I Can’t Even

I woke up shortly after noon, with the kind of headache that could only mean spending another long night with our guest from the Highlands, Johnnie Walker... The pub was already packed, and a crowd roared on occasion - it must have been the football. Flipping through the channels on TV, I found the matching match, England and Ireland playing Six Nations rugby. No one would be singing "Jerusalem" after this one, so we skipped the pub and headed out at halftime. On our last full day in London, we decided to go looking for more culture, starting at the…

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I’ve Seen the Flag on the Marble Arch

And right from the start, London meant business. If business means separating tourists (and locals, I'm sure) from their money as expediently as possible. Just to leave the airport (Luton, since we took a cheap flight) cost £52 for a train to our hostel in Tulse Hill. And despite that, we had to wonder the whole time if we were on the wrong train, there was almost no directional signage anywhere to be found, and even the locals didn't seem to know where exactly Tulse Hill was, or if this train was in fact going there. When the train finally…

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Sørdansk

I woke up with that strange sense of "where the fucking fuck am I?" There were people in the room speaking French, and I was on the top of a creaky bunk bed. Nothing made much sense to me at first. It took me much longer than it should have to remember that I flew to Europe yesterday, or that I was in a hostel in Copenhagen. Ben was already up and ready to go to a Danish dentist, we missed the first appointment but again what else can we expect, we're Team Fail. We only planned for one day…

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Team Fail: From The Rescue!

It started out of spite... a few days after New Year's, I bought a ticket to Copenhagen, for the end of February. I had just had a bitter argument with my parents about the possibility of going hiking in Iceland this summer, and they even offered to use their leftover airline points to get me there... until I was forced to admit I had no idea who was coming with me yet, even though the trip was at least six months away. So I decided to go farther, and sooner, and just kind of hoped that if I waved tickets…

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Urbex Challenge #103

Even as well as 2015 started, this one just seemed too good to be true. I'd heard a few weeks ago that the Walters Building was wide open, and at my level no less, for the first time in at least 10 years. I even got directions to it so I'd know exactly which door to use - either the best chance I'll ever have again at an asylum, or an elaborate trap to send me into the teeth of security. All I needed was someone willing to try it with me, and I even managed to make that happen,…

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Temporary Autonomous Zone

I've had my eyes on this building for years now, since I lived downtown. Not for much good reason, except that it was the local abandonment, not counting the one that was just an elevator ride away. But despite being so close, it always stayed locked up and even defied our efforts to Occupy it instead of wasting everyone's time fighting for a silly park. This building began as a hotel, the Richford, in around 1920, founded by one Richard Ford, initially without much success despite a central location in the middle of downtown Rochester and between the then two…

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