Power cords and chargers are one of the biggest scams out there. I recently reactivated an old US phone, and later realized I had lost the charger for it. The charger is a cord with a small transformer attached to it. Like Dell, who insidiously change the shape of their cord each year, Sprint askes an outrageous price for the cord ($40!!!). Pure scam, pure and simple.

That's where the glorious solution known as Ebay comes in to play: Just bought the charger for $0.99 and it works great. na na na! So, if you're missing a power cord or charger for any device, I suggest you look there first!

Outrageous amount of traveling with no major snafus. Left Barcelona with a belly full of good stuff from Bar Pinotxos in the Boqueria and topped it off with a pint of beer at the 10 Bell's Pub in London, at which time I got bored and started sending text messages around the globe with the little credit my cell-phone had left.. if you got something in the middle of the night, forgive me.

Anyway, London, despite impressing me with it's beauty (yes, it really is beautiful) took about 6 hours to become oppressive, but I took it with a sense of humor... stayed up all night on Wednesday and took a 4am cab to Heathrow, then got slapped with an unbelievable 280-pound bill for my excess luggage, almost got banned from the flight for using profanity in response, but ultimately convinced them to reduce it by 50%. Despite that, KLM is a really nice airline and underscores the fact that all European airlines (except the budget ones) are millions of times superior to their American counterparts.

Had about 1 hour in Amsterdam, and flying in obeserved a large number of lakes and canals. Will have to return there for a proper visit one of these days. Unfortunately, my theory that staying up all night would lead me to a good day's rest on the plane utterly failed and I immediately passed out on the couch. Now I'm awake and back to work...

This sign marks a stop on the Tibidabo Tram in Barcelona, but it's clearly inspired from that great masterpiece, Space Invaders.

I cannot understand why mobile phone calls are so expensive in Europe. The 3 Euros I have left on my phone card are good for over an hour of phone calls to the United States, but only 4 minutes of calls to Spanish mobile numbers. Wierd, and incredibly annoying!

Cadaques is one of the nicest places on the Costa Brava and it's got twice the liberty of New York! Either that or they like to manage the air-traffic here in a particularily splashy manner.