A Scenic World: Euro Edition

A collection of photographs from excellent travel adventures.

Bergen is a beautiful place. On our first day, we happened upon the opening ceremony of a big festival. It was as if the king and queen had come just to welcome us. However, our joy levels declined a bit as we realized that putting Norway at the end of a month of traveling was financially terrifying. Let’s just say I have eaten far too many sandwiches this calendar year.

These pictures are from quite possibly my favorite day of traveling. My friends and I took the Fløibanen (a sweet funicular train) up to a scenic view of the city. If that wasn’t enough, we then hiked around on some trails and ended up on top of a huge plateau where you could see for forever and a half. It was filled with gorgeous secret lakes and crazy rock pile structures. We ignored the trails and hiked around to the top of as many rocky crags as possible. Someday I will return to Norge to do some serious hiking. It is like the cap of God’s beauty container fell off as he was sprinkling it over the landscape and it left a huge pile of amazing.

This picture was taken during the festival of Las Fallas in Valencia, Spain. I studied there during spring semester of 2010. For 20 days in March, the city becomes a warzone. I have never seen so many unsupervised 5 year olds throwing huge firecrackers. I escaped with only 4 burn wounds. For 20 days in a row, the city lights off huge amounts of fireworks at 2 in the afternoon. They are part of a contest to see who can lose more of their hearing capacity and are designed to shake your internal organs around in your ribcage. There are also hundreds of enormous beautiful sculptures that can cost millions of euros and a year to make. At the end of the week, they burn them all in a few hours. Seriously. I will post pictures of them another time. This picture is of a family dressed in traditional Valencian attire. The dresses were incredibly ornate and some of the guys looked like video game characters. Excellent. 

This picture was taken during the festival of Las Fallas in Valencia, Spain. I studied there during spring semester of 2010. For 20 days in March, the city becomes a warzone. I have never seen so many unsupervised 5 year olds throwing huge firecrackers. I escaped with only 4 burn wounds.

For 20 days in a row, the city lights off huge amounts of fireworks at 2 in the afternoon. They are part of a contest to see who can lose more of their hearing capacity and are designed to shake your internal organs around in your ribcage. There are also hundreds of enormous beautiful sculptures that can cost millions of euros and a year to make. At the end of the week, they burn them all in a few hours. Seriously. I will post pictures of them another time.

This picture is of a family dressed in traditional Valencian attire. The dresses were incredibly ornate and some of the guys looked like video game characters. Excellent. 

In the past 7 months, I have traveled over 25,000 miles. That is more than the distance around the equator. Whoa. Last year it was probably easily under 1,000. Thus, I have acquired a substantial amount of photos. I am planning to use this blog as a way to share these photos and perhaps some anecdotes about my wanderings. I hope you enjoy. This photo was taken near Notre Dame in Paris, France. It shows the Seine River as seen from a bridge. I was traveling with my friends Eric, Rachel, and an awesome frenchman that we met in our hostel named Sayid. Quasimodo was chilling outside and the sun was shining. Notre Dame is too big. Physics shouldn’t allow that beautiful of architecture to exist. I promise I will have better stories later. I just like this picture because it reminds me of a wonderful day in Paris.

In the past 7 months, I have traveled over 25,000 miles. That is more than the distance around the equator. Whoa. Last year it was probably easily under 1,000. Thus, I have acquired a substantial amount of photos. I am planning to use this blog as a way to share these photos and perhaps some anecdotes about my wanderings. I hope you enjoy.

This photo was taken near Notre Dame in Paris, France. It shows the Seine River as seen from a bridge. I was traveling with my friends Eric, Rachel, and an awesome frenchman that we met in our hostel named Sayid. Quasimodo was chilling outside and the sun was shining. Notre Dame is too big. Physics shouldn’t allow that beautiful of architecture to exist.

I promise I will have better stories later. I just like this picture because it reminds me of a wonderful day in Paris.