Monday, September 14, 1998 -- 1:09am

What a few weeks.  I've been travelling like mad.  This past week I was in London (twice), Munich, Milan and then spent the weekend in Rome.  I saw some really cool stuff in Rome- here are a few pictures:

Pantheon - 9/11/98	Vatican - 9/12/98	Vatican - 9/12/98

Rome is a beautiful city- there is so much to see.  You have to be patient with the autos, scooters, etc.  Fortunately I was there during a rainy weekend and it didn't seem like it was that bad- I've heard horror stories.

I also had a vacation a few weeks ago.  I was in Aix en Provence for french classes, then my friend Jim came to visit.  So here's a picture of Jim, sitting in a London taxi:

Jim Welsch - London 9/3/98

So we had a great time- we travelled all through southern France, then into northern Spain.  We hung out mostly in this great little town called Sitges, plus Barcelona.  Let me see if I've got any pictures of those places.... oh yes here:

Sitges Beach - 9/1/98	Sitges Competition - 9/2/98

I don't remember the name of the above competition- but apparently this is done quite a bit around northern Spain- teams of people stack themselves up, and whichever team gets the most people stacked wins.  The guy on top is actually a boy- he looked about 6 years old.  Quite a brave little guy.  So we were wandering around the streets one afternoon and happened on a mob of people in the middle of the street, so they were getting ready for this competition.  We hung around and watched for a bit.

We saw plenty of other stuff- we were in this little beach town in southern France called Sete- and they were having this 300-year old tradition going on.  It was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen- they do jousting with boats.  Too bad I didn't snap any photos.  Other places we went- Arles, Avignon, Carcassone, Perpignon, among many other places.  We had a great time.  One of my favorite places was Barcelona.  We spent considerable time checking out the Gaudi architecture.  Incredible stuff.