E-Dog's BP

I know we're really setting the bar pretty high for bachelor parties.

.

We flew Ethan to Prague where he met friends John, Mike and Steve. They spent a night in Prague then drove for a couple days through Germany. They spent a night in Wurtsberg and a night in XXX. The final destination being Amsterdam for 6 days of fun.
.
Here is Matt in Dam Square. We took a walk through the city before everyone else showed up. We were really going to be a great time with these guys.
.

I met Matt in Schiphol airport and we made our way to Centraal Station in Amsterdam. We went and checked into our hotel, then took a stroll through the city, stopping for a couple beers in the Red Light District.

.

This is us out the first night. It was great to be hanging out in Europe with the fellas. Everyone was pumped for a good time. You couldn't beat the mood, we were all psyched!

.

Here is the bicycle parking lot outside Centraal Station. It has 2500 bike spots and it's still really tough to park a bike. There are more bikes in Amsterdam than cars.

.

We rode around everywhere. Here we are before hitting the Van Gogh museum.

.We loved this tree in Vondel Park on the SW side of Amsterdam. The tree apparently had fallen over, but continued to grow. The tree still looked pretty strong, so they let it keep growing.

.

It would have been chopped right down if that happened in the states, but in Amsterdam it's cool!

.

Here's place that was awesome for hanging out. We played a ton of pool, drank a bunch of beer and closed the place at 2 a.m. (it was an early bar).

.

Here's a picture of Matty at a sandwich shop right on the back side of the Nieuwe Kerk (new church - built in the 1420's after the Oude Kerk (old church - built in 1306) ran out of space). Great perspective in this picture.

.

I took this picture looking down on the guys on their bikes after climbing up a metal half pipe in a small skate park right outside the Van Gogh museum on the SW side of the city.

.

Here's a picture from a canal boat tour. The weather was gorgeous and the canal buildings even more so.

.

It was cool to be in the water and get some of these pictures.

.

Ethan and John were making a few friends as we tried to claim tables on the canal boat.

.

Ethan and I took a trip on Monday about 30km south of Amsterdam to a town called Nieuwegein. We went to watch a stage finish in the 2007 Tour du Benelux.

.

There was a massive jumbo-tron for the spectators to watch before they arrived at the finish.

.

It only took us about 25 minutes to get down there from Centraal Station and we found a great bar w/a huge TV screen playing the race 100m from the finish line. We had plenty of time to walk right out and watch the finish. Couldn't have been more perfect. We met a fry-cook there from Brooklyn too... go figure!

.

Here's Luciano Pagliarini of Saunier Duval who won this stage. It was pretty cool to see all the pro teams. There was so little security here. After the race, the cyclists all walked their bikes through the crowd to the team buses.

.

Ethan said it was VERY different than security at the TDF.

.

Here's a great nighttime pic of some canal houses. It really feels nice to be riding our bikes home through these canals. The age of the city is pretty amazing and it entered into the way I felt just riding around.

.

I could easily live in this city (if we only had EU passports!).

.

The last afternoon we had some time to kill, so we sat here in the lobby of our hotel and played cards for a while. We could order beers and play poker at the tables completely undisturbed.
.
Ethan and Phil went out earlier int he week and bought mentos, black licorice and some other white candies that we used for chips. The only down side was the horrid smell of feet coming from the black licorice.
.
Here are Ethan and I on the morning he and Matt left for the states. It was so nice that we could take this much time over here. We're so incredibly lucky to have these opportunities.
.
This is it! Last picture before sending them off to the airport from Centraal Station.

.

It was such a great week!

.

I had a day on my own now before Karen arrived the following day. I proceeded to ride all the canals around the city and photograph as much as I could.

.I'll leave you with a couple nighttime pictures from the canals. It's a really beautiful city... my favorite in Europe so far.

. This one is for Phil.

.

This is his Amsterdam city cruiser. This is Phil's answer for transportation in the future.

.

Thanks guys!

Camping in the Wicklow Mountains

............... Djouce Mountain, Co. WicklowPhil and I went south of Dublin about an hour into the Wicklow mountains. We went for a hike near the Sally Gap. The weather tried hard to ruin the overnight, but we made the best of it.
.

We're about to set out. This is as dry and warm as we'd be until we went home. When we left the car, it was just spitting a little and a little breezy.

.

Here I am, all smiles, at the summit. It started to get a little windier up here and the rain kicked up as we left the trail for the summit. As soon as we broke off the trail for the summit (walking straight into the clouds) we started to suffer the wrath of the August Irish summer!
.
Here's Phil looking for a spot to set up our tent (which he just got for 11 euro) which was really worth the money... ; )
And yes, we actually had to scare the sheep away to set up our tent.
.
Once we set up the tent behind one of the summit rocks, we settled in for what we thought was going to be a cozy afternoon with some scotch and the inside of a warm tent... NOT!!!
.

Here's a video from inside the test as the wind and rain started to pick up a good bit.
.
This had never happened to me before. The tent began to buckle under the force of the wind. When we were trying to sleep in the tent, the corner tent poles began to bang into my head. The windward side of the tent was being collapsed in toward the middle.
.
Time for "plan B"!
.
We packed up and made our way back toward the woods. On our way in, we passed through some pretty dense forest before we got onto the trail. We thought we'd be able to find a better spot in the woods.
.
Aaaahhhhhhh!!!! Home sweet home. We finally set up inside the woods. We were almost completely sheltered from the wind and the rain had slowed down a bit.
.
That's dinner out on the stove there: Irish beef, and onion, beans, rice with Phil's special cumin based spice pack and cheese on whole grain wraps. Great for dinner and breakfast.
.
Everything was covered in a real heavy layer of moss catapulted by the thick humidity. It was much nicer to be back in the woods rather than the bare mountain top.
.
Here's Phil shaking out the 2 cups of water that soaked his hat yesterday. It was actually DAMN cold this morning too. Felt more like February than August!
.
After we left the parking lot, we headed back the long way to take in the view as the weather improved. Phil's looking down here at the deer farm on the grounds of Lugalla.

Weekend on the Aran Islands, Inis Oirr

There are three Aran Islands located on the western coast of Ireland just across from Galway and the Cliffs of Moher. Inis Mor is the biggest western most island, Inis Meain is the middle island and Inis Oirr is the smallest and eastern most island (the one we visited).
.
We got a front row seat for the 6-minute flight there!
.
We arrived on Inis Oirr Saturday morning about 9:30. We walked up to our B&B up and said hello to Brid (pronounced like breege) who runs the place.
.
There was hot tea, fresh scones and warm bread waiting for us. After David and Ena had a chance to catch up with Brid, we set out on our hike around the island..
.
The islands are incredibly rocky. We found the most interesting cracks in some of them.
.Here's David making friends with some of the locals. It was a little rainy, but never came down real hard. It was just intermittent light rain most of the day.
.
I tried my best to photograph the fragile spider webs after the rain.
.How's this for a sunset picture? The sky was beautiful. We took a TON of pictures!
.
With the sunset this nice, just imagine how many pictures we took!
. Sunday morning the sky was a lot more clear. We found an enthusiastic horse here thrilled with the flowers we were feeding him.
.

Here's a video of the "Plassey" that ran aground in 1960. The islanders ran to the aid of the fishermen and nobody was lost.
.
That was a good size ship! Story goes, they lost engine power one night between the Cliffs of Moher and Inis Oirr. The currents in that stretch are treacherous and quickly dragged the Plassey right into the rocks where she still sits today.
.
Oddly more beautiful in this decrepit condition than she probably was when in use. I wonder how long something like this takes to become lore and legend rather than pollution...?
Suppose that's largely in the eye of the beholder.
Having been here for nearly 50 years, you can see straight through what's left of the vessel.

. Here's a nice rustic thatched roof stone house. Much of the island is a view into an older day of Irish history.
.

There were a lot of nice wildflowers on the island... some of which are found only in the Aran Islands.

.

This is our flight back from the Island. The planes are pretty small.

.

People get a little nervous over the water. David was good to hold Ena's hand.

.

Everyone needed to be weighed before we got in and seated specifically to balance the weight in the cabin.