I have just arrived back in San Diego just a few hours ago, still serving the remainder of my jet-lag sentence. This has been the longest that I have not posted anything on my blog (almost a month), and sorry for the lack of a notice — I had to leave in a hurry to catch my flight out from Los Angeles to London-Gatwick.
I have about 3 gigs of pictures and short video clips, which I will put up soon enough. Right now, I have to take care of business. Here is just one picture. More to come.
Any guesses of where this was taken? (answer below)
London.
Update 11/2/11: A reader reached out to me for more details about backpacking Europe, so just in case this may help – here’s what I sent him.
I was residing in San Diego then, and the cheapest flight I found was from an airport more “major” than SD: LAX (Los Angeles). So it was worth it for me to drive 2 hours to LA then fly from LAX to London.
Apparently flight tickets from LA to London were the cheapest when seasons were changing, so in my case it was when summer was just ending and most people were finishing up with their vacations. I spent about US $550 round trip on just the return flight.
To get around Western Europe, for the most part I took the train network that connected the bulk of western Europe (Euro Rail? Eurail?), where they had some kind of student pass if you were under 26 years old. It was a flat fee for an “all you can ride”, for X weeks (I think X was 3 or 4 weeks). I can’t remember how much I spent on that pass. It’s been 4 years so I can’t remember the exact details, and it would have been out of date by now anyway, but that’s the general idea of how to get around. I backpacked alone, and I lugged around with me an old fashioned physical book: a backpacker’s book with maps, and points of interest, and most importantly, info about HOSTELS for students. best $15 you’ll spend on Amazon 
Of all the places I visited, half the time I stayed with friends (or friends/families of theirs – they were so kind and I’m blessed to know such nice people). The other half I stayed at hostels. They ranged about 20 – 30 euros per night. ~15 euros on the low end, 35 euros on the higher end.
The only gotcha that took me by surprise was crossing from London to Brussels via the “chunnel”. When I went from London to Brussels, it went without a hitch. I just bought a ticket and off I went. But getting back to London from Brussels, apparently the ticket price was so high, that I ended up getting help from locals to find an alternative way to get back to London to catch my flight: by getting to London by bus (the bus would get on a ferry across the water). Not sure what the deal was, perhaps I got lucky the first time, or because there were too many people going the other direction that I needed a reservation. *shrug* either way, that’s part of backpacking alone: unexpected adventures.
Hope this helps!
Cheers
Jay