So I leave London tomorrow morning and since I have not blogged pretty much at all since I have been here this will cover most of my stay, please forgive any discrepancies.

I managed to visit quite a lot when I was in London, the list of places was,The London Eye, Tower Bridge, Hampton Courts, Tower of London, Globe Theatre, and Kew Gardens.
The tops of the list have to go to the things I was expecting, the Tower of London was super awsome, the Crown Jewels are on display here and looking at the jewels and thinking about there value was super fun. Some of the largest cut diamonds in the world are housed at the Tower of London so that was a treat.
Secondly, the Globe Theatre, its next to to the Tate Modern which really dwarfs it, it looks really funny but its cool to think that the reconstruction is so close to where the original stood. The plays had unfortunately ended so I was only able to take the standard tour, not see an actual play preformed. Still the theatre itself is col and pretty small especially when you think of how many people would have been cramed into it during Shakespears time.
The last is Kew Gardens, something I managed to put off until my final day in London. Don't get me wrong its not like I didn't want to go, as a matter of fact its what I was looking foreard to the most but I just kinda kept putting it off. Kew Gardens was something kinda special for me though, my family visited it both time we traveled to England and now I got to go on my own. When I first walked through the doors I almost immediatly noticed that I was having kinda crazy deja vu, I remembered the pathway to Kews most recognizable greenhouse and when I got to a certain had this crazy flashback to like an 8 year old me standing at the same spot under this giant bannanna plant and looking up into its giant leaves. It was really cool.
Alright, a little back story for those who dont know. Kew Gardens is the Royal Botanical Gardens of England, it was started over 250 years ago and holds 1 in 8 known plant species. Nowadays Kew is mostly a dedicated to preserving plant species as well as some research on plants.
For me the place was really nostalgic, I really enjoyed the walk around the gardens and I got a ton of great photos, I took around 150 shots all over the garden and they have all been uploaded to my Flickr account.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macandcheese240/
The day was not a perfect one since it was overcast the whole day and began to rain near when I left the gardens but I was used to it since Portland has much the same weather. I was also dissappointed to find that they did not have seeds of any cool plants for sale at any of the shops. On our first family trip to Kew my dad bought, Bannanna seeds and Bird of Paradise seeds. The Bannanna died and had to be replaced but the Bird of Paradise survived we have two plants and just got flowers from them for the first time. They have a seven year period where it grows before starting to flower yearly. Anyway got a little off topic but no exotic seeds this time, I had wanted to get some for my dad as a gift.
So that pretty much sums up my time in London, tomorrow I hop a plane from Gatwick airport to Madrid so my next posts will come direct from Spain.

 So both today and yesterday were spent in London or at least nearby. Yesterday was spent walking around Downtown London at the suggestion of my host who was very kind and gave me several great suggestions for things to do in and Around London. I went around the Themes near Downtown London nearby Waterloo Station and the London Eye, no photos unfortunately since I forgot the camera. Looked nice and there were a lot of store and restaurants. Today was spent lounging around while I tended to my photos since the uploading takes a while and I had to remove some of the bad photos and I had to work on my money tracking since I am trying to keep track of my spending and I had 30 or so receipts that have been sitting in my wallet for a really long time. So not much to say for today but tomorrow should produce better writing as well as some good photos.

Also random but funny points, when I arrived in London at the International train station there were several business men in front of me buying train tickets and the first guy asked if he could pay with Euros (LOL) thanks to my parents I knew better and already had Pounds(the currency of England for those who dont know), also seemed like the teller kinda sighed as she said they got that all the time and were really tired of it.

Also I am VERY happy to announce that my photos are now viewable, I shelled out $25 to Yahoo to get a Flickr Pro account so I could get unlimited uploads and unlimited storage so my photos can now be seen by all.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/macandcheese240/ 

 So today was really my exploration day for me in Rotterdam, first I had a nice breakfast at the hostel which was great and I felt good even though they had music beating way into the night (dont get me wrong it was way better then the last place which was oppressivly quiet, it had a god atmosphere). After that I headed out to the Maritime Museum where they had a cool exhibit about how both the sipping industry and sailing industry have evolved as well as the evolution of Rotterdam as a port city, how it went from a strong port city and then began to dwindle after sand bars egan to form and then they created a channel to solve the problem. It really struck me how the Dutch people thought, when they had this problem of nature basically creating a wall of sand instead of giving in and letting the town sort of devolve they said "no well just move the giant sandbars and control the ocean.
Anyway after that I headed down to a art museum in the down town area along the museum park area which is just what it sounds like, a park with three or four museums along the length of the park. Anyway I visited the biggest art museum and I got a pleasant surprise, since I was 18 I got in for FREE, a very good price for a traveller on a budget. Anyway I explored that for another 3 hours or so, they had paintings, drawings, and prints ranging from the early renaissance through modern times, they also had some modern art things containing both older things like glass and silver cook and dish ware and moving all the way up to things like TVs and toasters. After the museum I had a nice coke and brownie in the small cafe at the museum and I picked up a post card for a really cool idea I had. I want to get postcards at all the places U visit and then when I get home I plan on glueing them to a piece of poster paper around the name of the country and maybe city they are from. Hopefully it will be a sort of overview of the sights I saw on my trip.

Anyway the day was good and I still need to go grab some dinner, tomorrow morning I plan on moving on to Amsterdam and then probably trying to visit the Ann Frank house after I arrive and then spend the next two days after that exploring Amsterdam.
 
ALSO
exclusive to my GB blog
 
WTF
Yeah I just saw this in downtown Rotterdam next to a skatepark

So I made my train after some help from the ticket agent and now I am in Rotterdam and staying at a wonderful little Hostel called the Room Hostel, its has themed rooms and has a great atmosphere, compared with the StayOkay hostel OI was just in this is wonderful. When I had first arrived there was a possibility that they were full up but I was told to come back in an hour so I walked around and found a little cafe and had a nice pizza and coke for lunch and then went back and the Hostel had an opening. Unfortunately all the places I planned on visiting close at 5 pm and it was already 3 so I just plan on kicking it at the Hostel and they are having a concert so I may go to that and they also have a happy hour around the same time. I also met a really cool guy at the last Hostel called Ben, he was a really cool dude and he originally came from SF (San Francisco) and he really travels a lot, he has been traveling for 2 months or so now and he had been all around the world. I was pretty surprised that he had even been to Mali, he had apparently came up from Africa to England before I met him in the Netherlands. He was really cool and apparently couch surfs a lot and really suggested it to me heartily.

Anyway tomorrow I'm gonna hit some of the museums around the area, mostly art and theres also a maritime museum.

Now a quick gripe at AAA

I brought along two travel books, well three but I had to send one home already not it seems I will be sending another back. The first book is really great, A Rough Guide to Europe on a Budget, it has been great for finding activities and for the most part useful at getting me to hostels. The second book is the AAA Travel book for Europe which I only brought along because my mom suggested it, turns out I was right. I have been recently trying to use it for cross reference to try and find any more activities I think I would enjoy. My first gripe is that it only lists several cities for each country (most likely done to keep the book smaller) and these are usually the I cities (for example London for Britain) and so far these have been somewhat incomplete as far as I am concerned. The book does not have Versailles for France nor does it have The Globe Theater for London. Anyway that book is probably going back to home soon.

So I haven't written anything for a while and i's really sorry since I said this would be a daily thing but anyway. Please excuse it if you notice anything that breaks the time-space continuum since its kind of blurring together in my head.

Roman Ruins-Day

So basically we all loaded into the car and we drove down to a set of roman ruins that were somewhat in the area. So we went down there and we looked around. There was a set of sort of pantheon like columns and after we walked around the area before going to the nearby museum that encompassed also an old roman bath along with descriptions in German and our hosts very thoughtfully translated the German for us. The remainder of the museum was about the area where the ruins where through time as well as some of the roman fashions, amour and such and currency and then moving into fashions as time moved on. After the museum we went back out and checked out the Colosseum they had built nearby. It was really cool and you could go inside and hear the echo and reverb as you spoke. It also seemed like the area for contenders was smaller when you were in the center of the area. It was really weird, after that we went back to the house.

Chilling-Day 2

Basically I chilled I the house for a day, I watched a lot of videos and planned some of my time and travel in The Netherlands.

Traveling-Day 3

This was when I hopped a train and split up with my aunt and uncle and left Sarah and Detlef's house and went into Arnhem, it's a small town near the the border with Germany. I basically got off the train and got kinda lost finding the train I needed to get on. Got on the right train and made it to the biggest landmark near my Youth hostel, a hospital and it was pretty easy to get to the hostel from there. Unfortunately it was 2ish and I only really had one thing planned and it required a full day so I ended up watching videos and reading at the hostel then going to bed early.

Also the StayOkay Hostels which tend to be the main hostels you find around the Netherlands are kind of bland and they don't really have anything super nice going on especially in the bedroom areas.

Going Biking-Day 4

So I got up around 8:30 and ate a nice breakfast (included in the hostels price) and by 9:30 I was out the door going to De Hoge VeLuwe National Park, basically its a really nice park where you pay 7 Euros or 14 for the park and museum. They had white bikes you could use for free so I grabbed one and biked for a few hours then went into the museum with a ton of cool paintings. They had a lot of Van Gogh's they said around 300. It was pretty amazing, they had two long halls of just Van Gogh's. I had a nice cup of hot chocolate and a piece of cake. Then I went back out and biked around for about another hour. Also I got lost both on the way to the park and on the way back. Since this was really the only thing I had to do around Arnhem I plan on moving on to Rotterdam next and then onto Amsterdam on either Saturday evening or more likely Sunday morning.

Also I am working on uploading photos right now so please bear with me, you should be able to see my 400ish photos soon

Thank Yous

So the whole Germany thing was really cool, I really need to send a BIG thank you to Sarah and Detlef for letting me stay in there house for so long, it was really enjoyable and they had a lovely house.

Also thank you to my aunt Carol and uncle Mike since they paid for me for the last week.

sorry this took so long but the internet has been trickyer then I though it would be so its a couple days at once.
 

Part 1: Dulles Airport

So I had to get up at 5:30 this morning to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare so there would be no chance of missing the plane and being in a bad situation, anyway I got to the airport and I spend around 25 minutes just hanging with my mom having a coffee so she could have some final time with me before I left the country for 2 months. So eventually its time for me to go through security and right after I go through the security I immediately manage to read my ticket wrong and ended up at the wrong gate. I was at the complete wrong side of the airport and it was like 5 minutes till my plane started to board. I'm still not quite sure how I managed to get lost in my home airport but I still made it to the plane and got there right as they started boarding my section. The plane trip itself wasn't that bad, there were several babies, seemed like 6 months maybe a year but they were mostly quite for the flight and even when they did start to cry I had my Ipod so I just cranked on some music and drowned them out. Flight didn't seem too long, I slept for maybe an hour and mostly just listened to music but I also read maybe 35 pages of my first book for the trip, Shantaram. So far I'm enjoying it, my mom suggested the book to me and its like 950 pages so it should keep me occupied for awhile. I have a 2 hour layover at Dulles so I'm just kicking it near my gate, might grab a bite to eat and I will write more when I get to Frankfurt.

P.S. I really could tell I was at the right gate since a lot of the people really look like mad German.

Mackenzie

Part 2: Frankfurt Airport

well I made it too the airport, my flight managed to get in like super early (I'm not sure about the actual numbers but I think it was like an hour early). Anyway my Aunt was supposed to meet me at the gate when I arrived but my plane beat hers in so I had to figure out her arrival time an now I'm waiting for like an hour until her flight gets a gate assigned, anyway figured it was a good time to blog about the plane trip. The overall trip was good except I fell asleep and no one woke me up for the meal service so I missed that, thankfully I had a ham and cheese sandwich in my bag so I ate that instead. The plane seemed to take forever (the planned time was around 8 hours I think), made me really think about how long a direct flight from Portland would have been (I think around 12 hours). Also the difference between economy, business and first class was huge, the dudes in first class had like giant bed like seats with tvs and remotes and all sort of goodies and I barely had room for my feet. They decided to put the electronics for the tvs under the window seats, they were packed inside of metal boxes that took up half of my foot space so plus my carry on I had almost no space, I had to put it next to my feet instead of underneath the seat in front so I could stretch a little.

Overall the flight was okay though, nice and quite, we arrived early and I was actually able to sleep.

Mackenzie

Part 3: Frankfurt

So me and my aunt had planed to meet at gates but as I said my plane got in early and I could not find the gate so I spent 2 hours moving around the various exits to the airport trying to find my aunt. After that I went onto plan B. I hopped on the train to Frankfurt, unfortunately I got on the train headed in the wrong direction and only realized after 3 stops. I had to hop out and immediately shift to a train going the back the other way. I eventually found my way into Frankfurt and was going to stay at a youth hostel, turns out there pretty hard to find without directions so I ended up wandering around Frankfurt for a good 45 minutes before finding a cyber cafe and finally being able to both email my aunt who said we would meet at a youth hostel and also get good directions to the youth hostel and thats pretty much what happened. We also ate a really good dinner at a restaurant near the hostel that served traditional Frankfurt food

Mackenzie
 
 

So las t night I fell asleep like 6 maybe seven and I slept 12 hours round to 6 or seven in the morning. We had breakfast at the hostel which served a buffet style breakfast with fruit, meat, cheese, cereal, and drinks. The breakfast was actually better then I expected and after wards we went to a museum about the Jews that lived in Frankfurt, from the middle ages through the present with most of the stuff concentrated in the 1800-1900. It was pretty cool, they had lots of old documents, a couple Torahs and a ton of old menorahs including the place they came from, what they were made of and how old they were. The whole museum was in German so we had to read these booklets that had anywhere from a room to five rooms of information filling them and then we would go through the exhibit and see the pictures and what not. After that we went back and grabbed our bags we left at the hostel and went and got a train to Düsseldorf along with some sandwiches for lunch. After the train we arrived at carolyns(my aunt) friend's home where we were greeted by her son. After meeting with the son we went out to a nearby cafe and had coffee and Ice cream, I had an ice cream that was vanilla Ice cream with whipped cream and butterscotch topping with butterscotch pieces and maraschino cherries. After the ice cream we went back to the house and got a tour of the house and got to meet carolyns friend and we sat down and had a nice chat.

so I stayed up all night for the 3rd time in a row as I try to change my sleep schedule to German time which for me is going to sleep at 2 pm and waking up at 10 and I realized that in roughly 24 hours I will be on a plane to Europe where I will spend the next 2 months traveling through 6 maybe 7 countries (Germany, Netherlands, England, Italy, Greece, France and maybe Spain). Anyway I have spent the last 3 weeks gathering all of my supplies, making sure I have all the money, the trips costing me around $5000 in theory (though I'm hoping to keep the costs lower and spends some of the extra cash on new games when I get back) and packing everything before I leave. I also have been debating whether to bring my DS lite since I know I will want to play games while in Europe and i will be sorely missing my consoles. I also have the pleasure of missing the releases of some games I've been looking forward to for a long time, Scribblenauts, Halo 3 ODST, Modern Warfare 2 etc. I did plan my trip so that I return on Nov 14 so I get back in time for AC 2 since I want to write a guide for it and I stashed some cash in my room so there is no chance I will run out of money and not be able to buy AC 2. Anyway 2 months in europe without my games and I plan on bloging it all here probably with photos, so stay tuned.