England

This one's easy. Apart from catch up with Emma and Waitey, and Bonnie from Planet, (and lose a bunch of money playing poker) I did absolutely nothing. It was great.

I'm now in Stockholm (first impressions: great) with Mike, and we're about to go sort out car hiring and some other stuff.

Also, as always, my Ireland pics have been put up on my Picasa page. The shutter button on my camera is broken, so I might be relying on Wes for pics from now on.

Ireland

What do I say about Ireland? I liked it a lot - the people are friendly and there's an air of jovial optimism throughout, even in the once-troubled North. I could give a blow by blow description of the tour I went on, but that would miss the point, I think. The tour was more of an immersion in the existing pub culture of Ireland and the ties the country and its people retain to their often turbulent history. I had a good group and it was probably my favourite tour that I've been on so far.

A couple of highlights, though - the magical Aran islands, where I enjoyed the hell out of biking up and down the island. I might have to get hold of a bike when I get home. Being in Derry on July 12th and having the infamous Orange Lodge parade march right past us was pretty crazy - ten (or even five) years ago, going anywhere near the thing would have been suicidal. This year, the riot police were out, but looking bored, and the worst we saw was some young teenagers throwing stones at a couple of buildings. Having spent a bit of time in the region, my personal opinion is that, similarly to Palestine, the Republicans had a just cause, but destroyed my sympathy for then by randomly setting off bombs everywhere.

I'd like to return to Ireland in the future and maybe spend some time in Dublin, but I wasn't sorry when the tour was over - it's hard to keep up that pace for long.

Italy

I hope I don't offend anyone with this, but this would have to be my least favourite country in Europe, so far anyway. The beer sucks. The food, at standard price points, sucks. Almost everything is broken and/or dirty. The people are rude, to each other and also to customers in restaurants and bars. It sort of combines the rudeness and poor service of some of Eastern Europe with the high prices and rampant tourism of the West. I know a lot of people love it, but I'm not sure why.

Still, I'm having a fine time, thanks to the hostels I've stayed at, which have been good enough that it doesn't matter what city they're located in. I've been three nights in Rome already and except for sightseeing and eating I haven't ventured outside the hostel at all.

Backing up a sec though, Florence was OK, but after I got over the great view of the campsite I was at (up by Piazzale Michelangelo, which is a must visit if you go to Florence) there wasn't a lot to do. It was hard to work up the enthusiasm to go out to bars in town when the hostel was a nice place to socialise with other backpackers. One day, however, I did daytrip to Cinque Terre, a World Heritage listed series of 5 little fishing towns along the western coast of Italy. I hiked the two and a half hour or so distance between them and it was really nice there. A highlight was taking a dip in the Mediterranean at the northernmost village, which is the prettiest.

By the way, I uploaded all my photos from the trip so far here, including the Intrepid photos and the ones from Cinque Terre etc. No time to comment on them really, but I recommend taking a look at the Bled and Cinque Terre photos.

After Florence I headed south to Rome and have been here for three nights. St Peter's Basilica managed to be simultaneously impressive and dull. All religious art looks the same and I'm incredibly sick of it. If I see one more painting of Mary holding the infant Jesus I may set it on fire. The Colosseum was better, although due to the unbelievable inefficiency of, well, everything in Italy, the line took about 5 years to get through and I felt going inside actually somehow made the structure LESS impressive. The imposing outer wall is the best angle on it, I think.

Anyway, being in Italy was bad enough, and writing huge blog posts about it is definitely not how I intend to spend my time. It's American Independence Day today so no doubt the Americans here will be in the mood to party. I'm flying to Ireland tomorrow, next dispatch will probably not be till after the 8 day tour I'm doing, which ends on the 14th.