The Ramblin' Man's Commentary.

  When I was single and still living in Florida, I had always wanted and dreamed of travelling as much of the world as I could but back in those days it was kind of difficult, especially not really ever having the money to do the journeys. All that changed in the Summer of 2010 when I met my wife Elin and moved to Son, Norway. Since then, within the past ten years, those dreams became reality. So far to date my wife and I have been to [31] countries, and [63] cities. Photos always get taken on these journeys, yet I may not always write the stories and travel logs. The [10] journal writings published here are the only ones...for now.

The Travels List:
Mexico: Tijuana.
Belgium: Ghent, Brussels, Brugges.
Denmark: Copenhagen, Hornbæk, Helsingør.
Asia: Thailand: Bangkok, Koh Samet Island.
         Cambodia: Siem Reap.
         Vietnam: Saigon, Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Vung Tau.
                         Phu Quoc Island: Duong Dong town, 
                         Rach Vem (Rach Vem beach), 
                         Hon Thom (island).
Germany: Berlin, Hannover.
Hungary: Budapest.
Spain: Barcelona.
England: London.
Estonia: Tallinn.
Croatia: Lovran.
Poland: Warsaw. Gdansk. Sopot.
Turkey: Istanbul.
Afrika: Tanzania: Dar Es Salaam, Morogoro.
             Zanzibar Island: Stone Town, Jambiani.
             Tunisia: Hammamet, Tunis, Nabeul.
             Morocco: Marrakech, Essaouira.
Greece: Korfu Island.
Albania: Sarande, Borsh, Dhermi.
Switzerland: Zurich.
Israel: Eilat, Jerusalem, Bethlehem.
Lithuania: Vilnius.
Latvia: Riga, Jurmala-Majori.
Japan: Tokyo, Kyoto.
UAE (United Arab Emirates): Dubai, Abu Dhabi.
Portugal: Madeira Island: Funchal, Monte, Camara de Lobos.
Ukraine: Kiev.
Italy: Rome & The Vatican City.
Bulgaria: Sozopol.

(I do not have Sweden included in this list. I'm actually a bit unsure on how to classify Sweden in all of this. My wife is Swedish and we go to Sweden quite often to visit family and friends - mostly to Mariestad, Toreboda, Tibro, or Goteborg. There are also a few other cities and towns we have been to in Sweden such as Tidan, Skovde, and Angleholm; and I also do not account for these places in my listings. I do however, count the following Swedish cities - Stockholm, Malmo, Arvika, Stromstad: Koster Island (North and South Island), Smaland: Aby. Also included in my account for cities is Opdahl, Norway.)

And the ramblin' will always continue on.... 

Italy: Rome & The Vatican City.

[Preface: The following journal writing of a Tuesday to Friday in mid-May 2019, in Rome Italy is presented here written from my Eighth journal book. It is [16 and a half] hand written pages.

Disclaimer: This is the very first travel journal written piece that I have ever edited down. Normally I do not edit any of the written pieces for The Wanderlust Writings. They are typically typed up and posted completely, and taken directly as hand written from my journal books. For some certain personal reasons that I do not wish to go into detail about, the Part One: An Intro/Set-up has been edited down in this publishing, leaving out one page worth of text. The original full text in my Eighth journal book is 16 and a half pages, so what is published here is 15 and a half pages.]

Part One: An Intro/Set-up

  Right now it is mid-May 2019, about seven months ago - back sometime in October 2018 an old friend of mine Shane, in the states, sent me an e-mail letting me know that he and his girlfriend were planning a one week trip to Italy in May. He wanted me and my wife to try to make it down to Italy so we could all meet up. We set the plan in motion to meet in Rome. So, yea the original plan was for my wife to come with me. I had even booked both of our plane tickets. Unfortunately, as some months passed and the new year of 2019 began, life took a pretty drastic downturn for some bad times.

[one page text missing]

So, with all of this bit of chaos going on in life, my wife unfortunately could not make the trip. I went alone.

Part Two:

  Tuesday the 14th of May I took the 7:15 P.M. train from Skövde to Stockholm. It was a three and a half hour train ride. I tried to sleep a bit on the train but didn't really. On the train - I started to write this story, listened to The Nine Club podcast, and stared out the window. When I got to Stockholm central station it was 10:45 P.M. I bought a bus transfer ticket to go from the central station out to Arlanda airport not realizing that after 10 P.M. there were no buses or trains running out to the airport. The next - first bus to the airport was at 3:30 A.M. I was stuck - stranded at Stockholm central station for about four and a half hours. I sat on a bench on the bus terminal side of the station writing - working on this story. Around 12:15 A.M. a security guard came through the station kicking people out, saying the station was closed. I went across the street to another part of the central station and lurked out, sitting on the floor with other tired, weary travelers like myself, and homeless folks. About two hours later - around 2:20 A.M. two other security guards came through the station kicking everyone out. Now I had about an hour to lurk outside the station in the chilly Spring night air. It felt like hours until 3:15 A.M. when the station opened again. It was a forty minute bus ride out to the airport. Again, I tried to sleep a bit on the bus. I got to Arlanda airport at 4:10 A.M. My flight to Rome was at 7:25 A.M. that Wednesday morning - the 15th of May. A three hour flight. Once again I tried to sleep on the plane with not so much success due to some screaming and crying kids and babies on the flight.

  I landed in Italy at 10:35 A.M. and from the airport I took the 11:25 A.M. train into Rome central station - Roma Termini - a thirty minute train ride. So, it was basically 12 P.M. noon when I got into Rome. The hostel I had booked a room at was just a few blocks away from the central station. By this point, I had pretty much been awake for thirty hours. Sometime around 1 P.M. I finally fell asleep and was able to get about four or five hours sleep. Sometime between 5 P.M. and 6 P.M. I woke back up. I don't remember exactly - it's hazey, I was still exhausted, my head was pounding with a bad headache, and I was hungry. The plan was to possibly meet up with Shane and his girlfriend for dinner that Wednesday night. I knew they had about a four hour train ride from Florence to Rome, and that they were suppose to be in Rome around 7 P.M. I went downstairs to the hostel bar and got a beer, a small bag of potato chips, and sent a text message to Shane. Around 7 P.M. Shane sent a text message back saying that he and Angela were exhausted and they just wanted to get to their hotel which was another hour bus ride from Roma Termini - the central station. I understood this - and kind of figured meeting for dinner that night may not happen. It was still pouring rain outside, I walked a couple blocks to a restaurant and got a pizza and red wine for dinner. Back at the hostel, I sat in the bar drinking red wine, then beer, and ate french fries while writing - working on this story. It was sometime between 11 P.M. and 11:30 P.M. when I went up to my dorm room and passed out - falling asleep.

  Thursday the 16th of May - I woke up around 8 A.M. from a phone call from my wife. About a half hour later I headed out to go to the Colosseum. I walked around the Colosseum shooting photos, but I didn't stick around there as long as I wanted to because I started to get hassled by too many "street hustlers" which made me feel sketched and bugged out. I walked around some city blocks, roaming Rome, shooting photos. I found myself back at my hostel around 10:45 A.M., got a cup of espresso and text messages from Shane. The plan was for us to meet up at Roma Termini at 11:15 A.M. This did not happen. I was at the station waiting for them, and then at 11:30 A.M. I got more text messages from him saying it probably would be better for me to take the metro - subway to the Ottaviano station and meet them there. (The Ottaviano station is the stop for the Vatican City. We had pre-paid - pre-booked tickets for 1 P.M. for the Vatican museums, galleries, and the Sistine Chapel.) The clock was ticking. It was getting close to 12 P.M. noon, I had to buy the metro ticket and I asked how long the subway took from Rome Termini to Ottaviano - about twenty minutes. I got down to the platform and there was a train there, but it was over packed with people, there was no way I could get on that train. And even the platform was crowded with people - so crowded that I thought I wouldn't even be able to take the next incoming train. Then the police showed up and cleared the train - made everyone get off. I have no clue at all as to why the police were there and cleared out the train. So now the platform was even more over packed with people. The empty train still sat at the station for some minutes before pulling out. I was losing time. I needed to be on the next train. Somehow I pulled it off, I got myself packed in on that next train when it came. But then that train just sat there, at the station, with the doors open, for about ten minutes. It finally pulled out of the station but when we got to the next station, we got stuck again for about five minutes or so with the doors opening and closing over and over again. When I finally made it to the Ottaviano station and met up with Shane and Angela it was 12:40 P.M. Luckily the Vatican was only a couple of blocks away. We were at the Vatican for five hours. From 1 P.M. until 6 P.M. when it closed. We knew we probably wouldn't be able to see everything but we wanted to see as much as we could. We walked around the museums and galleries of artifacts, statues, sculptures, and paintings. Two of the main things we wanted to see - and we did - were the Raphael exhibit and the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was incredible, just so amazingly beautiful. I do not believe I have the right words to write, to describe how amazing the Sistine Chapel is. Photography and video filming is not allowed - prohibited inside the chapel, so unfortunately I have no photos to show how beautiful it is. The way Michaelangelo painted it - his technique - his use of lighting, shadows and shading, and detail, the murals look 3D - for real - like it's painted onto carved and sculpted architecture of the chapel ceiling. The colours are so bright and vibrant as well. I was amazed by this - how after centuries, the colours withstood time and held so vibrant. It was quite an experience being inside the Sistine Chapel. While there, a priest also came into the chapel and welcomed all the visitors and said a prayer - in Italian of course. Late in the afternoon we ate lunch and drank beer and red wine at an outdoor patio cafe in the garden courtyard of the Vatican. At 6 P.M. when the Vatican was closing and we had to leave, we ended up just hanging out - sitting on the stairs outside the walls of Vatican City for about an hour or so. We bought beer and wine from a street vendor, and talked about life. We walked a few blocks and found a restaurant for dinner - sitting outside - sidewalk patio - in the Italian Spring night. Two bottles of red wine were drank with dinner, with more great conversations about life. It was good times...we lost track of time. It was around 10 P.M., Shane and Angela had to take the metro back to Battistini and then from the Battistini station it was a bus out to their hotel. Shane said the last bus of the night was at 10:30 P.M. So we left the restaurant and made our way back to the Ottaviano station. There we said our goodbyes and gave hugs. They were off to Battistini and I was headed in the direction of Anagnina to Roma Termini. It was sometime between 11 P.M. and 11:30 P.M. when I got back to my hostel. I had the thought of spending my last night in Italy sitting in the hostel bar drinking red wine and writing - working more on this story. I really wanted to. But I realized I was already quite lit, and I did need to be up by 7:30 A.M. at the latest that Friday morning, so I just went up to my dorm room and went to sleep. My flight back to Stockholm was scheduled for 11:30 A.M. 

  Friday the 17th of May - I woke up at 7 A.M. - thirty minutes early before my alarm went off. I had a missed text message from Shane from just a few minutes before midnight - he and Angela ended up missing that last 10:30 P.M. bus from Battistini station out to their hotel, and had to take a taxi. I checked out of the hostel and walked the few blocks to Roma Termini. I took the 8:05 A.M. Leonardo Express train for the thirty minute ride back to the airport. My breakfast at the airport was a slice of pizza, a small bag of potato chips, and a small bottle of lemon Grappa - I got lit off that Grappa. (Shane had told me about the Grappa - he said it was kind of gnarly and he was right. It's pretty strong.) O.K., so my flight was scheduled for 11:30 A.M., and my ticket showed the boarding time was suppose to be at 10:45 A.M., well at 10:50 A.M. an announcement came over the P.A./intercom system that there was a gate change for my flight. Luckily it wasn't far - just a few other gates away. I ran to the gate thinking my flight has started boarding only to find out that the boarding time had also changed to 10:55 A.M. - which it was [10:55 A.M.] when I got to the [new] gate. But the flight was still not boarding. My flight got delayed thirty minutes. I tried to sleep on the three hour flight back to Sweden. I was scheduled to land in Stockholm at 2:40 P.M. - it was 3:10 P.M. when we landed. I had to buy my bus ticket from Arlanda airport back into the city to Stockholm central station. I found out the next bus was going in a few minutes - under five minutes. I got my ticket and ran, just making the bus in time. I also had a couple of missed calls and text messages from my wife - at home she had already been online checking the train tickets - times and prices for Stockholm back to Skövde. Pretty much all the trains were sold out - no available tickets. It was looking like I may get stuck overnight in Stockholm yet again. The bus ride from Arlanda into the city took an hour so I had a good bit of time to go online on my phone to try to find a train ticket. I got lucky but it cost me. I booked a ticket for the [two hour] fast train, it was a first class seat, and it cost me 1,185 Kroners - (compared to the 255 Kroners I paid for my train ticket from Skövde to Stockholm that previous Tuesday.) And the other downside - the train was at 7:30 P.M. It was 4:30 P.M. when I got to Stockholm central station, so I had three hours to lurk there. The train was ten minutes late. O.K., so this is a bit strange to me - it was the fast train - two hours - so, from Stockholm at 7:30 P.M. and into Skövde at 9:30 P.M. Now the train was ten minutes late, so that should be 9:40 P.M. in at Skövde, but it was 9:50 P.M. when I got to Skövde station. Somehow I ended up getting in twenty minutes late. At Skövde centrum station I had about ten minutes to wait for the number six bus to Södra-Ryd to the Myggdansen stop. Another thirty minute bus ride, then from the Myggdansen bus stop it was a five minute walk through the neighborhood, in the pouring rain. When I got home it was 10:40 P.M.

Berlin for the Fourth Time.

[Preface: The following journal writing of two days and two nights in Berlin Germany in January 2017, is presented here completely unedited, as it is written directly from my Eighth journal book. It is [13] hand written pages.]

Wednesday January 18th to Friday the 20th, 2017 - three days. 

  I want to start this story from the night before - Tuesday the 17th, I worked until 8P.M. and we had a staff meeting at work that went on until some time after 11P.M. My co-worker Marianne drove me home. We hadn't had any snowfall but there were severe ice warnings for the roads and the E6 highway. On the drive home, on the E6 - in the Northbound lane we saw that a semi truck had slid off the highway and overturned onto it's side. I didn't get home until 11:40P.M. I still had to pack for the trip, and I called to order a taxi to take me to the Sonsveien station - I had my alarm set for 4A.M., my flight was Wednesday morning at 7:45A.M., the flight bus from Sonsveien out to the airport was at 5:17A.M. I ordered for the taxi to pick me up at 4:45A.M. by the Apoteket in the center. It was around 12:30A.M. by the time I went to bed, with my alarm set for 4A.M. that would give me three and a half hours sleep, yet I couldn't sleep. I probably got only two to two and a half hours sleep. I got down to the Apoteket right on time at 4:45A.M. to catch my taxi but it wasn't there. I called the Follo taxi company right away to make sure it was on the way. The lady I talked to told me that even though I had ordered a taxi and was told it would come - it wasn't coming - because of the severe ice warnings for the roads and highway, and taxi orders were suppose to be cancelled. I got pissed. I couldn't miss that flight bus or my flight. My trip to Berlin was extremely important. It was personal family business. I had an interview at the Swedish embassy - my wife and I are planning to move back to Sweden from Norway. On the phone with the lady from the taxi company, I got so pissed off I switched from speaking Norwegian back to English, going off on her, yelling that it was the worst customer service, that if the ice warnings were so severe and taxi orders weren't suppose to be taken then I should have been told so. I ended up hanging up on her. I started to really freak out - nervous breakdown - bordering on a panic/anxiety attack and almost wanting to cry. It takes thirty minutes - a half an hour to walk to Sonsveien station. I had exactly thirty minutes. The ice really was severely bad on the streets and sidewalks, I wouldn't make it, but I had no choice. It wasn't an option to have Elin drive me. I didn't want her to risk an accident or anything else bad on the icey roads. I tried to run but I was slipping all over and fell once, yet I kept on. The crisp cold air burned in my lungs and made my chest hurt as I took in deep breaths when I tried to run. I began coughing harshly. I hoped that a car, any car, would just happen to drive by so I could try to wave - flag them down, get them to stop so I could beg the person to drive me to the station. Somehow, like some kind of miracle, it did happen. Coming from behind me, I turned to see headlights. I flagged the car down and it turned out to be a Follo taxi, yet it actually was not the taxi I had ordered. I got lucky. I begged the guy to take me to the station, he reluctantly agreed but didn't seem too happy about it - almost pissed in fact. The taxi fare was 150 Kroners. It was just after 5A.M., I was at Sonsveien station, I had made it. About five minutes later another Follo taxi drove up, the passenger got out and so did the driver, the driver walked over to me and asked if I was Kyle Stone, I said yes and tried to apologize and explain what happened, but he just turned around, mumbled some words, threw a hand up and waved me off. I think he got a bit pissed off as well. The flight bus was right on time - 5:17A.M. I was at Gardermoen airport around 6:30A.M. My breakfast at the airport was a slice of cheese pizza, potato chips, and a Coke.

  It was a fast one and a half hour flight from Oslo to Berlin. I had my iPod and headphones, cued up some Hip-Hop - Boot Camp Clik's General Steele, and tried to get some sleep on the plane. From Schoenefeld airport I caught the 9:44A.M. train into Berlin city to the Zoologischer Garten stop, and from there it was one subway stop to Wittenbergplatz. When I got up the stairs into the main entrance hall of the Wittenbergplatz subway station I recognized the murals painted on the walls. And when I walked outside the station and looked around, I realized I knew exactly where I was. This was my fourth time to Berlin after all. The Wittenbergplatz area was where I stayed, with Elin's brothers, on my first trip to Berlin in the Fall of 2012. In fact, on this trip, the hotel - The Air in Berlin - where I was staying was only one block over from the Ambassador Hotel where we stayed in 2012. It was sometime around 11A.M. when I checked in to the hotel. I got myself settled in my room, I was exhausted, I turned on the T.V. - the only two channels in English were BBC and CNN - so the news it was. I got myself caught up - current - on the politics - Donald Trump's presidential inauguration. I figured what the hell, so I took a beer from the mini-bar. I laid in bed, drinking my beer, watching the news, and passed out - falling asleep for a few hours. I awoke in the late afternoon and figured I should get out of my hotel room and go do something. I just wandered around aimlessly, snapping a few photos with my iPhone of random street art, and the old Kaiser Wilhelm church which was bombed out in World War II and is now a memorial. I had visited the Kaiser Wilhelm before on that first Berlin trip in 2012. I walked around for a few hours. I needed to eat. I found a burrito joint called Dolores, the place was straight up a "Hipster" spot but it was real good. They had a killer vegan burrito, they only had two kinds of beer - a Dolores home brew and Augustinerbrau Munchen - both brews were damn good. I ate dinner at Dolores on Thursday as well. On my walk back to the hotel I hit up a grocery store to buy some snacks and more beer. Both Wednesday and Thursday - the evenings and on into the nights, I just stayed in my hotel room, laying in bed, drinking - a bit drunk yet not wasted out, watching the news - BBC and CNN - president Obama's final press conference and Trump's inauguration. I had thoughts of Hunter S. Thompson.

Thursday January 19th

  I had my alarm set for 9A.M. My interview at the Swedish embassy was scheduled for 1:30P.M. The girl who worked the reception desk at the hotel had printed out a map of directions for me from Google Maps. From the hotel it was a ten minute walk to the embassy. I found a Dunkin' Donuts and had my breakfast of two donuts and a coffee there. With a few hours until my interview, my plan was to hang out in the city, walk around, find something to do other than just sit in my hotel room. I did wander around for a little while, but the weather wasn't so good. It was cold, overcast gray, a bit foggy, the streets and sidewalks were icey - it was just the same like it was back home in Norway. So, I did end up back in my hotel room, watching the news. I got restless. I became anxious, maybe even a bit nervous about the interview. I hated just sitting there waiting. Knowing it was only a ten minute walk to the embassy, but being a little unsure of exactly where the embassy was and not wanting to end up getting lost, I decided to just go - this was at 12:20P.M. I sat and waited for an hour in the main lobby at the embassy. I had been informed via e-mail that the interview could last anytime from an hour and a half up to three and a half hours long. For some reason I kind of expected it to last that long - around the three hour mark. Going through the interview sure felt like three hours, but when I was done, and left, I checked the time - it was 3P.M. - my interview had only been an hour and a half.  And it had gone well. I walked from the embassy straight to the Zoologischer Garten station and took the train to Alexanderplatz. I wandered around that area for a short while, by the T.V. Tower, hit up Titus skateshop. At Titus I found the February 2017 issue of Thrasher skate magazine with my old friend, Yonnie Cruz from Tampa, on the front cover. By now I was getting hungry and wanted to eat but I wasn't finding anyplace in the Alexanderplatz area I wanted. I took the train back to the Zoologischer Garten/Wittenbergplatz area and went to Dolores again. 

  I was up at 6A.M. Friday morning. My flight home was at 9:50A.M. My two days and two nights in Berlin were over with, time to head home. I settled up my mini-bar tab, checked out of the hotel, and walked to the Zoologischer Garten train station to take the train back to the airport. I landed back in Oslo around 11:30A.M., and had forty minutes to wait for the 12:10P.M. flight bus back to Son. A little over an hour later at 1:15P.M. I was at Sonsveien station. Elin was working and I didn't have anyone to pick me up. The next local bus into Son center was at 2:05P.M. I had no cash on me and I knew I couldn't pay with a credit card on the bus, and I didn't know if my flight bus ticket was transferable to be used like the train tickets are. I waited for around ten minutes then just figured I'd take the thirty minute walk home along the icey sidewalks.

Japan: Tokyo and Kyoto

[Preface 1: The following journal writing of a two week journey in Japan in September of 2016, is presented here completely unedited, as it is written directly from my Eighth journal book. It is [11] hand written pages.]

[Preface 2 & Commentary Notes: This [11] page journal write up on Japan is quite personal for me, and one of my favourites. Although it may not necessarily be one of my best writings, or so exciting/adventurous, it means a lot to me since Japan was suppose to be my very first international travel nine years ago in the Summer of 2007, and on this journey my wife Elin and I had our 10 month old son Anakin with us.]

Part One:

[An Introduction/Set Up]

  In the Summer of 2007 I had the plan to take what would have been my first international travel - to Japan. My good friends - Adam and his wife Teresa were living there. I was planning on being in Japan for about a month. That journey never happened. The job I had at that time - running the photolab at Camera Hut - came to an end. Camera Hut went bankrupt and out of business. We closed down and my money quit coming in. Instead, I ended up taking a road trip to Circleville, Ohio. I spent one month in Ohio with my good friend Matt and the Sleezy Skates crew.

(The stories of the road trip, Ohio, the Sleezy Skates crew and Skatopia from my Second journal book never got finished).

Part Two:

Nine years later. September 2016.

  My wife Elin and I along with our ten month old son Anakin spent two weeks in Japan. It was the first two weeks of September and my last two weeks of my "Pappa Perm." - dad leave time from work to be with Anakin. Our flight was scheduled for 9:45 A.M. on Friday September 2nd. We decided not to drive to Gardermoen airport - we didn't want to pay for the long term parking. 

  Thursday September 1st - The 3:15 P.M. bus from Son center to the Sonsveien train station was ten minutes late, when we got to the station we watched our train leave. We had to wait an hour for the next train. Then it was forty minutes to Oslo central station, transfer trains, and twenty-five minutes to the airport. We had booked a room at the Radisson Park Inn airport hotel, when we got there and went to check in, they somehow messed up Elin's name and at first couldn't find our reservation.

  Friday September 2nd, the day we flew out was also the day Anakin turned ten months old. Our flight was delayed thirty minutes. We had a layover in Zurich, Switzerland - it was suppose to be for only fifty-five minutes which is not so long - (we've been through Zurich before, it's a big airport) - yet with our flight from Oslo being delayed thirty minutes, we landed in Zurich only ten minutes late. We had to run to our connecting gate, and we made it just in time as the plane was boarding. It was a twelve hour flight from Zurich to Tokyo. We landed at Narita airport in Tokyo around 8 A.M. Saturday September 3rd. As we got off the plane, airport staff were waiting for us with a sign with our names - our luggage didn't make it to Tokyo, which included our baby stroller for Anakin. The airport did have a stroller we could borrow. We had rented an apartment but we couldn't check in until 3 P.M., so we took a room at the Narita Gateway hotel for the early part of the day. We slept for a few hours.

  It was evening time and getting dark by the time we got to the Tokyo neighborhood of Morishita where the apartment we rented was. The building was called L. House. We had the apartment for six days - until Friday the 9th. The next day - Sunday the 4th - I called the airport to find out when our luggage would get delivered - it wouldn't be until around 6 P.M. So for the afternoon, we took the subway to Ueno and went to Ueno Park. When our luggage did finally get delivered, we tried to get the delivery guy to take the other baby stroller that we loaned from the airport back to the airport, but he refused. So, for the two weeks we were in Japan we had to drag that extra stroller around. The following four days of being in Tokyo - Monday the 5th to Thursday the 8th - we explored, taking the subway to the Tokyo neighborhood areas of Ueno, Asakusa, Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, and Omote-sando. We hit up Ueno Park a couple of times, in Harajuku we went to Yoyogi Park and the Meiji shrine, in Asakusa we walked through the Kaminarimon Gate through the street markets to the Senso-ji temple. We ended up getting the subway lines dialed in.

  From Tokyo, our plan was to take the Shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto. We had booked an apartment rental there as well. On the evening of Thursday the 8th as we began to organize and pack - we were checking out of our Tokyo apartment the next morning - Friday the 9th - I double checked our itinerary and discovered that we had screwed up our booking dates for both apartments. We were leaving Tokyo that Friday the 9th, and our check in for our apartment in Kyoto was for Saturday the 10th. We had no place to stay for that first night in Kyoto. Elin jumped online on her iPhone, we had to find a hotel or someplace last minute. We ended up booking a two story [townhouse style] house. 

  Friday September 9th - we left our Tokyo apartment, (of course dragging along that extra stroller), took the subway from Morishita to Tokyo station, and bought our tickets for the Shinkansen bullet train to Kyoto. Tokyo station was another mess and hassle. First we were told that the next train for Kyoto was going at 11:10 A.M., that gave us about ten minutes to make that train, but we were told the wrong track, so we got on the wrong train. It was the train for Nagoya. Luckily we found out before it was too late and got off before it left the station. We ended up getting told the wrong track three times. When we finally did find the correct track for the Shinkansen to Kyoto - it was for the 12:18 P.M. train, the conductor told us that our tickets were reserved for the 11:10 A.M. train that we missed. He didn't want to let us on the train. We pretty much had to almost beg. Now we were finally on our way to Kyoto. The Shinkansen bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto takes around two hours and fifteen minutes, so we got into Kyoto around 2:30 P.M. Again, our check in time for the townhouse we rented was for 3 P.M., we walked to the rental office to pick up the key and see if we could check in early - we couldn't. We left our luggage at the office and headed out to start checking out Kyoto. It was around 6 P.M. when we got to the townhouse. The place was awesome, real nice, on "baller" status. Elin ventured out to see the area - what restaurants, cafes, and stores were around. I stayed at the house with Anakin - he fell asleep in my arms and I watched T.V. I found a channel that showed old (1960's/70's) Woody Woodpecker cartoons - and it was in English, no over dub or subtitles. 

  Saturday the 10th - we checked out of our "baller" two story house, hopped in a taxi and headed to the neighborhood area of Nijo in Kyoto where the other apartment we rented was. We had that apartment booked for four days - Saturday the 10th to Tuesday the 13th. In Kyoto we hit up the neighborhood areas of Gion, in Nijo - we went to the Kyoto Imperial Palace and Park, and the Nijo-jo castle. We toured the Nijo castle and as we walked on the old hardwood flooring the creaking of the boards sounded like birds - chirping and singing - (it was designed and built this way). We saw the Kinkakuji temple (A.K.A. the Golden Temple). We walked the pathway and steps of the Fushimi Inari shrine. We went to Arashiyama and took the half hour train ride on the Sagano Scenic Railway - "the Romantic Train" - through the mountains and along the river. Also in Arashiyama, we walked the path through the bamboo forest park. Now, our original plan - we had to check out of our apartment in Kyoto on Tuesday the 13th, and we had planned on going back to Tokyo, but we really liked Kyoto better than Tokyo, so we took a hotel room for one more night and stayed in Kyoto - in the Gion area. 

  Wednesday the 14th - we took the Shinkansen bullet train back to Tokyo. Our last night in Tokyo we took a room at the Mercure hotel in Narita. Our flight left Tokyo at 11 A.M. Thursday September 15th. The layover on the way home was three hours in Dusseldorf, Germany - it was an eleven hour flight from Tokyo to Dusseldorf. In Dusseldorf our flight was delayed about forty-five minutes. We landed in Oslo at Gardermoen sometime between 9-9:30 P.M., and had just enough time to catch the 10:03 P.M. train to Oslo central station. At Oslo central we had about forty-five minutes to wait for the [11:18 P.M.] train to Son. As we waited we ate french fries from Burger King. By the time we got home it was 12:30 A.M. Friday September 16th.

Israel

[Preface: The following journal writing of a one week journey in Israel in February of 2014, is presented here completely unedited, as it is written directly from my Sixth journal book. It is [13] hand written pages.]

   I already forget what time we left our apartment to head to the airport, I think it was sometime between 3:30 and 4PM - it was before 4PM. We had to gas up the car first. The Friday late afternoon traffick was horrible - gridlocked. I believe it took us about an hour and a half - to just under two hours to get to Gardermoen. Our flight was scheduled for 7:40PM. The layover was in Zurich. The flight was just over two hours, we landed in Zurich at 10PM, we had to go through passport control and take a shuttle train to a different terminal. The connecting flight to Tel Aviv was to go at 10:45PM. We had just made it to the gate in time to board. The flight from Zurich to Tel Aviv was about three and a half hours. We landed in Tel Aviv at 3:30AM. We went through passport control and got our luggage, we had booked a rental car with Thrifty - when we got to the Thrifty service counter at the airport there was a customer - a guy in front of us, this guy was going through all kinds of problems and arguments to get a car rented. It was a bit of a fiasco and taking a long time. The guy working the service counter just put us on a shuttle van which took us straight to the Thrifty rental office and where we had to pick up the car. When we got to the rental office the woman we dealt with seemed kind of rude and she couldn't find our booked reservation for the car. But we finally got it all straightened out and got our rental car. I think by now it was around 5:30AM.

   From Tel Aviv it was a four hour drive South to Eilat. The route was the highway 40 South - through the barren yet majestic Israeli desert, to the 90 South. At around 9:30AM that Saturday morning we made it into Eilat. We checked in at the Motel Tsabar. That late morning into the early afternoon we laid at the beach - at the Red sea. We could see over the border to the country Jordan. The day was windy, and the water of the Red sea was too cold to swim. We fell asleep for a few hours - sunbathing. For the rest of that Saturday afternoon and on into the night, we just took it easy - checking out Eilat and having dinner. Saturday night the rain came - pouring. When we got back to the hotel from dinner there was an ambulance and the police at the Tsabar - but we never found out what had happened. It rained all day on Sunday. We couldn't go to the beach. We decided to hit the shopping malls and maybe to see a movie. As we were leaving the hotel, I noticed that the passenger rear tire was almost dead flat. We drove to a gas station to put air in the tire - we could hear the air leaking out, so we had to find a mechanics garage to get the tire fixed. We had full insurance coverage on the car so we didn't have to pay for the repair. This took some time. After all that we hit a couple of malls and ate lunch. The rest of Sunday was a bit uneventful, the rain lasted all day. We checked out of the Tsabar on Monday morning, and headed North on highway 90 for Jerusalem. More driving through the Israeli desert - but this time along the coastline of the Dead sea. In the early afternoon we stopped off for a few hours to relax and swim in the Dead sea. This was quite an experience. At around 4PM we got into Jerusalem. The hotel Commodore where we were staying at was in the Muslim quarter, the map we had from the Thrifty rental place was cut off right at the Muslim quarters and we got a little lost. We stopped to ask for directions and the folks we asked had no idea. People were telling us we were far away from where we needed to be. One lady even told us that our map wasn't even a map of Jerusalem. But we ended up getting it all sorted out and made our way to the Commodore. The hotel was at the base of Mount of Olives and about a thirty minute walk into the city center and old city. That first Monday evening in Jerusalem we walked around the old city, snapped some photos, drank wine in a pub Elin had found, and ate dinner at a vegetarian café we found in the city center.

   Tuesday February 18 - after breakfast we made the half an hour walk to the old city. We walked around a lot checking out the old city, I shot lots of photos, we went to the Western Wall (The Wailing Wall), we checked out the Virgin Mary Birth Place Church, we went inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre - saw the tomb of Jesus and the stone - slab bed his body was laid to rest after he was crucified. We explored a lot in the old city, walked the narrow street ways, checked out the markets - mostly walking around the Jewish and Muslim quarters. In the Jewish quarter we ate a lunch of falafel and hummus, drank beer at a café.

   On Wednesday we took a bus to Bethlehem - (Palestine). We only spent a few hours in the afternoon in Bethlehem. We went to the Church of the Nativity (The Nativity Church) and saw the birth place of Jesus. We also saw the Christmas Church and the Virgin Mary's Church for the Syrian Orthodox. We ate lunch ate a café. When we left Bethlehem - the taxi driver that took us back to the bus station drove us by the graffiti laced wall of the West Bank dividing Palestine and Israel. We stayed in Jerusalem pretty much the entire week, except for those first two days of Eilat.

   Monday February 17th late afternoon to Friday the 21st - late night - that was all Jerusalem. Wednesday afternoon - after Bethlehem, all of Thursday, and Friday was all pretty much the same. Elin and I would make the thirty minute walk from the Commodore into the city center and the old city, we would walk around the old city, I shot photos, we would check out the markets, eat at cafes - mostly in the Jewish quarters of the old city and city center so we could drink wine or beer. In the Jewish quarter in the center we found a good vegan café - Village Green. We explored Jerusalem as much as we could - we saw a lot and did a lot, but there was also a lot we missed. Between Thursday night and Friday morning we were trying to figure out what we were going to do - our flight home from Tel Aviv went at 5:30AM Saturday morning the 22nd - we thought about checking out of the Commodore on Friday morning and going into Tel Aviv for the last day - to get a hotel at the beach there. Then we thought about going back to the Dead sea. We ended up staying in Jerusalem, at the Commodore but just relaxing, taking it easy, resting and sleeping a bit. Some time between 6 and 7PM we heard a lot of commotion and noise in the street in front of the Commodore - there were fireworks blasting off - it was a Muslim wedding. At this point Elin and I were also trying to figure out what we were going to do for dinner. The both of us really didn't want to make that thirty minute walk into the city center, and the only food spot closest was a pizza place a few blocks away. I jokingly said to Elin that it would be crazy if we went downstairs and got invited to the wedding dinner. We just figured on going to that pizza place. When we got down in the hotel lobby the hotel manager stopped us and asked us if we had eaten dinner yet, we told him that's what we were going to do - go get dinner, he and some of the others from the wedding told us we could join them, that there was plenty of food. My joke to Elin turned out to actually happen. There was a real nice buffet set up. So our last night in Jerusalem we had a nice free dinner at a Muslim wedding. After dinner we went back up to our room to sleep for a few more hours. We were back up at 11PM, took showers, packed up our luggage, and by midnight we checked out of the Commodore, leaving Jerusalem to head back to Tel Aviv. By the route of highway 1, it took us about forty minutes to get to Tel Aviv and the airport. We gassed up the rental car and took it back. By 1:30AM we were at the airport and all checked in. Our flight to Zurich was scheduled for 5:30AM, so we had about four hours to wait. We sat down and fall asleep for some time.

   Around 8AM we landed in Zurich. We took the train from the airport to the main station - we had booked a room at the Ibis hotel which was suppose to be right in Zurich - in the city, but it turned out to be in a smaller town called Adliswil which was a bit outside of Zurich. We had to take another train from the main station to Adliswil. So we get into Adliswil, and now we had to find the Ibis hotel, at the station we found a map of the town and by the look of the map, the hotel was still kind of far away. I had to call the hotel. The woman I talked to from the Ibis told me that we had to take a bus. This created a major problem. Our flight home from Zurich to Oslo was early the next morning - Sunday the 23rd at 6:55AM. We found out from the info counter at the main station that the first earliest train from Adliswil to Zurich main was at 5:30AM, and by the time we would make the connecting train from the main station back to the airport, we would be at the airport at 6:15AM. This would not work at all. By now Elin and I were very over tired and very hungry. We skipped out on the Ibis and took the train back into Zurich. Now we were back at the main station. We went to the tourist info center at the station, they helped us find and book another hotel - the Hotel Alexander - which was only about a couple of blocks away from the station in the old town center area. I think by now it was sometime between 12PM noon and 1PM. We checked into the Alexander then went out to get something to eat. We ended up at a restaurant right across the street from our hotel, and had pizza and wine. After we ate we walked around the old town area for a bit - shot a few photos, then went to a grocery store and bought some beer, and went back to the hotel to rest. Later on that Saturday night it poured rain. We slept. We were up at 4AM Sunday morning, checked out of the Alexander, and walked the couple of blocks to the train station. It was cold and still raining. The very first train to the airport was at 5AM, we had about a half an hour to wait. For money, we only had some coins left - I think it was around 1.20 or 1.30 Swiss Francs, we hit up a little vendor stand to get a cup of coffee but we were some change short - didn't quite have enough. We told the guy exactly how much we had and he hooked us up, selling us a small cup of coffee for what coins we had left. Elin and I shared the small cup of coffee. The train only took fifteen minutes from the main station to the airport, so by 5:15AM we were at the airport. We had a good amount of time to check in and make the flight. It all started out on schedule, we boarded the plane, but ended up getting delayed for a half an hour.

Germany: Berlin [Part II]

[Preface: The following journal writing of a weekend excursion in Berlin, Germany in September of 2013, is presented here completely unedited, as it is written directly from my Fifth journal book. It is [9.5] hand written pages.]

   Next travel agenda: Berlin, Germany - for the third time. Guy's weekend in September '13, with Elin's brothers Andreas and Christian, and Kjell Arne, and three others who I have not met.

   It's the first of September, a Sunday evening, 8PM. I'm flying out on Ryan Air from Rygge airport, on Wednesday September 4th at 10:30AM. I'll be in Berlin just after noon. I'm there until Sunday September 8th - my flight home leaves at 9PM - so I'm basically going to be in Berlin for five days. Christian and his friend David who is British, Andreas and his friend Kjell Arne, with two more guys are driving down from Southern Sweden in a mini-van that they all rented. They won't be getting into Berlin until Thursday evening (Sept. 5th) around 6PM. So, I will have about a day and a half there alone - and again also on Sunday (Sept. 8), they will all leave to drive back home that Sunday morning and my flight goes at 9PM that night. I'll have pretty much all day Sunday in Berlin alone too. Almost three days alone in Berlin! The Arcotelvelvet hotel where they all are staying at was completely booked up, so I'm staying in a hostel called Generator - it's on the same street as the Arcotelvelvet, some blocks away. This may get interesting.

   Right now it's just a few minutes over 8AM, it's Wednesday the 4th, my friend Knut drove me to the airport - I was here at 7:30AM - two and half hours to wait. I'm all checked in. I bought a few magazines for the flight, and now here I sit in an airport café. The night before, Elin and I went to bed at 11PM but it took me a while to fall asleep. I laid in bed thinking, words for another poem ran through my mind - (I need to remember, get them together and written.) - I guess for the first time ever really, I really thought about LBK and his stories of solo European journeys and adventures. I had to admit to myself I was nervous about this trek. I thought...about - how LBK did quite a lot of solo journeys...to travel alone. I know I should be fine, everything should go OK. Hour and a half flight - the plane was not so full, I took a window seat right behind the wing and ended up having the row to myself. Somebody - one of the ladies sitting either in front of me or behind stank real bad - like she needed a shower. The plane landed just before noon, took the train from the airport, making one connection change...I thought I was going to have to go all the way to the main big central station but I double checked the route map on the train and realized I could jump off one stop before. I walked a couple of blocks and found the Arcotelvelvet where everyone else is staying. I went in there to double check it was the right hotel and to ask directions to the Generator hostel where I was staying. It was just a block away. I went to the Generator to check in but my room wasn't ready, so I left with my backpack, walked a block or so up the street, found a café and ordered a beer and a pizza. An hour later I went back to the hostel and got checked in, I had to buy a lock for 3 Euros for the luggage locker in the room, I dropped off my bag, grabbed my camera, and headed out walking the city streets of Berlin. I shot graffiti and street art shots, found a skate shop called Titus, sat at a café across the street from the T.V. tower drinking a one liter glass mug of beer. At the café I met a guy named John, he was from Sarasota, Florida, had been living in Amsterdam for a few years, and just moved to Berlin to study. I walked around and shot some more photos. The evening was coming on, I went back to the hostel, to the room to rest and see if any of the other people who were staying in the room were there. The room had four sets of bunk beds for eight people. I got back to the room and there was one guy, Mario, he was from El Salvador but lived in Australia. We were talking for a while then I went down to the hostel café for dinner. When I got back up to the room Mario was still there with three more of the people staying there - a guy named Marcus from Stockholm, Sweden and two French girls who I didn't get their names. We all talked for a little while then Marcus and the two French girls left, Mario fell asleep, and I rested for a bit. There were two other guys staying in the room as well, but I haven't really met or talked to them yet. Sometime between 8:30 and 9PM I got back up and went down to the hostel bar. Drinking beer, sitting at one of the sidewalk patio tables in front of the hostel - I met some folks from Ireland, three guys and a girl - Ryan, Steve, Craig, and Sara. We drank, talked, and made fun of the hookers that worked the street in front of the hostel until about midnight, then I called it a night and went back up to the room to sleep. I didn't sleep so good that Wednesday night.

   The next day - Thursday - I spent about four hours of the day from late morning to mid-afternoon again walking the streets, shooting photos and checking out the city. I started the day with a coffee at a café around the corner from the hostel, I went to Check Point Charlie which took about thirty minutes to walk there, then I went to the Holocaust memorial, then to the Topographies Des Terrors museum. It was around 3:30PM when I got back to the hostel. At the hostel café I had a late lunch with Mario, drinking brews and talking travels. I went back up to the room to rest and wait for the guys to get into town. Around 8:30PM I went to their hotel and waited for them in the lobby. We took the subway into the West Berlin side for dinner and pub hopping. A night of drinking. (The group was me, Christian and his friend David, Andreas, Kjell Arne, Martin, and Fredrik.)

   On Friday I met the guys at 9:30AM in the Arcotel lobby. We went for breakfast, then Kjell Arne and Christian took off to go meet with one of Kjell Arne's friends for a few hours. Andreas, David, Martin, Fredrik, and I spent the early afternoon walking around East Berlin. We walked by the T.V. tower, went to the Brandenburger Tor, hit the DDR museum. By 1PM we all met back up at the Arcotelvelvet, we had a 2PM scheduled tour of the Berliner Kindl brewery. Back on trains, subways, and trams. The brewery tour was sweet. It cost 9 Euros and included sampling brews in the brewery pub. We all got wasted. The Friday night was dinner and more pub hopping - lots of drinking as usual.

   Saturday was the typical start, I met the guys at 9:30AM in the hotel lobby, we went for breakfast, then hit the city. The main thing we did on Saturday was hit up the Teknik museum - (Technology museum). It was well worth the 6 Euro admission fee. The place was huge. It was everything from early German technology - computer, film and photography, chemistry and medicine, auto and trains, textile, beer brewing, airplanes and boats, communications, just so much. It was awesome. We spent a few hours there. Berlin Saturday night life - dinner and pub hopping.

   The last day - Sunday - I was up by 8AM, I got dressed and packed all my stuff back into my backpack, I checked out of the Generator Mitte hostel, put my backpack in the luggage room for the day, I met the guys at 9AM for breakfast at the café next door to the Arcotel, and by 10:30AM they were loading up their gear into their rented van and taking off to head home. We said our goodbyes, shook hands and hugged, wishing safe journeys home. Once again I still had the Sunday afternoon alone in East Berlin. My flight home was at 9PM, I planned to take the 5:20PM train back to the airport - it may have been a bit early but I liked giving myself the time at airports - checking in, security checks, etc. So I had about six and a half hours of the day. I stopped back at the hostel to go to the luggage room and get my camera and jacket from my backpack, then headed straight to the T.V. tower. It was a fifteen minute walk. Two hundred and three meters above East Berlin with a 360 degree view. The ticket was 12.50 Euros. I only stayed up in the tower for about a half an hour - shot photos of the city and sat at the bar drinking a brew. I left the T.V. tower and walked the thirty minutes to the train station, I wanted to take care of the tickets arrangements right away. I got my ticket and a train schedule, then walked ten minutes back to the hostel. It was twenty minutes over 1PM, I had about four hours left. I sat at the hostel café drinking beer and writing. Now I felt like Kerouac or Bukowski.

Afrika: [Round Two] Tunisia

[Preface: The following journal writing of an eight day holiday in Tunisia, Afrika  July 8th to 15th, 2013, is presented here completely unedited, as it is written directly from my Fifth journal book. It is [11] hand written pages.]

Afrika - Round Two

   Six months later, Summer 2013...(July 8th to 15th) Elin and I spent eight days in North Afrika, in Hammamet, Tunisia on the Mediterranean. We did this trip charter style, it was our first time doing a charter trip and it'll probably be our last. But we did get a real good cheap price for the flight and hotel, but we didn't have all-inclusive. We left Gardermoen - Oslo on a Monday, our flight was scheduled for 2:55PM but ended up getting delayed for almost two hours. It was about a four hour flight to Tunisia. It was pretty late by the time we checked in to our hotel the Residence La Paix. There we had a studio apartment style room. We dropped our bags off in the room and went to find a restaurant for dinner. We walked a few blocks and ended up at a place called L'Aquarium. We ordered a bottle of red wine, I had a plate of grilled vegetables - sun drenched ripe flavorful tomatoes, onions, eggplant, zucchini squash - it reminded me of the grilled vegetable plates I got in Greece and Albania, except here the plate portion amount was smaller. Elin wanted fish - and she thought she ordered fish but the waiter got things mixed up and she ended up with shrimp instead, and the shrimp plate only had five shrimp on it, also which Elin said the shrimp wasn't so good, didn't seem so fresh. The bill was 88 Dinar, which we found out pretty quickly was over priced for a dinner of such small portions and not so good food.

   The next day - Tuesday, we somehow woke up early at around 7:30AM, but we laid in bed - falling back asleep but not for so much longer, maybe another hour or so. We found out it was only about a fifteen minute walk into the city center area of Hammamet, and to the Medina - (market area). On the walk into town we stopped off at a small sidewalk café - Café Queen - that was owned and run by a young boy and his father, we had breakfast there - croissants, coffee, and fresh made orange juice. We walked around the town center area and by the Medina, we found a bakery and bought a couple of loaves of fresh bread, stopped by a small grocery store to buy cheese, pasta - spaghetti, salt, bottles of water and pineapple juice, and we found a small vegetable stand where we bought fresh tomatoes, onions, zucchini squash, green peppers, garlic, and olive oil. We hit up that vegetable stand a few times - almost an average of every other day. Everyday for breakfast we had coffee, juice, and fresh homemade bruschetta from the bread from the bakery - we toasted the bread right on the hot burner plates of the stove - cut up the fresh tomatoes, sliced the garlic, and added the olive oil and sea salt. It happened to be Ramadan during the week we were there - Ramadan is a Muslim tradition when the Muslim people fast for one month during the day, and they eat around dusk/sundown at about 7PM, they go to the Mosques and pray - prayer chants are broadcast on loud speakers from the Mosques and can be heard all over the city - it reminded me of when we were in Albania. Since it was Ramadan, during the days pretty much all of the restaurants or cafes were closed all day long. Most of the markets, the Medina, and other places were open until 7PM, then everything would close down and people would go home to eat. Everything would open back up again around 9PM - restaurants and cafes. So for about two hours - 7PM - 9PM - it was like a ghost town. The streets were dead. Hardly any traffick, everything closed up, no one walking the sidewalks, in a way it was kind of creepy. I thought it was a bit interesting to be there, in Tunisia, an Afrikan - Muslim country, during Ramadan, to experience the culture - but in the same it was also a little frustrating since we were on holiday and wanted to eat out at restaurants more than we got to do so. When we did eat out, we had some late night dinners - usually between 9 and 10PM. So most of our lunches and dinners we cooked at our little studio apartment room at the hotel. And just like how we made fresh bruschetta for breakfast everyday, our lunches and dinners were pasta - spaghetti, with fresh homemade tomato sauce with onion and garlic, we would fry up the fresh zucchini squash, and also have the fresh bread from the bakery. Those were pretty much our meals everyday, yet it didn't seem to get old or boring to eat bruschetta for breakfast and pasta for lunch and dinner - (reminding me of Kerouac's On The Road).

   July 10th, that Wednesday in the afternoon we took a taxi to the train station with the plan to take the train (Northwest) to the capitol city of Tunis. When we got to the train station we had the taxi driver wait, the station was dead - no one was around, the taxi driver helped us find and track down someone who worked there - it took some time. There were no more trains that day running to Tunis, so we wanted to buy tickets for the 10AM train on Thursday. The guy working at the station couldn't get the computer to work right so we couldn't pre-order the tickets. We just had to wait until the morning. We woke up early - on time on Thursday morning, we thought - had the idea that maybe the train station would be crowded in the morning and there could be a long line. The taxi got us to the station around 9:15AM, and again it was dead. No long line. We had planned on staying one night at a hotel in Tunis and going back to Hammamet on Friday, so we had packed some clothes in Elin's rugsack backpack. We had forty-five minutes to wait. The train ended up being an hour late. We didn't leave the station until 11AM. It was about an hour train ride to Tunis. When we got to the station in Tunis, we went to the information desk to ask about hotels with swimming pools in the city but it turned out that none of the hotels in the city center had pools. The lady working the desk told us we should go to Hammamet, which was already where we were staying. So we decided not to stay the night in Tunis - just spend the afternoon. The station had baggage lockers, so we rented one and put Elin's rugsack in a locker. Then we realized we needed to go back to the ticket counter to buy return tickets and check the train times back to Hammamet. The last train back was at 3PM. Basically, we ended up having only about two and a half hours of that Friday afternoon in Tunis. We took a taxi straight to the Medina. As we were crossing the street some kind of altercation - argument broke out between a taxi driver and another driver, it was almost a fist fight, lots of yelling, the cops showed up to break it up. The building near the Medina was under some kind of construction, there were fences and razor wire all around, with police and armed guards - military style. It seemed crazy. The Medina was huge, crowded. We walked around, did our shopping. We bought a few ceramic - pottery bowls, a couple of carpets, a nice leather bag, and Elin was trying on some leather sandals - she wasn't sure at first if she really wanted to buy them but then one of the straps on the sandals she was already wearing broke, so she had no choice but to buy new sandals. I only got a chance to shoot a few photos, not as much as I wanted to. Not because I was afraid to take my camera out in the crowded Medina, but because we had kind of a lot of bags to carry from the shopping we had done. We left the Medina and hailed a taxi around 2:40PM and made it back to the train station with just enough time to get the rugsack from the locker and catch the 3PM train back to Hammamet. (Now, I really can't remember if it was on Friday or Saturday...it may have been on Friday.) Anyway - in the evening, sometime between 5 and 6PM we took a taxi to Nabeul. We wanted to check out the town and Medina there. Right after the taxi dropped us off and we started to walk around, we kept getting hit up by other taxi drivers telling us it was not a good time to be in Nabeul because everything would be closing up soon for Ramadan - they kept asking us if we wanted to go somewhere else. We walked around the town center for a little while, it was close to 7PM and everyplace was starting to close up for Ramadan, we found one café that was staying open but they weren't making everything that was on the menu. They were only offering couscous, salad, and brick - which is traditional Muslim - Tunisia, it's almost like a quesadilla type with chicken, veggies, cheese. We ate there. We both had salads, shared a bowl of couscous, and Elin had a brick. The café got crowded with people eating their Ramadan dinner. There was a Mosque a few blocks up on the same street as the café, as we ate we listened to the prayer chants from the Mosque, it was peaceful. After dinner we went to another café for coffee, then we went to the Medina. We ended up buying some more ceramic pottery bowls.

   The remaining few days in Hammamet we just relaxed, sitting at the beach, sunbathing, swimming in the Mediterranean sea, drinking beer. Our last morning at the La Paix we decided to check out the breakfast buffet - (now, as I wrote at the beginning of this story, this was a charter trip but it was not all-inclusive) - of course we knew we would have to pay for the breakfast - which turned out to be not good at all - in the end, we ended up skipping out on the breakfast check - not paying.