Snow shots!
Tall.
Tall.
Wide.
Dusk.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Forest for the Trees
In the spirit of xmas, I will leave you with some snow shots.
Pathway.
Pathway.
Trunks.
Tops.
Tangled.
Bielsko
I will keep it simple. I woke up. I gave a talk at the Academy of Computer Science in Bielsko. I took a gondola up Mount Szyndzielnyia. I walked through the forest. I ate lots of great Polish food. End of story.
Janusz' house during the day. We are going to try and put xmas lights on that tree :)
Janusz' house during the day. We are going to try and put xmas lights on that tree :)
The gondola track from the top.
Water runoff from the stream. We drank from this. My other love: free water!
Ground shot coming home on the trail.
The waiting game...
So I usually don't like to write a lot of boring words on this blog, but I will make an exception for my December 16th post here:
The plan was simple really. We had a plane ticket from Madrid to Luton (outside London) via EasyJet and a ticket from Luton to Katowice in Poland where Janusz could pick us up. In order to make our 10:55 am Madrid flight, we had to be there by 10:15, but we planned to get there by 9 or so. I should interrupt this now and tell you about how we kept being amazed about how early everything closed in Madrid. The bars would close early, people were not out late much, and the lights of the palace turned off early. Well it turns out that during our whole visit to Madrid, the clock on my phone was one hour off and the real time was always one hour later than we thought. We didn't realize this until we made it to the Madrid Airport and found that all the clocks showed that it was 10:10 instead of the 9:10 that we thought it was. We ran up to the checkin counter that said Last Call for London and told them we were here to checkin. The guy just said, "Esta Cerrado." After a while, I had to ask him what our options were and he said that we had to just change flights. We went back to the EasyJet desk and the next flight was to Gatwick and it would arrive at 8:00pm, which wouldn't allow us to make our 8:15 Luton flight. Gatwick is an hour and a half away from Luton. So we were told that there would be a British Airways flight at noon that we should try to get on, however that was in a different terminal. So we took the shuttle to the BA terminal and stood in line only to find out that they had seats, but that they were 900 euros each! Needless to say, we turned that option down, but then went over the information desk and found out about another option at CometAir that was would get to Gatwick at 5pm. So we went back on the shuttle, waited in line again and talked to CometAir. Amazingly they had seats available and they were 140 euros for the both of them. However, landing in Gatwick at 5pm and making a 7:30 boarding in Luton is a tall order. As soon as we landed, we rushed through passport control. Cindy went through customs without her luggage to ask for Gatwick to Luton travel information while I waited for the luggage. As soon as we found out, we made our way over to the trains, purchased tickets and took the next express train to Luton. That train was scheduled to arrive at Luton at 7:05, but it got delayed and arrived at 7:15. However, that train doesn't take you to the airport. You must take a shuttle. We ran to down the esclators to the shuttle and I even accidentally dropped my suitcase down the esclator. We made it on the shuttle and then arrived at the airport at 7:30. I was in charge of luggage and Cindy ran for the checkin line. We made it! Luckily I got cell reception and was able to email Janusz to pick us up in Katowice. Janusz' mom had even made us sandwiches and I slept well, if only for a few hours before I had to wake up and give a presentation in the morning.
But one quesion remains: Why is Madrid one hour later in time than London? Look at a map. It doesn't make sense.
Oh, well. I am safe and sound in Bielsko now.
We ate here. This restaurant is at a few places in the Madrid Airport. I wonder if they know how their name sounds in English. ;)
The plan was simple really. We had a plane ticket from Madrid to Luton (outside London) via EasyJet and a ticket from Luton to Katowice in Poland where Janusz could pick us up. In order to make our 10:55 am Madrid flight, we had to be there by 10:15, but we planned to get there by 9 or so. I should interrupt this now and tell you about how we kept being amazed about how early everything closed in Madrid. The bars would close early, people were not out late much, and the lights of the palace turned off early. Well it turns out that during our whole visit to Madrid, the clock on my phone was one hour off and the real time was always one hour later than we thought. We didn't realize this until we made it to the Madrid Airport and found that all the clocks showed that it was 10:10 instead of the 9:10 that we thought it was. We ran up to the checkin counter that said Last Call for London and told them we were here to checkin. The guy just said, "Esta Cerrado." After a while, I had to ask him what our options were and he said that we had to just change flights. We went back to the EasyJet desk and the next flight was to Gatwick and it would arrive at 8:00pm, which wouldn't allow us to make our 8:15 Luton flight. Gatwick is an hour and a half away from Luton. So we were told that there would be a British Airways flight at noon that we should try to get on, however that was in a different terminal. So we took the shuttle to the BA terminal and stood in line only to find out that they had seats, but that they were 900 euros each! Needless to say, we turned that option down, but then went over the information desk and found out about another option at CometAir that was would get to Gatwick at 5pm. So we went back on the shuttle, waited in line again and talked to CometAir. Amazingly they had seats available and they were 140 euros for the both of them. However, landing in Gatwick at 5pm and making a 7:30 boarding in Luton is a tall order. As soon as we landed, we rushed through passport control. Cindy went through customs without her luggage to ask for Gatwick to Luton travel information while I waited for the luggage. As soon as we found out, we made our way over to the trains, purchased tickets and took the next express train to Luton. That train was scheduled to arrive at Luton at 7:05, but it got delayed and arrived at 7:15. However, that train doesn't take you to the airport. You must take a shuttle. We ran to down the esclators to the shuttle and I even accidentally dropped my suitcase down the esclator. We made it on the shuttle and then arrived at the airport at 7:30. I was in charge of luggage and Cindy ran for the checkin line. We made it! Luckily I got cell reception and was able to email Janusz to pick us up in Katowice. Janusz' mom had even made us sandwiches and I slept well, if only for a few hours before I had to wake up and give a presentation in the morning.
But one quesion remains: Why is Madrid one hour later in time than London? Look at a map. It doesn't make sense.
Oh, well. I am safe and sound in Bielsko now.
We ate here. This restaurant is at a few places in the Madrid Airport. I wonder if they know how their name sounds in English. ;)
Mmmm
The steps up to Janusz' house. I wonder how this is all going to look in the morning.
Last Last Day in Madrid
I liked this building near the train station. The traffic kept whizzing by. Immediately after this pic, there was an accident.
Madrid has these great Limpiezas (Cleaners) that really do a good job at keeping the streets of Madrid looking spic and span. Each of them wear this bright green and yellow jacket and have their own pair of trash cans that they wheel around.
This is Real Palacio. It was lit beautifully from afar, but unfortunately when we got close, they shut off the lights. Why do they shut them off at 11:30pm?
Last day in Madrid
Sorry, but this is the first time I have been able to make a post in a while. I am sitting here at Janusz' house in Bielsko, Poland and I will catch you up, don't worry :)
So it was the last full day in Madrid (Dec. 15) and we decided to try and see all of the places that we still had left to visit. What's more is that the museums in Madrid are free on Saturday afternoons!
We stopped by the Madrid train station. It was pretty impressive.
So it was the last full day in Madrid (Dec. 15) and we decided to try and see all of the places that we still had left to visit. What's more is that the museums in Madrid are free on Saturday afternoons!
We stopped by the Madrid train station. It was pretty impressive.
Although, Cindy wasn't very patient with my persistent picture taking because she was hungry.
So I took her to a doner kebab house to have a bocadillo (sandwich). It was great and I took a photo of my ice for my Cola Light.
Glass elevators are my favorite and they have one at the Reina Sofia, which is their modern art museum. We found the Sofia to be much better than even Madrid's claim to fame: the Prado.
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