Traveling with Mom

So on 13 June I moved out of my Old Street flat, dropped my bags off at the self storage by Paddington and hit the road with my mom. We flew to Heraklion Crete where we stayed with George, a friend of the family who was the most excellent host. Beyond providing us a place to stay on his beautiful island he drove us all over - we got to see the Samaria Gorge and walked about 4km up to the narrowest, most picturesque point. We took a ferry and we spent some time in the village where George and his family live when they are not in Heraklion. He took us out to eat at all the best restaurants and I was very impressed with our time there. In my opinion it was much too short. The beaches were fantastic!

From Crete we flew to Rome and spent a quick and disappointing day there before traveling by train to Innsbruck Austria. Innsbruck was as fantastic as Rome was disappointing. Our hotel was lovely - I had booked on hostel world and didn't expect much for the price. The room was three times the size of our pension in Rome for the same price and the restaurant served a proper breakfast included (the breakfast in Rome was only sugary croissants!). One benefit of traveling with my mother is her willingness to pay for things and her sudden whims - like deciding I needed some jewelry from the Swarovsky Crystal Gallery. I got a necklace and a pair of earings and feel like a princess in them. They are special because the Swarovsky Crystal Factory, were all Swarovsky crystals are produced in Austria was just 15 km down the road from the shop. If we had had more time I would have wanted to visit it! We DID visit the Grassmayer Bell Foundry and Museum however which was very interesting! I got bells for my friends as souvenirs and read all about the different kinds of bells that were made in Europe and all over the world during the last thousand years. Very intersting from a materials perspective and gave me an increased appreciation for metallurgy which I've always been somewhat uninterested in compared to most topics in my field. In Innsbruck we also took the Funicular up to the top of the largest mountain and had a hearty lunch. I would love to come back to ski here in the winter sometime.

Next we went to Interlaken, Switzerland which was equally stunning for the natural beauty, though the cold and the rain were less than welcome on my 20km hike up the mountain. Along my hike I passed a brewery and a small castle, as well as some cute farm animals and of all things a few fascinating snails. After about 15 minutes of taking pictures of the snails and staring at them I began to wonder if I should have been a naturalist instead of an engineer!

From Interlaken we took the train to Paris and again I was impressed by the quality of the hotel for the cost. We paid the same for the hotel in Paris (pristinely clean, with AC, wifi, CNN world and an en suite toilet/shower) for our postage stamp sized, sharded bathrood, dirty hostel in London. After a few snapshots of the Tower and the Arch we had a nice little dinner and the following day we spent in the Louvre before catching the train to London (where we got the sad little over priced hostel).

This morning from London we caught an EasyJet flight to Edinburg for a few quid and have checked into a nice room at the Argyle Hostel. Not as standardly hotel-y, more hostelish, it is overwhelmingly friendly and comfortable feeling. The room is large enough to move around and light is streaming in through the windows. It's a relief to be here today after the stress of the airport. I forgot to take my laptop out of my backpack and checked it onto the flight. The entire flight the image of my lovely MacBook with huge ugly cracks zig-zagging the LCD display and clunking noised coming from the HDD circled like bees in my head. Thankfully, no damage done. We also almost missed the flight because my mom had gotten a letter opener in the vatican in Rome for my uncle and forgot to check it in here bag. Obviously security would not let her leave it in her carry on though my mom looks very motherly and hardly a terror suspect. She tried to check her carry on but was running out of time so she ended up giving away the letter opener - we'll find a gift for her brother in Scotland she cheerfully said as my heart is racing looking at the red "Final Call" on the departures board next to our flight which is scheduled to take off in 15 minutes. Oi!

All this traveling, while fantastic, is wearing me out. I really really just want to get to Cambridge and have a normal schedule and a routine and classes. Can it be that I actually REALLY miss classes!? Astonishing! I now know that it takes me two months of utter uselessness, two months of no class and no work, before I go absolutely bonkers with boredom. Even reading, wandering though parks and London and exploring got a little boring. I've finish Henry James (Daisy Miller and Other Stories) and "The Cannon" about basics in science (cute but nothing I didn't already know) and am now in the process of reading "Great Expectations" which I adore right now. Something about the writing style is easy to understand and the character is symapthetic and I just have to know what happens to him. Speaking of which - I am off to keep reading until mom feels like heading out to see Edinburg. In a few days we're off to Galway, Ireland.