champions league (more on this later).

(Continue Reading This Story )

Day 4, or Tuesday was a catch-up day for the most part. I spent a lot of time working (yes, actually working), and blogging (you notice how I posted 3 blogs yesterday?) and answering my other emails. I also spent a lot of time MySpacing, checking my bank account balances, and reading baseball scores from when I was gone. My fantasy baseball team is officially going to shit!

I did get out of the flat for a while, though, and I was able to take a few pictures.

We took ol faithful (bus route 44) into the city center, and decided to do some walking around. Ed showed Becky and I a graveyard that was connected to the park, and we went in and did some exploring. From the dates on the gravestones, I guessed that most of the people were buried between 1700 and 1850. Some of the graves were in very good shape, while most were actually pretty run down. I don’t think that anyone actually maintains the graveyard, and I’m pretty sure that it just sits unguarded during present day.

(Continue Reading This Story )