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...