Being staunch infront of the Statue of Liberty in June 2009.

Welcome to COOL STORY HANSEL. A blog in which I ramble on about my trips overseas and often have no idea why im talking about such things. I try to not bore my readers too much so I get to the point quickly, leave all the boring tourist shit out of the posts, talk about completely irrelevant things, and include a hell of a lot of photos.

This blog has so far been through two overseas trips – 2007 and 2009. The third, and biggest, will be coming in July 2010 and go all the way (hopefully) to January 2011.

My trip in 2007 was my first trip overseas and pretty much my first trip anywhere on my own. I left at the end of June and spent a bit over a week in the US and then skipped over to Europe for another four. The main purpose of the trip was to go and see the Tour de France (TdF) which I had dreamed of for a while. This was a special TdF in that it started in London, so that fitted in perfectly with also going on a short Contiki trip. The Contiki went through too many countries and cities in too little a time. However, this Contiki tour laid the foundations for what I now know about travel in Europe, and gave me a taste of a lot of great cities which I have subsequently revisited and enjoyed. The whole trip was great, everything went according to plan, but it left me wanting more.

So then came 2009. I had obviously wanted to go back overseas, and Lance Amrstrong coming out of retirement to race the TdF again just made my decision definite. This trip was going to be more ambitious than last time, lasting ten weeks total, with about two in the US and eight in Europe. My time in the US was amazing, I picked perfect cities, perfect hotels and perfect things to do. This good fortune spread all the way through Europe to the end of the trip. The TdF couldnt have gone any better either. Awesome weather the entire time, seeing the man himself race less than a foot away from me, and seeing it finish in Paris for the second time. For this trip I started planning eight months ahead, researching every day about various cities in Europe, whats good and whats not, and it paid off, everything went to plan. I also came back with a tonne of photos, most of which are the best ive ever taken in my life.

To check out maps of where I went for these two trips then check out the maps section at the top of the page.

And now for the big one. July 2010 to January 2011. Stay tuned…