Thanks to everyone who read this, it was cool hearing from you guys.  Until next time…Colin out!

This trip began as one of those ideas you never really think of as realistic.  Neima and I were hanging out in Seattle talking about how sweet it would be to travel around Europe without planning anything.  Basically each night you went to bed, you would have no idea where you would be sleeping the next night.  The key to this all happening was Neima calling me one day after he found plane tickets for $300 one way to Reykjavik.  From Reykjavik we found you could get to the mainland for under $100 and all of a sudden our hypothetical sweet trip began materializing.  I let my friends in Europe know I was heading over and was met with a large gravy train of downness for which my gratitude is unending.  We hit Iceland after a full 18 hours of flights and connections only to hop on a bus that dropped us off in the middle of nowhere.  We did a lot of hiking in Iceland and drove all over the southern part of the country.  The scenery was insanely cool and we topped it off meeting David at some ridiculous hot spring pool right before flying to Norway.  In Norway David taught us all about white trash ski bum Norwegians, Skandy Plaid, and Skandy Pop.  We walked about 213 miles in one night and hipster Colin was revealed.  At this point we were trying to decide if Stockholm was sweet enough to warrant a day or two out of the way.  We saw a video of a Swedish midsummer and booked a train to Copenhagen.  We only planned on staying one night here but it was too sweet to leave and we ended up staying three nights.  This city is the most legit biking city I’ve found, easily tops Amsterdam.  We finally bid adieu to Denmark and caught a train/boat to Hamburg.  Hamburg was cool because it was the first city that was actually affordable and beer was very cheap.  We cooked a bunch of German food, which got us laughed at by our German friends because apparently real Germans don’t eat sauerkraut…After a night in Las Hamburvegas we decided it was time to work our way to Amsterdam and ended up in a little town called Bremen.  Bremen turned out to be the chips, sweet vibe in the city, good cheap food, and nice cheap clean hostel.  Unfortunately we only spent one night there as we felt it was time to move on the the Netherlands.  Amsterdam was pretty cool, the bike thing was way over hyped and didn’t stack up to Copenhagen at all.  The red light district was just really touristy and kinda lame.  The canals and buildings however, were sweet and created a really cool atmosphere.  Visiting Anne Frank’s house was a pretty big trip and probably the high point for me in Amsterdam.  Renting a paddle boat and causing a ruckus in the canals was pretty sweet too.  After Amsterdam we caught a train over to Dortmund where we met up with my Uncle and Parents and started a tour of Western and Southern Germany.  We hit some nice wine country, ate some legit schnitzel, saw some sweet castles, and ended it all with Oktoberfest.  Oktoberfest was full of good food and huge steins of beer with lots of dancing on tables and broken glass.  If only the German band would have actually played authentic German music instead of playing Sweet Home Alabama 5 times.  The next day we hitched a ride with my friend Mr. Train over to Zurich…Man Zurich sucked.  To be fair, Zurich might actually be really cool, we rolled in around 10pm, wandered looking for a place to sleep, got skewered by the prices, and got up out of there the next morning.  So granted, if we had planned ahead a bit, we probably would’ve had a better experience.  It worked out fine anyway because we hightailed to Lyon and found a super cheap hotel with a mad scientist working and Lyon was an awesome city.  We stayed here three nights and spent a lot of time hanging out by the river and walking around exploring the old Roman area of Lyon.  Finally the time had come to end the trip and we saved the best for last.  We caught a train from Lyon to Paris and were immediately immersed in excellent French cuisine.  Adrien had arranged a very French dinner at a small restaurant where we had some nice cuts of meat, three different cheeses, some cheesy mashed potatoes and of course a few bottles of wine.  We were met there by Charles, Anne-Claire and Axel…safe to say one of the finest meals of the entire trip.  We spent our time living like Parisians and not wasting our days on too many touristy sights.  Like I said, words and pictures don’t do Paris justice, but in an attempt I can just say excellent friends, excellent food, and excellent baguettes made Paris amazing and the perfect end to our trip.

This trip was made a whole shift ton sweeter thanks to the following friends…

Oslo: David “is it really 6pm” Weir and his roommate Gregers.

Copenhagen: My sweet bike I rented.

Germany: Meeting up with my Uncle and Parents was legit.

Paris: Adrien, Charles, Anne-Claire, Axel, Louis, and many more…Taught me the Parisian lifestyle and made me feel at home in the greatest city on earth.

Big ups to Neima who kept me alive on more than one occasion and not only made the trip possible but made it legit by keeping it real at all times.

“Europe is the new Thursday.”

No.  Icelandair had their plane breakdown.  What ensued was a day of mass confusion, people behaving like animals, and boiled chicken with gravy.  We rolled into the airport well ahead of time and waited for them to open the ticket counter.  When they did the line got quite large and wasn’t seeming to move.  A random gathering of people started forming off to the side.  Then rumors began spreading of a delay.  Before long we were told to run downstairs and fight each other for random available tickets on other airlines being distributed by a third party.  This consisted of half the people being civil and forming a line while the other half just attacked the front.  The people working would randomly shout out ‘four for new york!’  The first four people to throw their passports at the guy would get the tickets.  Neima and I were heading to Seattle which we later found out had no available tickets until the next day.  We were ushered into a restaurant, told to wait for info and served boiled chicken in gravy gumption goodness.  I wasn’t too happy with the way things were going so I decided to go bug the ticket master.  When I got there I saw a lady getting a ticket to Seattle even though supposedly no tickets were being given out yet.  This turned out to be very fortunate for us since we grabbed a morning flight instead of having to wait possibly another day or two.  They ended up getting us hotel rooms, dinner and breakfast.  I decided that I was no longer in Paris but rather the principality of Charles de gaulle.  We flew out the next day on delta direct from Paris to salt lake which was pretty cool.  Eleven hours and four movies later the fat lady finally sang her sweet song.

Leaving Paris felt wrong.  This was our final sight before going underground on our way to the principality of Charles de gaulle.

We set a goal of eating a crépe in Paris.  This turned out to be harder than we thought so we had to force it.  The picture says it all.

The Seine, some legit pain chocolate, and el Louvre.