Dear Somebody Feed Phil producers,
This is totally your fault. I was perfectly happy being a lush here in Seattle, but NOOOO -- you had to show my wife and I the gastronomic delights of LONDON and now my credit card is weeping bitterly! Look what you made me do:
September 15: Get on a Delta flight from Seattle to London.
September 16: Get off a Delta flight from Seattle to London and cool my heels in the Lufthansa lounge because the only tickets from London to Munich were for business class. How am I supposed to ever fly coach again once I've tasted the sweet, sweet nectar that are the seats closest to the pilot-end of the aircraft?!
September 17: Wake up in Munich. Meh, I've woken up in stranger places. Trot on over to the Egyptian Museum, because when you're in Germany, what you want to see is stuff from Egypt.
September 18: OKTOBERFEST! Oh yeah, my wife's already living in mortal fear of THIS little stop on our trip! If water is the beer of life (or something like that) then I'm going to take a booze-bath for the ages! I've already got this planned out: 1. sit down; 2. drink beer; 3. drink beer; 4. drink beer; 5. umm, well, I'll figure something out.
September 19: Food tour. I'M LOOKING AT YOU AGAIN, PRODUCERS! Oh yeah, we're supposed to go some big building, too: Nymph-something-or-other. I voted for Oktoberfest pt. 2, but I was outvoted by the saner members of our traveling party. Friggen Democracy...
September 20: Train ride to Vienna. I've been told by the Missus that I will not be allow to blow the whistle, or get out of my seat for any reason what-so-ever. When we arrive in Vienna, we'll be in Vienna.
September 21: We're going to the opera. I've been told by the Missus that MST3K'ing the production will NOT be tolerated. Seriously, I'm getting dragged to an opera. I can't even sit still through a Looney Tunes cartoon, much less two+ hours of something Wagner cranked out. Le sigh. Hip flask it is!
September 22: We're off to FLORENCE, and a stay in Sant Ambrogio. Apparently, there's stuff to do there and we'll be doing a lot of it. As long as there's no Wagner, I'm down. Oh, and we're touring little towns in Tuscany, too. I'm told there'll be wine. I smile. I smile a lot.
September 29: Off to London and a stay in historic Hampstead. If anything gets between me and Sunday Roast, woe be unto it! There's a 15-minute gap between Sunday Roast and Sunday Getting Utterly Badgered, so I'll have to see what kind of amusements I can come up with. We're also planning to see dead people at Highgate Cemetery. Apparently, they planted Karl Marx there, so that's worth tramping a mile or so across the Heath to see.
October 4: It's back on Delta, hopefully with my Trusted Traveler privs still intact, and home to Seattle.
In short, I totally blame you lot at Somebody Feed Phil for this affront to financial responsibility. Please do me a favor: um, next time could you do Buenos Ares? I've always wanted to go there!
-- Mike Beebe