It's been awhile since I updated...

Most of the early parts of our trip included long journeys on trains to our next destination, which made it easy to write a recap of everywhere we'd previously been. Since I haven't traveled much by train since, well, long enough to start writing for an hour or two, I haven't had time to do much on the internet... other than put up a new FB status every once in a while.

With that said, since the last time I updated I've been to Northern England to visit a friend from high school. Visited Edinburgh, Scotland. Took a train and ferry from Scotland to Northern Ireland, and then down to Dublin, we stayed in Galway last night and tonight we're in a tiny town on the coast called Doolin. It's a tourist place because it's very close to the Cliffs of Moher, but it was rather foggy today so there was no way to see anything, and it didn't make sense to pay money to park and not see anything. So, we're going to hang out in Doolin tonight and see if we can see the cliffs before heading back to Dublin.

Ok, so I have some time because everyone's tired and felt like napping or whatever, I figure this is a good time to start typing for an hour or two.

Dewsbury, England (previously written on the train to Scotland and copied from wordpad)

A small stop in the middle of Northern England where an old friend from high school lives, Joseph Wood. I graduated with his brother, Sam, but I got to know Joseph pretty well due to playing soccer with him his freshman year. Myself and Sam played offense and my brother Richard played defense with Joseph... so as one can imagine we all knew each other quite well in those days. It was cool to be traveling overseas and meet up with another person I know, especially when it's someone I know from Jamestown, TN where I pretty much grew up.


Joseph married an English woman named Kat (Sp?) who he met in school while he was at university in Manchester, I think. She's now a pastor at a church in Dewsbury along with Joseph being a deacon there. ( I think I got that right, if not, hopefully he can let me know and I'll fix any errors...lol) So he now lives in Northern England and I decided to take a day of my trip to swing by to visit him and his wife. I was greeted by a stop at the grocery store and a nice hot meal when I got to their place. This always gets an A+ from me, so yeah, they treated me exceptionally well and I'd like to say thanks to the both of them for being so awesome to me for the day I came through. I also saw a few British comedies that I'll have to find online at some point. We sat around and had some good new beers I'd never tried before, including a different Guiness that I liked... So yeah, thanks again for letting me hang out and do laundry while getting a great night of sleep. :-)

I got my ticket to Edinburgh, Scotland and I'm now on the train there. My bank waited until 4 weeks into my trip to decide to put a hold on my debit card, luckily Joseph gets Vonage service and gets free calls to the states so it didn't take me too long to get my finances back in order. The day started out looking perfect with sun and beautiful clouds all the way through England, but as I just got into Scotland a few minutes ago, I see fog and I expect rain. Which I'm actually fine with since I'd like a tad bit of rain sprinkled into my trip just to keep away those blazing hot days we've went most of our trip with.

Anthony and Bobbi are already in Edinburgh so I plan on meeting them there at some point in the day when I get there. Perhaps they'll be able to just tell me what the coolest part of the place is and I'll check it out, since I won't have too much sightseeing time here unless they decided to stay another day. Luckily, like Oregon, the sun will set really late here considering how far North we are situated. It's a pretty stunning view to be in a train along the edge of the North Sea in Scotland and England. The whole countryside on this leg of my journey has been fairly amazing the whole time I've been on this train, so that's really cool.