updates from the summer

well i wasn't as good about this blog this summer as i hoped i would be... but i have had a great and busy summer!

graduated from school in mid june and hung out in chicago for a few weeks afterward which was a nice way to say goodbye to my friends and chicago...

at the end of june i set out for a roadtrip with alexis.  we had an amazing time, we went through illinois, wisconsin, minnesota, south dakota, wyoming, idaho, oregon and california... there are a bunch of pics below of all of our adventures

after about two weeks i headed back to chicago and packed up all the belongings in my apartment for a fun u-haul trip back to boston with my mom... it was a lot of driving but it went pretty well... immediately after the cotton fam packed up for the cape and went to emily scott's wedding which was fabulous... the wedding was beautiful and it was fun to see all of the concord peeps in one place

from the cape i headed to nantucket to spend a few days with the tosti family... plenty of beach time which was nice... from there i came home to concord to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday party - we had a celebration at home and then headed to stratford for the weekend which as always was nice and relaxing... post stratford i came back to boston for a week to settle in followed by a fun trip to long island for a couple days with burgess and then a weekend in nyc with burgess, alexis and sejal before starting work on the 16th...

this past weekend i capped the summer off with a trip to cape ann for tom and catherine's wedding.  it was a wonderful time with a beautiful location, a trip to the beach, a couple of bonfires and a beautiful really touching ceremony - i was so glad that i could be there with them for this amazing time in their lives!

being back at work is starting to feel more normal - although i keep having this sinking feeling that there is no more grad school get out of jail free card... but before the warm weather really disappears later this week i have one last trip to colombia which i am really looking forward to - will update with pictures when i get back next week!

new blog

well since sweden i have missed blogging - so i decided to start a new blog just for my every day stuff... the new blog is emilycotton.blogspot.com i hope you come visit!

since sweden...

when i got back from sweden i felt TOTALLY traveled out... so from march until june i didn't leave chicago!  i think it was the longest stretch that i have had without going anywhere in the past five years, and to be honest it felt GREAT.

but something that i have missed since i was in sweden was blogging... so i decided to start another blog that rather than just having nordic adventures has all the little adventures that i go on.

so in the past month i finished my mba (eeek!) and then left chicago for the first time in three months to go to my super fun carleton five year reunion.  it was great to catch up with all the carleton kids that i hadn't seen in way too long a time.

THEN after most of my friends left chicago i went on a super fun 12 day roadtrip with alexis... we made it through illinois, wisconsin, minnesota, south dakota, wyoming, montana, idaho, oregon and california - woohoo! and had more fun than i thought we could have sitting in a car for 12 days... i got to see so many things that i have always wanted to see and it was a really great trip

so i got back to chicago late late wednesday night and there is basically no one here :(  my mom is flying in on monday night and we are driving a uhaul to boston - so i have between now and monday night to pack up my whole apartment - which of course i am totally procrastinating... luckily i have sent a lot of stuff home with my parents over the course of the past six months so hopefully it won't take too much packing time!

2nd day in iceland

i woke up early my second day in iceland and packed up all my stuff... i think that people thought i was crazy for having so much stuff for such a short trip... little did they know i was hauling three months worth of stuff along with me :)

anyhow i set off for the blue lagoon which is definitely the most famous tourist location in iceland.  it was a very pretty drive from downtown reykjavik to the blue lagoon and it was a nice relaxing morning sitting there and hanging out... the springs were amazing and very warm which was nice in chilly windy iceland.  there is a bus directly from the springs to the airport so i headed back there and snapped some shots of the scenery along the way.

then i hung out at kef airport for a little while and waited to head back to boston...

iceland!

i have wanted to come to iceland for about 5 years... i don't know why but it has always been on my list, and now i am finally here!  given that icelandair had the cheapest flights to and from stockholm my way home seemed like the perfect place to come.

i arrived in kef yesterday afternoon, now many people fly through kef to other destinations in europe - but clearly not too many get off in iceland... after the transfer area which was quite large i got to the baggage claim area which was smaller than the one at the good old manch-vegas airport... i was shocked - this was supposed to be a capital of a country!!! the size shocks just kept coming...

for those of you unaware here are some iceland facts.  the population of the country is 317,000 and 2/3s of the population lives in reykjavik... so that means that the population of reykjavik is about 200,000 but downtown reykjavik is about the size of downtown concord (a town with 40,000 in population) with fewer large buildings... CRAZY!

anyhow, so last night i walked around reykjavik and got myself some dinner... although iceland's currency has been greatly devalued it seems to have had little effect on prices here... although hotels are incredibly reasonable food is even more expensive than it was in stockholm!

the city is beautiful, i can see the ocean from my hotel and there are all sorts of little brightly colored houses.  this morning i did some blogging and emailing and then got up had breakfast and walked around the downtown, i bought my customary print and found the 66 north hat that i had been wanting since stockholm... otherwise no shopping for me...

this afternoon i went on a horseback riding trip.  icelandic horses have been bred in complete isolation so they look really different kinda short and stout and very furry and when they run they go kinda sideways. anyhow it is quite cold in iceland and VERY windy but the horseback riding across the lava field was quite fun... however the pics are pretty bad, it is not easy to shoot with a slr while riding a horse- sorry :(

there is currently a volcano erupting in iceland - it started on march 21st and is apparently quite a big deal... i guess everytime this small volcano has erupted in the past it has triggered a HUGE volcano next door... so people are thinking that might happen again soon the last time it happened in 1783 BAD THINGS happened... so obviously i wanted to go see it - but also obviously since i didn't know about this until yesterday all the tours were booked... oh well

so tonight i am going to go get myself some icelandic fish and chips - repack my bags and tomorrow i am going to go to the blue lagoon before the airport back to boston!

thoughts on trip as a whole

so not that i haven't written enough about the past ten days - but it was a really fun trip :) first it was nice to not travel by myself but also not to travel with a HUGE group, which business school seems to lend itself to.  i think 4 people is the perfect number and we had a great group... we all seemed to be interested in pretty much the same schedule, getting up early, seeing lots of stuff, having a drink or two in the afternoon, having great dinners and heading to bed at a very tame hour.

so yay! the girls were lots of fun and we had MANY laughs along the way... in terms of cities i think that vienna was my favorite, it was so beautiful and especially at eastertime the markets and the eggs were amazing.  budapest we had a great time but it was not at all what i was expecting - it is still very european whereas i guess i thought it would be more similar to turkey? or just more eastern?

prague was the only city i had been to before and it was great to go back... my family oftentimes travels in the winter and it is amazing what a difference a few months can make - prague was packed! and it was warm and just sitting out in the square with a drink was great.  i remember on my last trip which was in december we were all FREEZING the entire time...  this also makes me want to go back to scandinavia in the summer, i think that traveling during the winter is just more difficult, you can't pack as much in during the day.  i certainly don't want to join the hoards of tourists in july in august but i think in the future i will try to take more trips in the april-may and sept-oct ranges.

prague

so unlike the train from vienna to budapest which was only 5 hours and where we could play bananagrams the entire time the train from budapest to prague was 7 hours and cramped and our car had a heating issue in that although it was 65 degrees outside the heat could not be turned off... i had a total heat attack and had to leave the car... but otherwise we got there safe and sound

so by the time we found and checked into our hotel it was definitely time for some food.  we headed to pivovarsky klub where we had awesome beers and some great czech food... we sat for quite a while and soaked up the ambiance as well as the beer.  on the way home from restaurant to the hotel we faced quite the conundrum, we got to the train station at 8:55 apparently the stands that sold tickets closed at 9, however, at the station we were at they were already closed.  so having no way to buy a ticket we just got on the train anyways, they had a similar systems in vienna and budapest and although we had always purchased tickets we had never seen anyone get caught for not purchasing them.  well when we got off at our stop we were busted.  now i would have been fine being busted if i had the opportunity to purchase a ticket but we didn't!  initially the cop wanted to fine us each $35 when a ticket costs $1, we talked him down to just fining us $35 for all four of us... but still pretty annoying.  we headed back to the hotel and played more bananagrams... it was starting to become a theme.

the next day we set out early for the jewish quarter.  prague has a great jewish history and the 7 buildings that comprise the museum are definitely a must see.  i had been to all of them when i visited prague with my family in 2003 but it was nice to see them again when it was a bit warmer.  we had lunch at kolkovna good old schnitzel and our first of many $2 .5L pilsner urquells YUM - nothing like cheap beer and fried meat!  after lunch we walked back through both the old town square which had a crazy crowed easter market and made our way over to wenceslas square and the mucha museum.  i had really enjoyed this museum the last time i was in prague and this time it was no different.  mucha is a very interesting figure and had a huge impact on prague and the entire czech independence movement.  we ended the day with drinks outside of the astronomical clock where we got to see the clock chime twice and then had a cute dinner followed by bananagrams, hearts and some european candy :)

saturday we decided that we didn't have enough left to do in prague for the two whole days that we had left and it was supposed to rain so we needed some indoor activities... we took the train about an hour and a half away to the pilsner urquell brewery in plzen.  although plzen is a sprawling industrial town it has a cute old town area where both the brewery museum and the museum restaurant are.  the brewery museum wins hands down for best audio tour they had hysterical characters that constantly talked about how disgusting the beer in the town used to be.  the museum restaurant where we had lunch was fabulous, they serve unfiltered unpasturized pilsner urquell which cannot be bought anywhere else that was fabulous.  we all had yummy czech treats including marinated camenbert and i had some great pork with deep friend potato pancakes - YUM!  we walked around the town quickly and went on the brewery tour in the afternoon then headed back to prague and grabbed dinner... followed by even more bananagrams and cards :)

sunday we got up and walked over toward the charles bridge... we walked up the hill to the castle and saw all the major sights up there as well as the changing of the guard.  then we had our only truly terrible meal - we asked for hamburgers and instead got this weird mystery meat that NONE of us could eat it was pretty hysterical.  after that we walked around got some food to eat on the train and once on the train we celebrated carol's 29th birthday with some warm grocery store champagne :)