worst blogger ever

Categories: spain, england, travel, library, museum

I'm not so great at keeping up with this here thing. I keep thinking i'll have time (and access to a computer), but I never do. Alas.

I am in England right now, at my aunt's house (with broadband in the house! No internet cafes for me today!). Tom, Meg, and I flew in Wednesday and we've been soaking up the English language (they speak it here, like all the time!), VARIETY of vegetarian foods (Indian, veggie burgers, Chinese), and beautiful weather. Yes, beautiful weather in London--we spent yesterday walking around London and today along the canal in Rickmansworth, and it was sunny, breezy, and about 70 degrees.

We visited the British Library, where I was able to drool over the medieval illuminated manuscripts (hee hee, good thing they're under glass!). We had a pub lunch (cider and a veggie burger with chips!), and then hit the Tate Modern. It's housed in a former power plant, and there's a big warehouse-sized room when you enter that has a sound sculpture in it that it positively chilling. Speakers spaced throughout with people saying different words and sentences, and as you walk through, they fade in and out. I wandered around the 3rd floor, which is one of two with their permanent collection. The Rothko room was really incredible, set up a little like the Rothko Chapel in Houston, but the colors were so different it had a completely different effect on the brains.

Today, we walked along the idyllic Union canal, which runs from the London zoo up to the Midlands (Birmingham, I think?). We watched the canal boats float along (or, moreso, sit there) and saw one guy go through a lock. And we ate the best chips ever. It is Tom's birthday, so we had cake too, whoopee!!

Speaking of Tom, he got the official news yesterday that he's matched at Bay State Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, so we're going to have to dust off our snow suits when we get back to the states. We're really happy about it, since that's where we'd both been mentally planning to go, so it's nice to know that we're actually going.

Umm, tomorrow we head to Amsterdam for 2 1/2 days, followed by a frighteningly poorly-planned return to Spain on Tuesday. RyanAir didn't make it too clear to us when we booked our retuen trip that we needed to allow at least an hour between flights to make a changeover in London, so we've been scrambling to find new flights back to Spain. Wouldn't be too much of a problem if Semana Santa (the Easter holiday) weren't coming up, as the rates are pretty crazy. Tom and I are now flying to Biarritz, France, then taking two trains to San Sebastian (you have to disembark on the border and switch trains since the Spanish rails have a different guage than the rest of Europe), then a bus from San Seb to Pamplona. We, however, got the last of the discount flights to Biarritz, so Tom's sister Meg is going to take the train from Amsterdam and see a bit of France along the way. I think it should all work out, but it's a little stressful. Yikes.

But there is a beer waiting for me downstairs, and I don't want to disappoint it, so I sign off. Imagine if I get my act together enough to write an entry in Amsterdam? Hope it's semi-readable. (or maybe i don't...)