Europe Journal: Home Base

An interesting aspect of the European journey was the ability not to stay in hostels or hotels, but to live in some of the places that people actually inhabit in these cities.  This was done courtesy of crashing on my sisters couch in London, and utilizing the fabulous air.bnb for finding amazing flats to stay at along the way (highly recommended btw). 

This yielded an interesting experience in understanding cities not as a tourist, but in the words of Rick Steves - as a "temporary local".  More on some of these home bases and the ways in which one connects with a certain neighborhood, but for now, I found it interesting, via Google Earth, to look at the locations in comparison of urban form - each one at approximately the same scale - with a yellow dot on where we lived.

London  (Waltham Forest)

Barcelona (Gracia)

Rome (2 locations in Coliseum/Forum area)

Siena (near the Duomo)