Just touched down in London town.... Alex Miller: 12/1/08

I'm going to have to make this one short and sweet. A couple weeks ago, (Thanksgiving weekend) I visited the wonderful little city of Sevilla in Spain. Jordan, Freya (A girl in our program), and I met up with Freya's Carla, who is studying in Sevilla. This was our last and final trip and of course something had to go wrong to mess up my clean streak of traveling. We were set to fly out on Thursday night, but being that it was thanksgiving we ended up taking off a little later than we should have although in normal circumstances we would've been fine.

I'd just like to add that my thanksgiving lunch consisted of ribs and chips washed down with a pint of Guinness with my friend Drew at a pub that claims to have "the best ribs this side of the Atlantic."

Anyways so after lunch I rush back to my room and pack to leave. We thought we still had plenty of time. We took the express train to Stanstead but because of delays we arrived 20 minutes later than we should have, making us literally one minute late to check in to our ryanair flight, which forces check in 40 minutes before takeoff. We were pretty upset but in the end it all worked out, we just had to reschedule our flight for the next night. That night we went to bed early and ended up waking out 12 hours later, so we were very well rested for Spain. Once in Spain we were greeted by rain and our friends Carla and Freya. We went our surprisingly nice hostel and dropped off our stuff before heading out for a crazy Spanish night. They party different in Spain. You do not have dinner until about 9, then after dinner you botellon (Pregame) in a plaza with all the other Spaniards before hitting up the clubs at around 1 or 2. Then you basically stay up all morning and head home with the morning sunrise.

The next day and pretty the whole time the sun was out over the weekend we took advantage of the bike rental system in Spain. Basically they have these bike stalls all over the place where you can get a pass for a week so you can get bikes and ride from place to place. The system was really handy as we covered a good portion of the city in very little time. I'll leave you with the pictures to show the rest of my trip as I am pretty busy right now trying to rush to get everything done before I head home in less than a week.

Our trip to Malta was a short one but a good one. Malta is a small island nation south of Sicily and "almost" the farthest south you can go in Europe. Evidently it's the most densely populated country in Europe and almost the whole world, although I would have never guessed.

We arrived on Friday night and left Sunday night. Once again this was another beautiful locale that I would recommend going to if the weather is nice. We didn't have so much luck it was kinda chilly, windy, and rainy during our stay which put a damper on the trip. The beaches here are unlike anything I have ever seen. There is no sand, what I'm standing on in the above picture is like a limestone shelf. Its smooth in places and really bumpy in others. From what I could tell you really don't get into the sea, although I did see ladders to go down into the water. Really you'd have to be out of your mind to swim because large waves come crashing in all the time (like the picture below). There are places where the rock had created a "natural pool" that would enable you to relax in a pool of fresh sea water that would fill up every time a large wave crashed in and then would very slowly drain until the next one came. We didn't get to enjoy this because is was a tad too cold and windy.

(Just steeped out of the way in time for this one)

(More "Beach")

(Coastline)

(One of the more rocky area of shore)

The transportation on the island is pretty cool although we never rode it. All the buses are similar to the bus pictured above. The owners all put in a personal touch of customization through the use of chrome parts, body work, and pin striping. We did however ride in a taxi to and from the airport. It might have been the craziest ride of my life. The taxi's operate on flat rates to and from certain towns to the airport. Of course this seems like a good idea for the tourists but what you get is taxi drivers trying to maximize their economies of scale. Any other taxi driver would take his sweet time driving slow though the scenic route to your destination, not these guys. The drivers we had drove as fast as they can the whole way to our hotel, cutting off other cars, tailgating, taking shortcuts though back alleys, passing though intersections without yielding. It was pretty cool. I'm guessing there aren't many traffic laws them seem to worry about. The drivers were good though I never really felt like I was going to die, I doubted that the drivers wanted to harm their new Mercedes and Volkswagen's. It just felt like I was a character stuck in the video game "Crazy Taxi."

Basically all we did all day was walk around and checked out our side of the island. We really didn't have any idea where we were heading we just kind of followed the crowds and walked along the coastline taking pictures here and there and mostly importantly trying to find some cheap food.

(A park by the sea.)

(An old Maserati)

(I don't know)

(The old city we never made it to, the walk was way too far)

The Maltese nightlife is a crazy experience. The best part is their were no entry fees so you didn't have to have any club loyalties. If a place sucked or was empty you could just walk out and try the next one. The best part is each place had girls outside handing out flyers for free drinks and 2 for 1s so it was a pretty cheap night for us. We would just keep going outside grab a flyer and head back in. Some clubs were 18+ but most clubs were 16+ so a lot of the people looked like children. Making you think "go home baby" and "where is your mother?" Jordan and I were easily the two tallest guys on the island. Making it very hard to lose each other in the crowded streets. Our last night we happened to make friends with some Dutch bartenders at one of the more quieter bars. We scored a lot of free pizza and drinks out of the girls and stayed up basically until the next sunrise at the bar next door where after everything closes, the place hosts all the other bartenders. At about 6:30 AM we step out of the bar and start our 45 min walk back home. The picture below is proof. I had wanted a morning picture of the bay, I just never would've thought I'd get it by not sleeping. It was good practice for the next weekend, because we heard in Spain you don't go out until after 1AM and you stay out all morning.