05/19 Los Angeles, California

Imprisoned by my own curiosity. I felt as if I was looking up through trees that encircled my view, staring at the many branches and the fruits suspended beyond my grasp.  I knew I could no longer be satisfied simply to lie here on my back, closing my eyes and dreaming of things out of my reach.

…

10/14 Marina Piccola, Capri Italy

The next morning I took advantage of the locations that I had found the day before.  It was another beautiful day with the sun shining down under a dense curtain of trees.  I lounged around in-between the shade of the trees and the heat of the sun.  At the end of the day I sat down in the harbor and watched the passing faces leaving the island. …

10/28 Matala, Crete Greece

I woke to what I thought was a scream.  Eventually I realized that it was the manager of the hotel yelling at somebody.  Apparently Dawn had spent the night with a young man who got himself caught on his way to the bathroom.  That was the sign I needed to change locations and find a new room closer to the restaurants.  I managed to locate a much nicer room directly across the street from what I had labeled the best restaurants and it was a whole lot cheaper.  I guess this time I didn’t to have to compensate a taxi driver.  …

06/19 Ring of Carrie, Ireland

We woke to another picturesque day and it wasn’t till we began driving the Ring of Kerry that we realized it was also a lucky day.  We were heading clockwise, south to north and every possible tourist and circus was traveling in the other direction.  This gave us the ability to stop and enjoy the scenery and not second guess our place in line or force us to let others dictate our pace. …

08/02 Salzburg, Austria

As we approached Salzburg the clouds parted and the sun came peaking through, signaling that a good day was ahead of us.  In one of the travel guides there was an interesting youth hostel alongside a casino.  I knew from my last visit to Salzburg, that the hostel had to be on the cliff overlooking the old city.  Once our train arrived we headed straight toward a phone and contacted the hostel to see if rooms were available.  Good news but we had to be quick because they did not take reservations.  …

08/13 Giessbach Switzerland

We discovered Lake Brienzersee early that next morning.  My entire side was bruised and I had scab from elbow to waist, even through the pain the lake’s unique color of blue was almost hypnotizing.  We docked at Glessbach to walk the falls.  Fighting through the soreness of my abused legs was worth the effort.  …

08/17 Madrid, Spain

I woke up in the middle of a desert of reddish clay painted orange by the rising sun.  As the ride wore on the sun converted our compartment from a cozy bed into practically an oven.  Each hill looked the same as the one before it rolling one after another past my window.  If one didn’t know any better it could be assumed that my window was the backdrop to a movie set.  …

11/07 Tel Aviv, Isreal

The clouds parted when we reached Haifa’s harbor.  It was impressive passing right up next to aircraft carriers and battleships.  That time they passed me right through customs but not Jenni.  They couldn’t pin point why somebody would travel from New Zealand to Moscow, to Cyprus, to Israel and detained her for about forty-five minutes while the rest of us waited outside.  We read travel paraphernalia for ideas and to pass the time.  Once she got released we all wandered the waterfront in search of the train station and discovered that if we wanted to exchange currency we would need to find ourselves a bank.   …

11/20 Marmaris, Turkey

Kate joined us on the walk into town that morning.  She needed to stop off at the post office while the two of us procured tickets for today’s journey.  Kate was a very sweet lady and this was a pleasurable visit.  We said our goodbyes over lunch and she saw us off at the dock.  We met up with the same American gentleman we originally asked directions from when we first arrived.  …

06/27 Oslo, Norway

We ended up in Oslo’s train station an hour and a half earlier than we had originally planned.  We had eaten and kind of ran out of touring options and found ourselves debating on which train to depart on.  One train left at eleven and the other at midnight.  Jim was having another one of his bad days, randomly complaining about everything and anything that came into view.  I wasn’t up for spending much time sitting in this vacant station with only Jim’s attitude to entertain me.  When the first of the two trains arrived, Jim walked the length of the train while I watched the gear.  “There’s no first class, so let’s wait for the next one” Jim demanded.  …

06/14 Dublin, Ireland

We paid twenty pounds each for deck passage to Ireland.  Everybody we had been crossing paths with had one priority, duty free beer.  Especially a couple of guys from the states.  One was from San Diego and the other from somewhere outside of Boston Massachusetts.  I was still tired from the long walks and late nights in Liverpool, so I thought I’d catch up on some sleep.  After two beers sleep wasn’t hard to find.  Jim volunteered to watch our bags so I wandered off and found myself a comfortable place to grab some sleep.  …

11/26 Ephesus, Turkey

When I woke I could not shake that dirty feeling.  I had felt cleaner waking up on the floor of train stations.  It was early.  The sun hadn’t come up yet and Jenni was planning on sleeping in, so I headed off to the ruins of Ephesus.  That trek started out as a long dark walk.  Luckily I eventually hitched a ride.  When I reached the front gate the sun began casting long shadows but it was still very cold.  …

06/06 Edinburgh, Scotland

We headed north into Scotland.  Initially we didn’t wander too far from the train stations but eventually we stretched our arms and headed into the countryside.  The weather had been wonderful.  I truly believe the sun had been following us for weeks.  The primroses were in bloom and the fields were scattered with frolicking rabbits.  …

09/24 Countryside, France

I wandered about the northern coast of France skipping from hostel to hostel and enjoying their fine cuisine.  Finding excellent food was easy but locating a smile or a friendly gesture from the locals was sometimes impossible.  I felt that the rudeness the Northern French dished out actually provided the glue that bonded us tourists closer together.  I came across a nice room in Blois and utilized it as home base to visit the chateaus in the area.  …