The Flickr uploading process while abroad was so haphazard, disorganized, and so frequently interrupted that I think I'm going to junk everything I uploaded and start redoing it today. Tedious? Sure. Annoying? Aboslutely. Going to lose some titles and comments? Yes. That bums me out. But less so than sorting through the hundreds and hundreds of duplicative uploads and out-of-set shots.

Flickr, so good and yet so very, very bad.

Davos Dorf - In the Woody Allen film "Everyone Says I Love You," narrator Natasha Lyonne opens each chapter of the film waxing poetic on the allure of each season in New York. Each is her absolute favorite as they descend upon the city.

The past two days here in Davos have been gloriously warm. Snowboarding in t-shirts warm. Bask on a sunny deck and get a sunburned neck warm.

This morning, however, we awoke to the sound of heavy artillery which Rob explained were snow cannons firing at the hills to induce avalanches (make little ones, avoid big ones). I went to the widow and surveyed the dark and brooding sky. No sun today.

By 11am it was raining and by 11:30 it hard turned to wet snow. By this evening, it had snowed consistently all day. At dusk, the streets were freezing over, walking was becoming difficult, and our sunny days seemed like distant dreams. There was no snowboarding today.

There was, however, ice skating. Well, briefly until the aforementioned rain and snow made the whole experience a bit too damp and chilly to be fun.

We decided to head to the top of Parsenn (a peak across from Jakobshorn and for which we also have passes) for lunch. The very top was closed though, so it turned out to be just a long few rides up and down a few 1000 meters of mountain elevation. We ate instead back at Bolgen Plaza, but inside this time.

We trudged through the snow to the Davos Wintersports Museum to see an endless array of antique skis, skates, and snowboards (antique boards dating from the 1980s - so that's US style antique, not Euro style antique. I bought a few more postcards (to add to the pile of postcards and letters I've been meaning to mail since we left on this jaunt 3 or so weeks ago). Now we're back at the Hotel Montana. Rob's just braved the cold to secure some wine and we're going to hang out in the room and edit vacation footage. Jealous?

So, while Natasha might have decided that Winter was IT in NYC, I'll have to go the slightly less romantic route and say that, while it is undeniably stunning outside, I would prefer to have finished out our time under sunny skies. Especially because I didn't have a camera by my side for yesterday's high altitude adventures and those views are indescribable. Most amazing vistas I have ever seen ever. And I'm not even a mountain loving kinda girl. But you haven't lived until you've seen those mountains under that sky. Endless. Rugged. Insert better adjectives here. I haven't got them myself.

Jakobshorn - Another day on the slopes, this time after having my bindings reversed to reflect my general goofiness. Bad call. It was hard enough learning the awkward, skateboard-like shuffle on and off of the lifts. Without the stomppad to hold my foot in place, there was no way not to eat it everytime I exited the chairlift. So I swapped the safety strap back to the left boot and was accordingly just plain awkward for the rest of the day.

The time change had us burying our heads with the sound of the alarm this morning. Hitting the slopes early wasn't a great idea for me since the sun hadn't yet had a chance to mushy up the snow. I felt out of control cutting through the crusty top layer of snow until the air warmed up a bit. Once it started warming, however, it didn't quit, not even at the very top of Jakobshorn where over 2000m of elevation still gave way to warm weather and burning sun. Rob and I have sworn that tomorrow we ditch our heavy snow jackets and stick with long sleeved t-shirts and sunglasses. Even at that there was a guy on the slopes wearing a wife-beater. He shouldn't have been, but it was hot enough for it, no doubt.

It figures that our snow holiday would be the warmest part of the trip yet.

The best way to enjoy the warm weather in this resort town is to take frequent beer breaks either at Bolgen Plaza (at the foot of Jakobshorn) or up the mountain at Fuxagufer. Each has a sunny deck, good food, plenty of beer, and the kind of kick-back atmosphere that is way too easy to get used to. The photo here was taken at Bolgen Plaza yesterday. That's a hot dog inside a hollowed out baguette. And yeah, we got our sixth-grader on and laughed at it awhile too. How could you not. Tasty though, especially when washed down with a Calanda. Today we split a buffalo burger at Fuxagufer.

Today was also my first real trip up the big chairlifts. Wayyyyy up the chairlifts. I left the map at the hotel or I could give better height approximations, but the ride takes you from around 1000m at the base up to about 2300m at the top. All on tiny metal framed chairs with just a little bar across your lap [insert my mom saying "no thank you" here].

It was about a 7 minute ride from Bolgen to Fuxagufer, from which we boarded down to another lift which went higher than Fuxagufer and then boarded back from there, rinse, repeat.

Our first ride down from the second lift back to Fuxagufer nearly finished me off in the sport. I boarded gingerly up to the edge of the run to see what seemed to be a 75 to 85 degree straight drop down the side of the mountain. I turned to Rob said something approximating "F this S" and said he had to be kidding. But what other way down was there? Off we went. Straight. Down. A. Damned. Mountain. It wasn't so much fun because I was so focused on staying in control of the board.

Had the board not been strapped to my feet when we slid to a welcomed stop at the Fuxagufer deck, I'd have smacked Rob with it. He said I did well.

During lunch, we plotted our next runs and the rest of the day.

Rob's eyes went wide and he slapped his head on the map.

Yeah, that run was hard because it was black. Blue = easy. Red = intermediate. Black = cd is not ready for Black yet.

But I did it and lived to tell the tale. Go me.

By the way: Don't know if anyone has run into the problem yet, but my archive links still don't work - so you can't read what's beyond the first page. Still working on that. Also - soon to come, we hope, footage of me snowboarding. Slowly.

Davos Platz - Not that we needed a day's snowboarding to confirm the fact, but Rob has decreed that I am, in fact, goofy. This is opposed to being regular (which, come on, is anyone on vacation regular? ah, potty humor?). Goofy is what you call someone who boards backwards from everyone else. They look down the hill over their left shoulder, I look down over my right so that my body is facing left, not right.

That I tend to face left instinctively also really didn't need confirming.

I'll confess, after yesterday's dismal, rather painful performance, I wasn't really looking forward to this morning. I thought maybe I'd try skiing or just go shopping and blog, two things I know I can do quite well.

After two practice runs on the nursery slopes, Rob said "right, off we go then" and dragged me to the chair lift that was like 6000 miles from where we were. Okay, not so far. The lift itself was fun - all breezy and quiet. But once on the top, there was only one way down.

Dismounting the lift was tricky, but soon I was strapped onto my board and ready to go. And you know what? I like didn't completely suck. It was marvelous. I'm mastering this falling leaf thing (meaning I go from side to side and can slow myself down a whole lot when I get too scared) and did a bunch of runs with a minimum of falling on my ass and/or face. I loved it.

After a beer and hot dog lunch on the extremely sunny, warm, and heavenly deck at Bolgen Plaza, I tried the t-bar drag lift.

Not easy.

I fell off the first time and Rob went whooshing away up the hill leaving me to scramble inelegantly out from under the others in line for the lift. It took a few more tries, but I made it up that way a couple of times - not nearly as much fun as the chair lift, but at least I can say I made it. On our last trip up the hellish thing, I tripped getting off and Rob and I were dragged a few feet until I fell off and he was dangling by his board being dragged further until the operator stopped the damned thing. It was funny because no one lost a leg or a head.

Tomorrow it's more of the same after a planned early start (made more difficult by the onset of DST - I assume it's the same in the US?) and hopefully an afternoon at the recently discovered wifi cafe (taught the bartender there a new word in "wifi") where I can upload photos, etc.

Davos Dorf - Snowboarding is hard. You fall down a lot and it hurts your wrists. And your arse. On the plus side, only faceplanted once. Also, it is a lot of fun because snow is fun and there is beer at the end (and in the middle) of the day.

Today was my first ever attempt at boarding. I think I frustrated Rob a bit but he was a trooper and a good teacher and never laughed at me (at least not to my face, which is really all I ask).

Rob says I did "alright." I'll take that.

We still have days left too. I'll be on the pipe by Tuesday at the latest.
Rob snorted at that.

Time to get back to my whiskey and coca-cola light. We may have found a wifi cafe today as well. Have to check that out tomorrow.

Wish me luck and no broken bones.

Greetings from Switzerland where the mountains are high and snowy and the keyboards reverse the z and y and all the punctuation is in strange places. Accordingly, I cannot vouch for the correctness of this post.

Suffice to say, Davos is gorgeous and snowy and full of seemingly good-natured, helpful, highly English speaking folks around whom we feel less guilty about speaking English than in Paris. I am still unsure of exactly what mix of German, French, Italian and those crossed with local, uh, Swissisms here, but I am working on it. It sounds pretty though. And I likely sound like the idiot American for not knowing more basic Swiss facts like what language they speak.

Not sure where or if we will find a wifi cafe so there probably wont be any snow photos for awhile. But after much traveling and many forms of transport over the last 3 weeks, I am happy to be in one place, in one hotel, in one room for more than one night. It is our vacation vacation.

Paris. The City of Light. And stuff.

It is gorgeous here, there's no doubt about that. Each block prettier than the next - an oddly like New Orleans Square at Disneyland (what? I've never been to New Orleans, okay, I make comparisons with what I know).

We arrived by train from England a few days ago. I had checked information on the hotel website about how far it was from the train station: 1.5 kilometers. Accordingly, when the cabbie took about 85 turns and let the meter run to over 8 euros, we knew we had experienced the first quintessentially Parisian moment: taking it up the butt from a cabbie. It's more than a hobby for them, these guys are professionals. I have a feeling it is an art form to which some exhibit in some dark corner of the Louvre has been erected.

After checking into our hotel we took an after dark stroll down to Notre Dame. It was misty and cold - though the Parisian cold was balmy compared to the warmest day in Ireland. We found a corner restaurant in what was likely a touristy area and had our first Parisian dinner. And our first introduction to Parisian service. In a way, it's probably more polite not to slap down the check the moment a patron's fork hits the plate. Yet the pendulum seems to have swung a bit too far in the other direction now.

Tuesday morning we decided to get our culture on and visit the Louvre.

Tuesday morning is also when I learned my first French sentence not related to ordering food.

Le musee du Louvre est ferme le mardi.

So we took a walk instead. A very, very cold walk.

I should not have thought so quickly that France was going to be warmer than Ireland. Tuesday was very, very cold indeed. We walked past all the good stuff though, right down to the Eiffel Tower.

I never thought I was afraid of heights but during riding on the two elevators to the top of the Tower was a bit much even for me. Once I was on the top I was okay - but the journey inspired more fear than awe. It was too misty out to see much, but the view was impressive nonetheless (this morning, of course, dawned clear and sunny, but what can you do).

During our walk, we kept careful watch for the dinner <em>bateaux</em> we had seen the night before. We'd checked some websites, but none looked as nice as what we had seen glide gracefully under the Ponte Neuf the night before. Finally, just beside the Eiffel Tower we saw the Bateaux Parisian dock and decided they must be the ones we wanted. We booked two spots for that night's cruise and braved the Metro system to get back to the hotel.

After a nap and a snack of bread, cheese, wine, and nutella (yummmmm, Nutellaaaaa), we dressed for the cruise and asked the front desk to call us a cab.

Note: In Paris, unlike any other civilized city I have ever visited or in which I have ever lived, if you call a cab, you will be charged from the moment the cab answers your call until the moment you step out at your destination. Also, the hotel, it seems, will not call your room to say "hey, your cab is here." Nor, should you happen to go down to the lobby to wait, will the person who called the cab for you, pause in her phone call to say "hey, your cab is here," until at least 10 minutes have passed. And so what should have been about a 7 Euro fare was about 20 Euros.

You know, I can totally appreciate that things in cities are expensive. I can even deal with the worthless American Dollar these days. I don't even mind horribly that as a tourist, I'm going to get worked a bit around the edges. But that cab policy is just bullshit. People in this city should revolt. I thought that's what they were good at.

The cruise itself, however, was worth the fare. Lovely, calm, good music, good food, plenty of wine, couldn't-be-beat scenery. Too expensive - but how often are you in Paris, really.

More on the cruise, the sights, and the accompanying photos soon . . . . time to go see if the hotel has fixed the hot water (that would be the absence thereof) so we can get the hell out of here).

And we're back Since there's no hot water, seemed foolish to quit in the middle. This is just an overview of course, so I'll probably blog with more detail with the pictures that I post later. The sketchy net access has me experimenting with emailing this post to the site because I can write it offline and then just shoot it over so as to conserve the precious few minutes of access I have left.

I'll talk more about the cruise when I post photos from it. Suffice to say, it has been my favorite thing about the city so far.

Yesterday it rained. Not hard, but persistently all day. It was slightly less bitterly cold, but far from warm - perfect weather for visiting a museum.

The Louvre is open on Wednesdays, thank goodness, and we and the rest of the city had flocked to I.M. Pei's glass pyramid to beat our way into the world famous - and vast - museum. I've been to the Smithsonian on particularly busy days and it's no picnic. The Louvre was no different. I'd forgotten how nice it is to have the time to visit such things on off-days. I don't think the Louvre has any off-days, though I'd have been grateful for a day on which school trips are prohibited. There are only so many vacant-eyed French high schoolers you can trip over before you get a bit fatigued.

We saw the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, the Venus, yadda yadda. No, I keed. It was a great museum. A very large great museum. Unlike most modern museums, this one had much more natural lighting - windows, not skylights, though it had those as well. It made it impossible to enjoy a wall of art from one position since almost every position was guaranteed to cast glare on some section of the artwork.

Particularly amusing to Rob were the numerous "no photography or video" signs situated next to hordes of folks holding their cell phones up to snap pictures of the Mona Lisa or other sensitive works of priceless art. Tired-looking guards would amble up and say "no photos" and then wander away. Ineffective.

Presumably, the point of the prohibition is that flashbulbs (how long since they were bulbs, really) would damage the light-sensitive paintings. Digital photography - and especially cell phones - make turning off the flash pretty damn easy (even film cameras weren't difficult). So then why the fuss? It isn't like people in America traveling to Paris will say "you know, we saw Rob's camera phone photo of the Mona Lisa, do we really need to go see it? Ha! The Louvre can do without my 8.50 Euros." Hardly. So you can't take photos in large parts of the Louvre, but really, you can, so knock yourselves out.

We put in a good three and a half hours there and barely scratched the surface. Exhausted from battling the school groups, we rushed out for some air and to check out Notre Dame in the day time and to see the inside.

It was full of people too - but no surprise. It was beautiful, of course. Except I think they were tuning the organ and so the sanctuary (insert hunchback voice here - sanctuarrrry) was filled with discordant tones and scales that had Rob looking in every shadowy corner for some goblin to pop out. If it was a form of music it wasn't one I had ever heard before.

Wandering past the many side chapels I thought about what it means to visit places of religious significance. There were signs requesting silence in the sacred space. Few people complied. Though, to be fair, in such a hall, the combined hushed whispers of hundreds of visitors make quite a noise - so perhaps people were trying to be silent. But I wondered what being there meant for non-Catholics as opposed to Catholics. I explained a few of the things I did (like lighting the candle) to Rob and wondered if the slight discomfort I felt with the flash photography of people I (probably prejudicially) presumed not to be Catholic bothered me in a similar way to the way Muslims feel about the occupation of some of their sacred places in the Middle East (there's no way to qualify and hedge that sentence in a politically correct way, so you're just going to have to go with it). It wasn't that I was terribly offended, but it seemed like it was harder for me to concentrate on appreciating the holiness of one of the world's great Cathedrals with so many around me treating it like just another stop on the Grayline tour. Or maybe they weren't treating it thusly and I should get over it. Hard to say.

And now I will pause in the story - it's time to check out - late and unshowered because civilized folk do not suffer cold showers, they wait. I hope the hotel cuts us a deal for the lack of essential services. But they'll probably charge extra.

Up next, the rest of France, including our Parisian Mexican feast.

It's freezing cold here in Paris. Last night was nearly balmy and gave us a false sense of hope about today's weather. But, alas, the cold prevails. Still lovely here, though.

Mmmmmmm . . . .

We arrived in Paris yesterday and took a stroll down to the river and over to Notre Dame. Today it's on to the Louvre.

Don't let the blue skies fool you. It was cold out there.

From the Guiness Storeroom in Dublin.

Were this Phoblographer, I might attempt to comment more intelligently on the political and policy struggles underlying the Paris riots.

Since this is Phar, however, and I'm about to go to Paris, I'll have to request respectfully that everyone work their shit out so there's less of a chance that this kind of thing will interfere with my highly idealistic, romantic, Parisian week mental picture.

I'm going to take my own advice and try to draft up some coherrent posts during tomorrow's travels. Right now I am thoroughly exhausted.

We spent the last week traveling around Ireland - a ferry from Wales to Dublin, then to Galway, Cork via a lot of kilometers of Irish countryside, then to Waterford, and back to Cork for an overnight ferry to Swansea, Wales.

Note to self: next time I spend the night on a boat, the word "Cunard" should be stamped on all towels, soap, etc.

It wasn't that the ferry was bad. I'm not even that prone to seasickness. But there was a LOT of motion in that ocean last night. It wasn't the feeling so much as the sound (20 points to the first person to tell me what song that line is from). With every pitch and roll, the walls shook and the ceiling creaked ferociously. I should've stuffed my earbuds in my ears and cranked my iPod, but I didn't. I didn't know I was asleep until I started dreaming. It was a very, very strange night. Even stranger were the infrequent crew announcements that were wholly unintelligible. Had one been "attention, we have just sunk," we'd have never known. The lack of portholes and clocks meant we awoke this morning in a strange state of fatigued panic, not knowing whether our car alone was holding up a ferry full of people in the hold below (it wasn't).

After landfall, we drove through Bath (best English city so far - loved it!), visited the Jane Austen Centre (really loved it!), hit Stonehenge (smaller than you'd think), and tried to visit Windsor Castle (closes at 4 on Sundays) before arriving at Rob's friends for the night where we found a comfy house and internet.

Pictures will be forthcoming as I sort through the massive amount I'm trying to upload to flickr right now (the one thing between me an bed, argh).

Tomorrow, we make our way to Paris for a few days and then on to Switzerland for some snowy fun.

Lots of stories to tell and hopefully having steeped myself in Austen today will motivate me to write them up and post them.

Dear Me,

In the future, despite your incredible frustration at being off-line for days at a time - yes, that was merely days, not years - you really should go ahead and compose your blog posts, figure out which pictures you want to blog, etc, so that when you do have free web access, you can simply cut and paste your way to oodles of fresh content.

Unfortunately, you won't be able to speed up flickr's uploading time, though you should by now be well prepared for the looong time that will take. Looooooong time.

Sincerely,
You.

Some sweetly stationary boats in a small village between Galway and Cork, the name of which I'll figure out later.

Separating a blogger from the internet for days at a time, no matter how worthy the reason, just isn't healthy. But separated I am, having only internet cafes and hotel lobby terminals available to me for the quick check of email, etc. The shift keys are weird and the @ is in the wrong place, but it'll do. Hopefully, I'll hit a starbucks or the like soon, so I can use my machine to take care of the stack of email, etc, awaiting my attention.

We're in Galway tonight and will be in Cork tomorrow for the big day - bring on the Guiness - and we spent last night in Dublin. My initial reaction to Dublin: lovely city, but where are the Irish.

More on that later - but for now, this post should suffice to let you know where I am and to at least tide over my parents until I find a phone card and phone access that won't cost me the balance of my trip money.

Happy St. Patrick's Day?

(Anyone know if the Pope gave us dispensation to hit the corned beef tomorrow? Hope so . . . .)

Pretty much everything on on this list.

Especially here. Because I fancy myself a Pemberley kinda gal.

Also this seems like a must-see.

But first off - tomorrow, we'll hit Stratford-upon-Avon tomorrow to get our iambic pentameter on.

And of course, it will get me in a poetic mood to work on some limmericks if we get to Limmerick this week.

There was a blogger named Pho . . .

We slept in this morning (okay, fine, most mornings) and thought we'd spend a few hours poking around online, setting up the first leg of our big adventure. That was about 7 hours ago. The damned website for a train we need to book has been making Rob want to smash his head into a wall and as it turns out, there is no international language of hotel booking - so who knows exactly what I've paid for in Ireland for the coming week.

At any rate, we're set to depart tomorrow for Wales and a ferry to Dublin. We'll spend the rest of the week touring Ireland with stays in Dublin, Galway, and Cork with visits to Kerry and Waterford among other places. Then a ferry back to England and a slightly complicated series of steps that will get us on a train to Paris. We'll spend a few days in the City of Lights and then be off to Switzerland, again via train, for some snowboarding and fondue. I'm not sure of our exact itinerary, but I assure you there will be yodeling. Well, I will be yodeling. And saying "Riiicolaaaa" at various points, whether or not anyone knows what I'm talking about.

Paris and Switzerland will also provide the first two stops on the Chocolate Challenge Tour - something I've just decided will be a competition between French, Swiss, Italian, and English chocolate for world domination. Also upcoming, the great Wine-off in which France will try to prove why their grapes are so hot to a defender of all things Californian. This, naturally, ties in with the Battle Royale with Cheese - a fight to the death between English and France against California Cheese. Wisconsin wannabes need not apply.

Busy weekend. Saturday started with snow flurries - which is always amazing to this California girl. After a lovely lunch with Rob's parents, we anxiously awaited the arrival of his sister and Mr. John (I was the anxious one, having never met them before and hoping I'd brought the right requested granola bars and pringles). Duncan arrived as well from Cambridge - always good to see him.

We left around 7pm for a friend's farmhouse from which we'd take a taxi to the Raleigh high street (high street = main street, or whatever you might generically call a town's main drag) and the Pink Toothbrush to celebrate the birthday of one of Rob's friends. It took about an hour to the farmhouse and another 30 or 40 minutes to the Brush. It was a bit like going out in L.A. except with more farms in between and available cabs.

The club was fun. Not too different from what you'd get in America, but I did like the music selection a bit better than I'd expected too after Rob's warnings about it: a good mix of Brit pop (duh) like Interpol, some classics and fun tracks (Vanilla Ice, anyone) and general club crap like Prodigy. In the UK, they let in anyone 18 and older. It was strange to see so many young faces with beer in their hands NOT acting like complete assholes. There were some hyper dancers to be sure, but club-goers at the Brush seemed a generally good-natured lot. Drinks over here are weaker than they are in the US, with all hard drinks coming from force-measured spouts on upended and mounted bottles. Upside: harder to overindulge. Down-side: buzz is expensive and hard to attain.

Backtrack: While everyone else went right into the Brush, I needed food (jet lag effects are mostly gone, except that I still get hungry at odd times of the day). We ran across the street where I had my first kebab. Lamb. Delish.

And speaking of club food - after dancing straight through from about 9:30 till 2:00 (at which point, yes, I was getting crabby and danced out), we had to kill half an hour until we met up with our cabbie. We staggered on pained feet to a rather questionable hamburger trailer in a parking lot and scarfed down some greasy sandwiches before staggering back to the inviting warmth of our waiting cab. John, Sarah, Rob and I promptly fell asleep and awoke in front of the farmhouse, into which we stumbled and fell asleep again.

The next morning, I awoke to the insistent mewing of the family cat looking for an invite onto the bed. He had a lovely bushy tail and an agreeable demeanor. Unfortunately his fur combined with the after effects of 5 or so hours in a smoky club made for a long day of general stuffiness. We hustled back to Copdock for some badly needed hot baths and tea and then headed off to the Wildman for a Sunday carvery.

The rest of Sunday was spent appropriately lounging around the living room, drinking tea, watching television, and chatting. A very good weekend indeed.

[Note: Click on the photo to visit its flickr page where the foods are identified, for those of you who might be curious.]

This is my first carvery at The Wildman - a place not far from Spadgers. It was very tasty - especially the Yorkshire pudding and the parsnips.

You know, it's pretty good stuff, really. This one is covered in custard.

I bet you're wondering why I posted a photo of a toilet. I took this photo at approximately 12:15am at a very, very crowded club with a relatively young crowd (that would be many kids under 21 and drinking heavily).

Note the general cleanliness.

I didn't check out the other bathroom at the other end of the club, but since this one was by the main entrance/exit, I would think it would be more heavily used anyway.

So, dear Americans, why can't you leave the restroom like this? You know what our club toilets look like toward closing. Not good.

I applaud you, England.

Proof that I am where I say I am. Well, sort of proof, I suppose, since those beers could have been acquired anywhere. But I am, in fact, in England - Colchester, specifically in that picture.

Colchester is the oldest recorded town England. It also has a castle. We love castles.

Drinking trivia of the day: I didn't realize it before, but it feels utterly wrong to drink without drinking to something. No clinky no drinky, dammit. Here, however, there is generally no clinking of glasses prior to the first sip. They can say "cheers" in response to nearly every question or at the conclusion of any human contact, yet they don't say cheers before drinking. It's the bar equivalent of leaving "shave and a haircut" hanging without the two bits.

Fortunately, Rob will oblige me with a quick tap of the pint so I can enjoy my beer.

Quick site note: Something in the default settings of this template prevent the archive links from working correctly. I think that, as of now, everything is on the main page still, so there's no need to worry. I've exercised my phone-a-friend option to figure out how to fix the problem. The same thing happened over on Phubar and I should've paid attention to how it was fixed.

Also - I was worried that the sidebar was getting shoved to the bottom because of the large photos I've been posting. According to at least two people, the sidebar is still on the side where it belongs, but please let me know if it doesn't show up where it should be for you. It switches back and forth on my browser - so try refreshing if it ever does disappear.

Cigarette warnings in England get right to the point.

Cigarettes will kill you.

And since that doesn't have the slightest effect on immortal young men, cigarettes will also make you impotent. Hear that? Smoke and the only butt you'll be getting is the one in your hand.

This reminds me of the little thing on the wall in my dining room back home. I don't know what the thing at home is either.

Here's a lovely old toilet from the antiques yard down the road from Rob's house. And you thought those decorated toilet seats were a bit much. This was quite pretty, though it seems odd to have it on a toilet.

It may say something about me that anyone would think to give me chips as a welcome back gift - but they are damn tasty chips. Ah, a vocab lesson: in the UK, chips are fries (steak fry kind of fries, mostly) and crisps are chips. So pictured here are Walkers Sensations chips that come in such flavors (flavours) as Minted Lamb, Oven-Roasted Chicken, and Roasted Onion and Balsamic Vinegar. They really taste like their names too. American chips taste like cool ranch, sure, but really, what the hell is cool ranch anyway. I'm not normally a chip kinda girl, but these are tasty. They're a speciality line of crisps, but even the normal Walkers come in flavors that seem more adventurous than our BBQ-or-plain options.
But look what I saw at Vons (NorCal translation: Safeway) on the way to the airport (where, by the way, in an example of chip grass-is-greenerism running both ways, I was sent to secure some Ranch Pringles for Rob's sister)! Walkers = Lays/Tostitos! The packaging translates, but the flavors don't. These American Sensations seem like any old chip, just in a white bag. Oh well, perhaps someday, they'll get more exciting. I'm not sure what the American analog for Minted Lamb would be, but I hope it is something more akin to actual food than anything with the word "ranch" in it.

My dislike of air travel is about as well known as my love of politics. Whenever possible, I drive to my destination or I simply travel places far enough away to allow me to safely medicate myself into a state of blissful unawareness without worrying about changing planes.

My magic plane pills met their match, however, when moderate chop gave way to severe turbulence and I was left awake enough to be scared and aware of the slow passage of time. I got, perhaps, four and a half hours of sleep in. Last time I got over seven. That worked better.

Everything was fine, of course, and we even made it to London 30 minutes early. Air traffic control, however, wasn't ready for us, so we spent 20 of those early minutes circling before landing and taxing forever. I thought LAX had the corner on ridiculous taxi time. At Heathrow, however, you taxi for half the length of your flight and then walk the balance of time to customs and baggage.

Passing through Immigration makes anyone feel like they've done something wrong.

Where did you come from?
United States . . . Los Angeles
How long are you here for?
About 2 months, but I'll be going to other countries before I leave.
So where else are you going then?
Um, France, Spain, Italy, wherever else I can afford.
How much money do you have?
(Define "have") Uh, about $Xk dollars.
Why are you here?
Tourist.
And what do you do at home?
Well, I just finished school.
So you're going back to a job then, have one lined up?
(beat) Yes, yes, of course. Have to go home, start work.
Alright - Stamp Stamp Stamp.

For those keeping track, both the UK and US government ask me more "what are you going to do with your life, exactly" questions than even my parents do.

Having adequately proved my sufficient contacts to the US, I collected my luggage, Rob collected me, and now we're safely settled at his parents' home, which is very lovely and cozy.

So here I am, safe and sound and glad the flight stress is lifted.

More soon.

I sent out an email to some friends and family letting them know about this site and my upcoming trip. In it, I mentioned that I'd love any restaurant advice or don't-miss destination advice. So this is the suggestion box post. I'll leave it specially linked in the sidebar so that if anyone thinks of anything later, this post will be easy to find and use for offering travel tips. You can leave a comment by clicking the number next to the post title. If the comments moderation function feels like working, your comment may not appear right away, but be [99%] assured that your comment is waiting in my inbox for approval and will appear on the site after a click or two on my part. I hate having to use the moderation feature, but spammers got ahold of a Phubar post and it was not pretty - this special non-Blogger template is a tad less secure than regular Blogger template pages because the word verification feature won't work with it (though if anyone has a hack for getting it to work, please let me know).

Thanks in advance for your suggestions! I can't wait to visit your favorite haunts and sample your favorite food!

Cosmic Radiation, however, is not one of them.

My friends Josh and Marisa use TravelBlog.org for their road trip website. I really enjoy not just their content, but the website's layout. For each of their travel journal entries, they can add flags and maps, and the service includes a comments freature and a subscription link so you can be notified of new entries. It's pretty well organized as well - and easy to flip through past entries. Seems like a fun, targeted type of free blog service that makes more sense than Blogger or the other general providers if you want to use a site just to get the word out on your travels.

I should note, however, that you can also subscribe to this site to receive notices of new posts. But unlike TravelBlog.org, you don't subscribe yourself, I do. If you'd like to save the time of checking the site, just shoot me an email (christiana at phoblographer dot com) and I'll sign you up. Otherwise, use the Atom feed or go the old-fashioned route of just checking the site once in awhile to get the same effect.

Meaning, I return in 5 days. Return to England, that is.

It's hard not to shop for vacations. The right traveling shoes, the right traveling dress, the right whatever that is in your head as the ideal outfit you wear in your travel daydreams. What kind of jacket do you need to toss coins in a fountain? Which skirt looks best when you're strolling Paris to the strains of La Vie en Rose?

Today, I did some practical pre-trip shopping. Some toiletries. Some little bottles into which I can transfer shampoo for my trips during my trip. A special bag for the rad present my parents got me which will be formally introduced once I figure out how to incorporate that technology into the site. An inflatable neck pillow because, no matter how dorky it is, dammit, your head just will not stay upright on its own, okay.

Additionally, reading about other people's vacations definitely gets me in the mood to get going with my own. For quite awhile now - dare I say years, already? - my friend Sonya whom I met through Emerge has been working in Hong Kong and making excellent use of her weekends and vacation time. She's regaled us with quarterly reports about her Asian travels - each of which sounds more amazing than the last. The girl knows how to live and I love that she shares that with us.

Then there's the amazing Stag/Athena duo of Josh and Marisa who have been sharing tales of their 4 month road trip through the US and Mexico via their online travel journal. If you know Josh and Marisa, I don't have explain their individual and team awesomeness to you. But if you don't know them, I've jacked this photo from their website of the beach in Cabo which is captioned "A Great Picture of Us: Marisa is the good looking one." It's quintessential them, trust me. Reading about fun people doing fun things makes me want to be a fun person and get going with the fun things.

But between me and fun is a mountain of sorting and packing. Despite leaving 3 solidly stocked closets (closet units, to imply my house has actual closets would be a lie), I have at least two full wardrobes here in LA with me. Sadly, not all the clothes can go - but I just couldn't make the final cut in SF. Better to do it here so I can fight with my mom instead of just myself about why I really NEED all these shoes to fit in the suitcase. Tomorrow, then, will be spent sorting and packing in the morning, errand-running in the afternoon, and checklist-accomplishing (reach for that parallel sentence structure, reach!) in the evening to finish mailing bills, settling finances, and setting up automatic bill-paying, etc. Sounds exciting, right?

Rob says that you can't truly be packed until your toothbrush is packed - which can't happen until the day you leave. I think that's correct. But I can be mostly packed, which is where I need to be to have any peace of mind to enjoy the time at home. If you could only see the disorganized pile of clothing and luggage in my room, you'd understand . . . .