Lots to see, Blue Mosque, fresh orange juice, Istanbul University, Grand Bazaar closed, the aqueduct, shoot some bottles with a bb gun, golden horn, that damn shoeshiner, night. Cistern, Topkapi palace, Grand Bazaar, ferry trip up the Bosporus, night. Haghia Sofia, museum of Turkish and Islamic art (lots of carpets), bus to Goreme.

Photos: part 1 & part 2

Inside the Blue Mosque:

The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art. It’s full of carpets. Seriously. Room after room, floor after floor:

Notice how dotted with ships the horizon is:

Skopje

Morning bus to Podgorica, which is dull, so spend much of the day reading. Night bus to Skopje. Mother Teresa statues, nice Turkish bazaar, buy a hat, fortress, Dutch people, talk about Amsterdam, Greek girls beat me and a French teacher in Bratislava at pool, take a morning train with an unsurprising two-and-a-half hour delay down to Thessaloniki.

Greece

Thessaloniki bores, Kavala is nice, but after the boring experience of Thessaloniki I left my camera in our hotel, damn. There are no connections to Istanbul from Kavala, so in the morning (my friend’s “Fancy another hour in bed?” response to the alarm clock is met with an unconvinced but determined “No” on my part) to grab as early a bus to Xanthi as possible. Xanthi has connections to Istanbul, we’re told. We get to Xanthi around noon…and it ain’t much. The place is absolutely dead, hot, and dull. When we realize that the single shabby building by the railroad tracks is the main train station, we’re not hopeful. Fortunately, there’s a train to Istanbul going at midnight, so we don’t have to stay the night. We spend the day mostly reading in a park, having decided against investing four Euro into a size 3 football (a decision we would regret many times during the rest of the journey). At midnight we hop on the train, into a rather slick compartment with two beds, and after staring out the window for half an hour, we go to sleep.

Photos

Bus to Dubrovnik, want a ferry to Greece, no ferries to Greece, some old lady offers us a place, we accept, Dubrovnik’s nice, talk with some American PhD Philosophy students, they take the piss out of their course in a healthy way, discuss fictionalism, grab a bus back to Montenegro in the morning.

Photos

EXIT – Moby, The Prodigy, Grandmaster Flash, etc., Herzeg Novi. Bike trip with four of us, one bike breaks gearbox, two back tires pop, go down the hill on flat tires, pub in the middle of nowhere, German comes in handy, boat trip, small classical music concerts.

Photos

Around the 8th July, 2009.

Amazing goulash, the castle, baths, Citadel, statue of Liberty, another castle, oldest subway in central Europe, meet lots of musical people.

Photos

Umm…lot’s of sheep?

Here’s a handful of photos, with suspiciously few sheep..

Catch a morning bus up to Belfast, crazy bus driver with neighbour feuds and camper plans, bump into a tour guide, take tour to Giant’s Causeway with a driver who has lots of bad jokes and asks every single person “Where you from yourselves?”, walk through Belfast for an hour, meet a Czech girl on the bus back.

Photos

Well hey, guess who’s back. I have about one and a half thousand photos to look through and pick out some good ones, so this is going to take a while. The writing would, too, so please accept my condensed versions.

DUBLIN (late June 2009)

Walk to the lighthouse, stumble into a water cleaning station, pub crawl, Michael Jackson dies (who doesn’t remember where they were?), too many Americans, too many Canadians, too many Australians, take a tour, Guinness Storehouse, Riverdance, Phoenix Park, the massive obelisk, deer, head out of the city, hang out with some Swedes, impress an Irish drunk with my moonwalk, sing Abba in the street, museum, great Jack B. Yeats exhibition.

Photos

Enjoying a Guinness in the Storehouse.

Tonight’s Healines:

Krystof is done with schoolwork for the year.

That means the holidays have begun.

I will see many places during them.

Hopefully I will have many pictures from them.

And hopefully you will come back here at the end of the Holidays to check those pictures out.

And even more hopefully, you will have a pleasant summer as well.

Today I had an excursion down to Brick Lane, and then to the Tower of London. At Brick Lane, I wandered into two art exhibitions; it was pretty damn cool. I have already put up photos from Brick Lane (and the route from there to the Tower); the rest I will put up later. It is now time to go watch the Lakers win a Championship. Woop woop.

Ni!!

(Photos)

Not entirely happy with the way they came out, but I suppose it’s not terrible, and I’ve learned a few things, so hey.

Yeah.