Year In Review - Part II

As always, I made sure to have some escapade in my year.

This year was New York, NY; Kansas City, MO; Austin, TX; Santa Claus, IN; Dublin, Ireland; London, UK; Glasgow, Scotland; Berkeley, CA.

Here are a few pics...








Lessons Learned...

• Sometimes you have to get away be it for entertainment, avoidance, therapy, or your birthday. You just need to do it!


• Traveling alone has its rewards. You get to go where you want, do what you want, and all on your schedule.


• Traveling alone can be scary. When something goes wrong, you have only your brain to figure out what to do


• Traveling alone means it's hard to get good pictures. Yea, you can ask the random stranger to take a picture for you; but with my trust issues, no one was touching my camera!


• Sometimes the places you least expect to enjoy are the best and vice versa. I had high hopes for London though it proved much less enjoyable than anticipated. I had low hopes for Berkley and it proved to be a top on my list of places to return.

Tomorrow I Take Off

I'm very excited, as today is my last full day of this week. Tomorrow I take off to Dublin/London/Glasgow. I just checked the weather and it should be in the 70's with rain. I should plan to pack an extra set of pants and maybe less shorts.

Tomorrow will be hectic. I am having Chris drop me off at a Metrolink station so I can take Metro downtown to work for a few hours. I think sometime around 10 or 11 I'll leave work to Metro to the airport. My flight isn't until 3, but with the President coming to St. Louis for the All-Star game, I have to be prepared for hassles at the airport. Metrolink to the airport is about 45-50 minutes from downtown, so if I leave at 10, I should get there around 11, and I'll just eat lunch inside security and have about 3 hours to kill. I'd better pack another book!

It has just occured to me that I used the words President and kill in the same blog! Egads! What do you think will happen?

So just a quick review of my weekend and then I'm off to work as much as I can possibly stand today!

Saturday, Amanda and I went for a bike ride, partly for the ride, partly for the geocaching experience. We looked but found no geocach. We also rode in the rain, which was slick, but fun.

Sunday, Eva and I went for a hike up at Pere Marquette State Park. We are getting Eva prepared for her trip to the Smokies. While there, we looked for a geocach, and surprisingly enough found it. Lucky for me it had a Travel Bug so I get to take that with me to the UK to deposit in a different geocach! I am very excited about this!



Words-
ungood: Surfer term for "bad". Also used in George Orwell's bovel 1984.
drunk catcher: An obstacle found in one's path that, while drunk, provides, an incredible challenge to avoid. This includes cracks in the sidewalk, low-hanging tree branches, abnormal curbs, and members of the opposite sex who are of questionable attractiveness. Generally these are ranked by class, or degree of difficulty: class 1 being the lowest and class 5 being the highest.

In Use: The captain totally tweaked his ankle last night on a class 5 drunk catcher.

My Itinerary

For those of you that choose to keep track of me, like Amanda, Holly, and Drew (for mom) . . . here is my itinerary for next week. (This is also my back up copy).

[For reference, STL-St. Louis, ATL-Atlanta, DUB-Dublin, LHR-London Heathrow, GLA-Glasgow, all US flights are Delta booked through Northwest]

DUBLIN
JULY 14 Flight DL1723 STL-ATL 15:15; arrive 17:57
JULY 14 Flight DL0176 ATL-DUB 20:55; arrive 10:00 (+ 1 day)
Hotel Jurys Inn Parnell Street (353 (0)1 878 4900) [In-15th, Out-16th]

LONDON
JULY 16 Flight BD124 DUB-LHR 11:40; arrive 13:00 (44 (0)13 3264 8181) [REF#32L4ZX, bmi]
Hotel Euston Square Hotel (44 (0)20 7388 0099) [In-16th, Out-18th]

GLASGOW
JULY 18 Flight BA1492 LHR-GLA 17:35; arrive 19:00 [REF#32FWHT, British Airways]
Hotel Victorian House Hotel (0141 332 0129) [In-18th, Out-20th]

DUBLIN
JULY 20 Flight AL225 GLA-DUB 10:55; arrive 11:50 [REF#25FJ2N, Aer Lingus]
Hotel Jurys Inn Parnell Street (353 (0)1 878 4900) [In-20th, Out-21st]

HOME
JULY 21 Flight DL0177 DUB-ATL 11:50; arrive 15:45
JULY 21 Flight DL0909 ATL-STL 17:35; arrive 18:20

Anyone wanting to drop me off and/or pick me up at the airport or a Metrolink station may volunteer! ha, like how I threw that in there!