Juggle the World

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I woke up in the morning and rolled out of bed with a mere half hour to enjoy the free breakfast where I was staying. This is a theme I followed for the rest of my trip. My wake-up time was generally dictated by the end of the period of time where the hostel (or hotel in this case) was serving food.  If you haven't traveled much, or have only enjoyed American hotel style "continental breakfast," let me walk you through the basic varieties of breakfast you are going to get.  Standard: Most places offer at least these items as standard at their breakfast. Bread, Jam, Butter, and maybe Nutella, Juice, Cereal, Milk.  From there we go to what I call Standard Plus: All of the above plus some sort of coffee, perhaps 2 kinds of Juice, Cheese.  Standard Deluxe offers all of the above and adds some kind of meat or perhaps hard-boiled eggs.  In this case I was enjoying a Standard Plus type breakfast. I was still slightly tired from the flight/time change but I was excited to st

…And Far Away. I boarded the plane to Paris with both earbuds placed firmly in my ear, loud music pumping from my iPod drowning out the sea of French conversation around me. As I searched for a suitable track to listen to, the line in front of me was shortening and I was arriving closer to my assigned place in the plane. I stopped searching when I came to a Led Zeppelin song that became one of the anthem’s for my trip. (The other one being Windowsill by Arcade Fire ). If you havn’t figured out the name of the Led Zeppelin song look at the title of this blog post after looking at the title of the last one. You can imagine me listening to it while I stared out the window at this view. Brussels to Paris by plane is a short flight so I was landing at my final destination before I knew it. I had been warned before I got to Charles De Gaulle international that the airport was something like an artists imagination of a moon base space station from the Seventies. I’d have to agree wi

October 27, 2009 Tears welled up in my eyes, as I spoke a single drop of moisture made its way down my face ‘Tricia I don’t know why this is happening.’ My big sister was positive and resolute and she had surely been through similar emotions catching her first flight out of the country. Out of the people I had called while attempting to talk over my shaky feelings about my flight across the Atlantic, I think she was the best equipped person to make me feel better. I had wondered around Grand Central Station trying to find food after my friends left and I felt positive and upbeat that I was on my own and ready to face a new adventure. I made my way to JFK airport to catch my flight. I had already made myself at home in the terminal, sitting next to a power supply so I could type a future blog entry on my laptop. I managed to detail the previous nights drinking before I started to think about my friends and my family that I was leaving behind in the country I had known for my twenty-

October 25th, 2009 (My apologies for such a long interlude between my last post and this, I was unsure how to write about this day’s events as I wanted to be thoroughly honest and detailed in my blog. I have decided that the more important aspect is to actually write and detail my journey as best I can remember while I can remember it, even if I leave out a few less than savory details that I do remember) We woke early the next morning, bellies still remembering the feast from the night before. Our merriment was less than appreciated by those in the household who had to attend work in the wee hours of the morning, but we did not let anything stand in our way of enjoying our last day on Mount Desert Island. We ate a hearty breakfast and were out the door and on our way to our days first destination, Champlain Mountain, for the Precipice trail climb. I Pulled over to snap a few pictures before we arrived at our destination, the foot of the steeply sloping trail to the top of the mou

After taking tons of shitty pictures of waves hitting the rocks in acadia and a few decent ones, I was tired and hungry and ready to drive on to pick up supplies for cooking the ultimate seafood feast. Maine  as you may know is a major fishing ground, if you blow up the picture above of the simple lobster  and seafood market, you'll see that the cost per lb for a whole lobster was $4.49. I love  lobster  , but Maine lobster sounded even better, so I got two, Brad got two, our roadtrip companion got one citing concern for his moderate waistline, and our buddy got two, one for himself, and one for his girlfriend, who ended up not wanting it, bringing our total lobsters to SEVEN! In the pic you can also see some of the clams we got, I also bought scallops specifically so I could wrap this lovely seafood treat in bacon, as you can see plated here on a lovely Indiana University plate. We also had a shrimp pasta dish, some special rice my buddy made to accompany the  lobster  (and ev