Things I learned while travelling:

1. According to Anna's Mom, "All mens are gross".
2. According to Anna's Dad, "When it comes to men you've gotta have a cold, cold mind".
3. Anna hates it when Korean's pluralize everything, like "Cereals".
4. Anna has a trick finger that can detect when she's drunk.
5. Guinness in a can is a lot stronger than Guinness on tap.
6. Irish people are lushes because the only thing open after 5 pm are pubs.
7. Brazillian men think you're their girlfriend if you try to teach them English.
8. London is depressing and the food sucks.
9. Virgin Airlines has the worst food on the planet.
10. Men from Venezuela are beautiful.
11. You have to be crazy and out of your mind to ride a bike in Amsterdam.
12. Lock up your bike before you leave because when you get home you're bike will be stolen.
13. Don't over pack.
14. You can wear your pants everday for a week before you can't wear them anymore.
15. The British Pound sucks.
16. When you go on vacation your sadness and problems follow you where ever you go.
17. Tram 5 is free in Amsterdam, the only people who pay are tourists.
18. You don't have to tell a French guy twice before he tries to climb into bed with you.
19. Don't lose your soap.
20.

Anger Management

My last night in Dublin was super crazy. Put my anger management skills to the test! Im on a super slow computer so I'll have to update this blog later. Amsterdam was a great day. Will write more later.

My last night in Ireland... weep...

Actually, I'm pretty excited to be moving on to Amsterdam. Dublin is such a busy city, when I thought about Ireland I thought green hills, castles and leperchans, but infact its probably one of the busiest cities I've ever been to.

Not last night but the night before (no, 24 robbers didn't come knocking at my door) but I had another horrible nights sleep. This 40 year old woman was staying in my room at the hostel and not only did she come back wasted and assume everyone who was sleeping wanted to hear about her drunken night, but she snored like nothing I've ever heard in my life. She sounded like a purring cat. I'm not even joking. She snored in and snored out and it woke me up and 130 am and around 4 am Anna woke up to find me with kleenex stuffed in my ears and my ipod on reading a book. I tried every attemp to fall back asleep but was unsucessful till around 5. I tried to wake this crazy biatch up and politely let her know she was keeping the entire room of 16 beds awake and she flashed and went crazy on me. (I bought some ear plugs yesterday and slept like a log last night) The thing that really sucked was that we had to get up super early cause we booked a Lakes and Valleys tour of Ireland. It was pretty nice to see some of the Irish country side. We went to a couple villages and saw really old buildings and such... I have pictures. I'm pretty thankful that my camera battery hasn't died yet! Its gone almost 2 weeks without a charge!

Today, we went to Malahide castle and took a tour. Then we went to Trinity college to take a look at the Book of Kells, apparently the book of Kells was written by monks around 800 ad and it has some of the most incredible writing and art Ive ever seen. Its some sort of transcription of the first 3 books of the bible... something like that. (I know I'm a bad tourist) It wasn't really something I wanted to see but Anna wanted to see it so we went. The library they had was incredible though. I've never seen anything like it. Something you might see in a Harry Potter movie or something.

Anyhow, its might last night here in Ireland, last night we each bought a Guinness in a can and I have to say that Guinness in a can is a lot stronger than any guiness from a pub. Lets just say us girls had a fun night back in our room taking silly pictures and being crazy. I'm so sad to part ways with Anna tomorrow, but I'm sure I'll have a good time in Amsterdam.

Ok ya'll I'll try to be good, text me if you want. Makes me happy and feel like I'm not so alone. Talk to ya'll later. :D

Finally in Ireland!

Yikes 4 days without a blog. I apologize...

I'm so glad to be out of London, I was getting really really depressed sitting in that big house all by myself. Then with transit being on strike and me getting sick and having to go to the hospital I wasn't sure what would happen next. I was having a really hard time sleeping. The night before I was supposed to fly to Ireland I couldn't fall asleep till about 130 or 2 am. I had a 430 am pick up to go to the airport which meant I had to get up at 4. The whole time I was in London I averaged about 2 - 4 hours of sleep a night. I ended up eating something really horrible in London that made me really sick. My boss took me to the ER at 11 pm at night (yes its free healthcare even though I'm an american). The wait was about 2 hours so Eric suggested we go to the clinic down the street. It was immediate service but it ended up costing £105 which is about $210.00. After my £8 prescription, £23 in cab fares, £30 for vitamins the american dollar total was over $300+. Eric offered to pay for it and I will be forever in debt to him. I've been taking my antibiotics for 5 days now and I'm feeling a lot better.

I took a nice flight on AerLingus to Ireland. My flight left at 650 am and I arrived sometime around 8. Then I took the bus from the airport to another bus stop, then the number 7 bus to the coast. I stayed in a city prounounced Dun-Leery, its really confusing to spell it properly so I won't even try.

So I got to The Marina House in Dun-leery outside of Dublin. It was the dirtiest place I've ever stayed. I bunked in a room last night with a guy from Italy, a guy from France and a girl from Spain. Very interesting people I tell ya. It was quite comical as both of the guys were snoring. First, Aldo, the guy from Italy was snoring, and I was like "ALDO!!" All of a sudden he jumped out of bed and was like "Si, si!!!" Then the French dude came in and he started snoring, so me and the Italian guy were trying to wake him up... When he finally woke up he said in his funny french accent, "No, that is impossible I do not snore!" The way he said impossible was like super funny. Then the Italian guy fell asleep and it was me and the French guy awake, keep in mind this is like 330 am. Aldo the Italian starts snoring, so the french guy goes to his bunk, plugs his nose and starts shining his cell phone light in his face. All of a sudden the italian guy goes into convulsions. It was the funniest damn night of my life. Finally I decided to make some ear plugs out of toilet paper, but it was so unsuccessful. I ended up falling back asleep around 5, but was again woken up by an atomic fart which resulted in the worst smell I've ever smelled. It wasn't the noise of the fart that woke me up, but the smell, which means it must have come from the depths of hell. I have no idea where it came from but it woke me up out of sound sleep.

Today I'm pretty groggy and tired. After taking another cold shower this morning and realizing I left my body soap at that last dumpe we stayed at we arrived at The Shinging Hostel and its SOO clean!! :D I'm not sure what Anna and I are gonna get up to tonight but maybe something mellow. I decided the other day to go to Amsterdam, so when I leave the shining hostel on wednesday, I've got a flight that arrives in Amsterdam at 445 pm local time. Now instead of being 8 hours difference from san francisco, i'll be 9 hours.

Meanwhile, back at Marina hostel in Dun-Leeery, we met this really nice guy from Missouri. I'm trying to convince him to meet me in Amsterdam but he wants to go back to Gallway, Ireland for a couple weeks. That crazy Italian guy Aldo will be in Amsterdam but I think I need to steer clear of that guy.

Sister if you're reading this, I'm going to call my hostel in Amsterdam and maybe you can 3-day fedex my charger. The battery is almost dead and to buy a charger here is €50 which is about $75.00.

Here is where I'm staying in Amsterdam:

Hostel:Inner Amsterdam
Address: Wanningstraat 1 ,Amsterdam 1071 LA, Netherlands
Telephone: 0031 20 - 66 25 792
Email: info@innerhotel.nl
Website: http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/netherlands/amsterdam/5069/

Once I get there I hope to take a bicycle tour of the city. I've done most of the touristy things there so we'll see. Unless you've been there you have NO idea what kind of bike population they have. The statistics say that there are 700,000 people there and 1 million bikes. I ran into some Americans at the Guiness brewery yesterday and she told me she was so surprised by the bikes, it really is unbelievable.

Oh yeah, yesterday we went to the Guinness brewery where with your admission you get a tour and at the top you get a free pint of Guinness. Well I drank my pint, then other people would take a sip of their beer and leave it on the counter and just leave, so I ended up drinking other peoples beers. FREE BEER! I had 3 pints in total and left the brewery pretty wasted. It was good fun times. At the top of the factory they have what's called the Gravity Bar it has a 360 degree view of Dublin, its pretty amazing. I havent taken many pictures for fear of my battery dying but I'll try and sort it out.

Hope you can HELP ME SISTER!!

miss you guys and you're right nicole my goo goo is an asswipe. I just bought the book "he's just not that in to you" today, can't wait to read it. Cheers everyone! Kiss my cats for me i miss them SO much!

Mummy, what's for pudding?

So today as I was walking around westminster I realized that "pudding" is just some general term for dessert. Kinda random, but I heard this girl ask her mummy what was for pudding and her mummy said ice cream! I had heard the term used before in a pink floyd song but I wasn't sure that pudding meant something other than pudding.

Anyway, today i kinda had a late start. I was feeling quite ill this morning so I ended up leaving the flat around 11. I sorted out where I wanted to go for the day so I headed to the bus station and took a couple busses until I arrived at St. John's Wood underground tube station. I didn't take the tube from there until later, my first stop was Abbey Road made famous by the Beatles album cover. I actually took some pictures of myself in the crosswalk and I rang up one of my friends and had him look at me online. They actually have a camera outside pointing at the crosswalk so if you go online people can see you. Pretty cool. Unfortunately when I arrived there it was about 5:45 california time so I apologize I didn't ring anyone else to have them look at me in a crosswalk online.

After that I realized that the Jubilee line was running to I wanted to go see the London Eye again. I took the train to the Waterloo station because it looked the closest to the London Eye, but actually the Westminster station is closer. So i hopped on a bus and got off at the wrong stop, which made me have to walk super far. When I finally arrrived at the Eye I was like, "WTF are all these tourists doing here?!" Even though I'm totally a tourist, I don't walk around with my fanny pack and camera pulled out like everyone else. I actually didn't take many pictures today because i was like "eh, been there done that" so basically i just tried to fit in with the locals. Once I realized the ques for the Eye were super long and that tube was on strike, I figured I better try and make my way back before rush hour traffic. I hopped on the Jubilee line, got off at West Hamstead and caught the silverlink rail towards richmond. caught the 452 bus and once again, was informed to get off at the wrong stop. I ended up walking SOOO far. Half way through my walk I realized I had a major blister on my foot which made things really difficult. Its a good thing I brought my London A - Zed book because without that I might have never made it back to the flat.

Once I got back here I realized I was getting sick. I had major chills, so I popped 2 advil and layed on the couch and listened to my ipod. Then after I sweat it out Eric came to the house and asked if I wanted to have dinner with him and one of his friends. It was really nice. Last night we went out to the Hospital Club for dinner and drinks. I noticed here in London that people join these swanky clubs for high prices but the benefits are really great. Tonight we went to this other members only club he belongs to called Electric. We had a good dinner and drinks now I'm back here thinking I should go to sleep. It's about midnight and I'm feeling pretty tired. I hope everyone at home is doing well and I'll talk to ya'll soon!

Waiting...

Since I've been waiting for my cab for about... oh, 2 hours now, i thought I'd sit down a blog a bit on todays events. It seems like everytime I go to Europe there's a strike on the public transit. Last time I was in Italy there was a strike against the war in Iraq so naturally they had to shut down the public transit system. No trains, no busses. Then again, the italians find a reason to strike for anything. There's nearly a strike every other day in Italy.. No joke.

I officially spent like $60 american dollars just on trasit today, thats 1 fifteen minute train ride and a short cab ride. Then I opted for some lunch at this Italian place and the food was totally disgusting. Cost me about 7 pounds, which is 14 American. I gotta get out of this city! My wallet is being raped by the pound! I wanted to fly somewhere tomorrow but then I realized that I forgot my camera charger, so my sister is fedex-ing it over night, thank god.

Tomorrrow, I'm gonnna have to sort out a way to get to west minster abbey to go to the famous crosswalk on the Beatles album cover. Also, I plan to hit up Stonehenge, Bath and Windsor castle, public trasit permitting.

Its 8pm here, I'm starving and my cab still hasn't come. I saw a cab outside dropping someone off and I ran from the 5th floor of this flat down 5 flights of stairs nearly breaking my neck just to see the cabby drive away... I think this is why I lose so much weight in Europe... You can't eat!

What a crazy trip so far!

So I finally arrived in London! Yay! Took about 10 or so hours via Virgin Airlines, but I made it. The flight was awesome. They have free on-demand so you can watch a ton of different movies. I watched "The Waitress" with Keri Russell and "Mr. Bean's Holiday"... Other than those 2 movies I slept. I also enjoyed the free cocktails. I had a stiff vodka tonic and a nice glass of red wine.

Once I got hassled in customs for listing on my immigration card as "unemployed" and informing them that I was staying at my boss' place (whoops) I tried to get some cash. I was totally unsucessful! First, I tried the ATM like 8 times and of course Bank of America freezes my card and decides to be "closed for the Labor Day Holiday". THANKS for leaving me stranded! Then I went to Travelex, which I always have a hard time there and they denied me money because I didn't sign the back of my card. Even with my license, passport and 12 other forms of ID she would not take my card. I think she was just trying to be a bitch.

Finally I opted to use my HSBC card (thank god I brought it) and it saved my a$$! I brought it in case of an emergency and being stranded in London is an emergency so... Plus my boss was nice enough to front me $40 pounds until I can get ahold of BofA.

Anyhow, I took some pics of this rad flat I'm staying in. I'm gonna try and post them in a bit.