We arrived in Bath and I brought the others to the same hostel Lewis and I had so enjoyed the previous time we were there, Bath Backpackers. After dropping our bags off I took the others for a stroll around the city, up along the canal, up the main street and then through the Circus and Royal Crescent then we stopped to let them rest in a small park next to a spire to Queen Victoria. After a short rest period and series of photographs of Jo posing in a tree we got back underway and headed back towards to hostel through the big park before I introduced Jo and Macky to the glory of La Baguette and its amazing, cheap pastries.
We then headed back into the hostel and chilled out watching crappy movies for a couple of hours before heading to a nearby Wetherspoons. Wetherspoons is a cheap, decent chain of pubs and do stuff like £7.50 steak and beer combos which aren't bad value. After this the others, being knackered from the couple of hour stroll, went to bed while I, keen to go out and have some fun, went for a wander and encountered vast numbers of students all heading in the same direction.
While exploring I was informed that I was "going the wrong way" by a group of them and discovered they were all going to a big uni pub and, as I was Australian, I was now required to go with them, which was totally not my plan at all. We queued for about 45 minutes to get into the destination pub, "The Earl", only to get to the front of the queue and be given a ticket and told to wait in the next door pub until our number was called as it was that full already (9pm). Fortunately the pub next door was reasonably cheap, 2 large cocktails for £5. Unfortunately it only sold cocktails and was so crowded I quickly became separated from the group I went in with and so I spent an hour or so making various new friends before heading out again to see if there was somewhere else to see.
From there I soon found a place called "The Huntsman" where a decent live band was playing for a cheeky last beer before calling it a night around 1.
The next morning Macky discovered that he had lost his phone and after a fruitless search we went and grabbed more pasty goodness from La Baguette before another attempt was made at finding Macky a new jacket. This time, after a couple of hours of comparing shops, we finally found him a satisfactory one and his happiness was fully restored. After that I sent the others to check out the baths while I went back to the hostel and sorted the majority of the rest of our UK tours hostels, flights and trains, made only slightly difficult by having to wait for Macky to agree on the hostels, which meant that he looked at the ones I had picked as the best at each location, then had to go through all the options himself in very precise detail only to find he agreed with every single decision I had made.
That evening we again hit up Wetherspoons as it was Tuesday cheap steak night, which really meant there was no other options available to us. We also made inquiries about Macky's phone but to no avail. After cheap steaks we grabbed some beers from the nearby Sainsbury's then went back to the hostel where we befriended an American girl called Lyndsey and spent the night drinking and playing Jenga and Shithead.
On awakening we found a guy from the hostel had found Macky's phone, which was a relief, and after yet more pastry deliciousness we jumped on a bus to Stone Henge which was pretty much as advertised. A hengeful of stones of reasonable size and impressiveness, a bunch of barrows and an interesting audio guide.
After that I took the others to the Beau Nash for dinner as a change from our La Baguette and Wetherspoons cycle which was good then, after stocking up on a few more beers we headed back to the hostel for pre drinks with Lyndsey and an aussie, Lachlan, before we crossed the road and I took them to my previously discovered favourite club in the UK, Discord, which is essentially English Blink.
On entry we learnt, by the vast see of bandanas, eye patches and cutlasses, that it was a pirate themed night, so Jo promptly stole a pirates hat, we had a few cheap shots and it was straight to the dance floor to finally get our metal club fix dealt with.
Ended up making another group of English friends, Beccie and her friends, after being slightly assaulted by a very young and... voluptuous... pirate girl who I finally gave the slip to.
Stayed there until close then walked back to the hostel where I found Jo and Lyndsey people watching from the common room window before I went to bed.
After another bad nights sleep, courtesy of the chavs in our room who would loudly get in every night around 2am then loudly snore before loudly waking up, talking and taking turns showering and changing from about 6-8am every morning (yeah, they were a little loud) while the entire rest of the room glared at them, we checked out, dropped off our bags and watched a Knight's Tale in semi-comatose states before jumping on another train for the 20 minute trip west to Bristol.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Days 116-119 (Sept 30-Oct 3) - London
Landed in London and made our way to our hostel near Paddington. Had a late lunch in a nearby pub and decent indian for dinner. The only other noteable event being my anger from Prague again boiling over at Macky and Jo, who can be a bit full on when one is not in the best of moods.
The next day we slept in and then around midday got the tube to Chalk Farm where we met up with our mate Greg from back home, who now lives in Camden, working on movie special effects on some pretty high profile films. We had a beer in a little pub then went up to Greg's flat to meet him roommates and have a look at the place, which was very nice, before going for a walk into Camden center.
Greg showed us the sights of Camden and then we had lunch in a pub where we discovered our first "freshers". Freshers is an English university tradition where for the first week of the year the first year students, or "freshers", are taken on a series of pub crawls, drinking adventures and hazing activities. We found them, at 2pm, at pub 10 of a 13 location pub crawl, all blind drunk and covered in plain white shirts, mostly customised, primarily by the girls whose seemed to mysteriously be lacking various parts, coated in obscene permanent marker graffiti and often with bunny ears, bunny tails or bowties.
After our run in with the freshers and very entertaining lunch we made our way back through the Camden markets, which are the biggest, most impressive markets I have seen, with every stall selling completely different merchandise, whole sections devoted to specific types of clothing and peaking at a shop in the middle called "Cyberdog", a 4 storey shop devoted to cyberpunk, industrial, rave and fetish clothing and accessories and hugely futuristically stylised.
After that we separated from Greg for a while as we went back to the hostel to change and clean ourselves before we met up again around 8 at a pub we were told had a metal club for Mackys birthday on in the evenings. After a couple of hours of pre drinks the club opened at 10:30 so we left our newly made Israeli friends to head downstairs into the club. After paying our entry we discovered that it was 1) empty and 2) indie night so we left and went for a wander to try and find something better which climaxed at a pub playing super heavy death metal, but with very few patrons. We asked one helpful soul whether there was a club that would play "stuff like System of a Down, Slipknot, Korn etcetera" and were told "oh, you want a gay club" so, giving up, we went back to the indie club which turned out to be ok, cheap drinks and the music was, at least, not shitty dance music.
The next day was primarily spent on and around Oxford street, trying to find Macky a new jacket and Jo some warm clothes, as she hadn't realised that maybe Scotland and England in late October might be slightly chilly. After a while Lewis and I left them to their shopping and settled ourselves in a pub to watch Chelsea dominate Bolton 5-1. Midway through the next game, Arsenal and somebody, the others rejoined us, having successfully bought... Jo a jacket.
We then headed back to the hostel before getting Thai for dinner then giving Macky his birthday cake. After cake Lewis and I watched The Lovely Bones with a bunch of people then Lewis went to bed and I played a couple of lazy drinking games before joining them.
The next morning Lewis once again left us to go up to Liverpool while Macky, Jo and I begun our UK tour by jumping on a train to Bath.
The next day we slept in and then around midday got the tube to Chalk Farm where we met up with our mate Greg from back home, who now lives in Camden, working on movie special effects on some pretty high profile films. We had a beer in a little pub then went up to Greg's flat to meet him roommates and have a look at the place, which was very nice, before going for a walk into Camden center.
Greg showed us the sights of Camden and then we had lunch in a pub where we discovered our first "freshers". Freshers is an English university tradition where for the first week of the year the first year students, or "freshers", are taken on a series of pub crawls, drinking adventures and hazing activities. We found them, at 2pm, at pub 10 of a 13 location pub crawl, all blind drunk and covered in plain white shirts, mostly customised, primarily by the girls whose seemed to mysteriously be lacking various parts, coated in obscene permanent marker graffiti and often with bunny ears, bunny tails or bowties.
After our run in with the freshers and very entertaining lunch we made our way back through the Camden markets, which are the biggest, most impressive markets I have seen, with every stall selling completely different merchandise, whole sections devoted to specific types of clothing and peaking at a shop in the middle called "Cyberdog", a 4 storey shop devoted to cyberpunk, industrial, rave and fetish clothing and accessories and hugely futuristically stylised.
After that we separated from Greg for a while as we went back to the hostel to change and clean ourselves before we met up again around 8 at a pub we were told had a metal club for Mackys birthday on in the evenings. After a couple of hours of pre drinks the club opened at 10:30 so we left our newly made Israeli friends to head downstairs into the club. After paying our entry we discovered that it was 1) empty and 2) indie night so we left and went for a wander to try and find something better which climaxed at a pub playing super heavy death metal, but with very few patrons. We asked one helpful soul whether there was a club that would play "stuff like System of a Down, Slipknot, Korn etcetera" and were told "oh, you want a gay club" so, giving up, we went back to the indie club which turned out to be ok, cheap drinks and the music was, at least, not shitty dance music.
The next day was primarily spent on and around Oxford street, trying to find Macky a new jacket and Jo some warm clothes, as she hadn't realised that maybe Scotland and England in late October might be slightly chilly. After a while Lewis and I left them to their shopping and settled ourselves in a pub to watch Chelsea dominate Bolton 5-1. Midway through the next game, Arsenal and somebody, the others rejoined us, having successfully bought... Jo a jacket.
We then headed back to the hostel before getting Thai for dinner then giving Macky his birthday cake. After cake Lewis and I watched The Lovely Bones with a bunch of people then Lewis went to bed and I played a couple of lazy drinking games before joining them.
The next morning Lewis once again left us to go up to Liverpool while Macky, Jo and I begun our UK tour by jumping on a train to Bath.
Days 113-116 (Sept 27-30) - Prague 2.0
We arrived in Prague and then, guided by Jo, who had spent several weeks there before meeting up with Macky for Paris, made our way to Jo's brother, Simon's, place where we were being put up with for 3 nights. After a quick trip to a decent, cheap pizza place we had an early night
The next day was spent doing very little, we did a large amount of washing, played a bit of xbox and watched a movie. Macky and Lewis went and did some shopping while Jo and I had lunch at a little cafe next to a park. Spag bol for dinner.
The following morning I awoke several hours before the others and spent the morning out on the balcony, reading, listening to music and stewing in frustration. The reason for the frustration was that the 3 nights we were spending in Prague would be our last 3 in mainland Europe and the others had rejected my suggestions of Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Krakow, Zurich, Helsinki and Kiev as they were "too expensive", "had nothing to do in them", "too far from London" or "too hard to get to" and then suggested we go back to Prague as we "wanted to spend more time there" but weren't doing anything and had nothing anyone wanted to do, not to mention that we all had enough money to justify seeing another awesome city especially having bypasses Scandinavia completely. It was to a degree my own fault as I conceded Prague, although I did so as they had rejected every idea I proposed, I was over trying to make plans and they claimed there was more to do. It felt horribly wasteful of 3 precious days and put me in a fairly angry mood for a couple of days.
That afternoon we spent walking around the city, seeing sights we had already seen, and then in the evening went back to a restaurant we found the first time and was good before checking out black light theatre. Black light theatre is a very strange sort of stage show, performed under black lights where only things at the very front of the stage or painted in florescent paint are visible. The quality wasn't amazing and the story a bit convoluted but it seemed to be a comedy about Dr Frankenstein travelling the world collecting body parts to create his monster and falling in love with a series of women and was worth seeing just to experience the style. The others were very unimpressed but at least it was something new.
The next morning we woke up early, said our goodbyes to Simon and made our way to the airport for our flight to London.
The next day was spent doing very little, we did a large amount of washing, played a bit of xbox and watched a movie. Macky and Lewis went and did some shopping while Jo and I had lunch at a little cafe next to a park. Spag bol for dinner.
The following morning I awoke several hours before the others and spent the morning out on the balcony, reading, listening to music and stewing in frustration. The reason for the frustration was that the 3 nights we were spending in Prague would be our last 3 in mainland Europe and the others had rejected my suggestions of Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Krakow, Zurich, Helsinki and Kiev as they were "too expensive", "had nothing to do in them", "too far from London" or "too hard to get to" and then suggested we go back to Prague as we "wanted to spend more time there" but weren't doing anything and had nothing anyone wanted to do, not to mention that we all had enough money to justify seeing another awesome city especially having bypasses Scandinavia completely. It was to a degree my own fault as I conceded Prague, although I did so as they had rejected every idea I proposed, I was over trying to make plans and they claimed there was more to do. It felt horribly wasteful of 3 precious days and put me in a fairly angry mood for a couple of days.
That afternoon we spent walking around the city, seeing sights we had already seen, and then in the evening went back to a restaurant we found the first time and was good before checking out black light theatre. Black light theatre is a very strange sort of stage show, performed under black lights where only things at the very front of the stage or painted in florescent paint are visible. The quality wasn't amazing and the story a bit convoluted but it seemed to be a comedy about Dr Frankenstein travelling the world collecting body parts to create his monster and falling in love with a series of women and was worth seeing just to experience the style. The others were very unimpressed but at least it was something new.
The next morning we woke up early, said our goodbyes to Simon and made our way to the airport for our flight to London.
Days 109-113 (Sept 23-27) - Oktoberfest, Munich
After our 8 hour train ride / sleep catchup Tim and I arrived in Munich around 6pm and walked the half hour stroll to the hotel we had booked about a year prior to our trip where we met up with Macky again and Jo. After a couple of hours of comparing tales (Tim and I totally won), we went to find food and got ourselves some kebabs and beer from a nearby kebab shop. The kebabs were awful, cold, tasteless and tiny, but the beers were Franziskaner; cold, delicious and large which made up for it. Over the course of the 4 nights and days of Oktoberfest we managed to cover just about every available surface of our hotel room with these bottles. Around 10-11pm Lewis rocked up and we were all together at last. I should note that it was a 4 person room, luckily Macky and Jo count as one single person for sleeping and drinking purposes.
The next day, being Tim's birthday, began as appropriately as it could have, a 7am beer alarm so we could shower, have breakfast and still make it into the Oktoberfest grounds by 9am.
Oktoberfest is something very hard to describe, it is like a larger, considerably more majestic Sydney Royal Easter Show, except tailored to beer drinking alcoholics (I'm not an alcoholic, alcoholics go to rehab and rehab is for quitters!) rather than farmers. It is a huge series of beer tents, each with its own outdoor beer garden and indoor band stage, broken by rides, roller coasters and food (roast ox rolls, 50cm long sausages etc) and merchandise (silly hats and souvenir steins) stalls. We spent about half an hour wandering, wide eyed with awe, before at 9:30 we stumbled on a girl passed out, being tended by ambos, and realised that we had some catching up to do so we headed into the first beer garden we didnt have to line up for (yup, that early) for steins, which are $10 each.
We were shortly after joined by Lance, Tim and I's mate who now lives in Brisbane, and his mate Nick, and then befriended by a group of girls based on the fact that it was one of their birthdays also. One of which was a ranga who proceeded to cry to Macky about how "there used to be 4 types of freshwater dolphins and now there's only 3 *waaaaaah*".
After a large period of drinking, during which Tim at one point had 3 steins on the go and I managed to cheers so enthusiastically that I broke my stein, we all got separated. Lewis and Tim had a fight, Lance and Nick disappeared andJo went back to the hotel room then got lost and scared before finally finding Macky. I ended up going in search of Tim but stumbled on Lance instead and after a frustrating hour of trying to meet up with others who were "by the huge statue" which we were unable to find we just headed into a beer tent and spent the rest of the evening dancing drunkenly on tables with the rest of the tent to the band playing.
On the drunk walk back to the hotel I discovered the huge statue. It was appropriately huge and remarkably obvious. Oops.
Once back at the hotel we all managed to regroup, the only noteable tale being that of Tim, who was drugged and came to about an hour from the festival grounds in the wrong direction, minus his previously bought hat and his shirt and completely sober, then much needed bed.
The next morning, after breakfast and feeling happily un-hungover, we spent relaxing in the hotel room, having a few quiet beers and playing Munchkin before crossing the road to a pub for huge schnitzels for lunch. After lunch and a couple more beers we headed into the festival in early evening to try and properly experience the tents at night, which only I had made the previous night. With dinners of ox burgers or pork steak sandwiches under our belts we headed into the Paulaner tent where we stayed, drinking and dancing on the tables and stools, until it closed.
On closing Macky discovered that he had lost his much loved jacket and then on leaving Jo was groped and harassed by some drunk idiot until I pushed him away and told him to fuck off. This resulted in a somewhat unhappy group walking back to the hotel and began the saga of Macky and his jacket.
The next morning we had a fantastic sleep in, just made the 11am free breakfast cutoff and then inquired how much the hotel was owed. This was the point where we paniced slightly, did the maths, trawled through our emails to find the booking made a year ago and verified that yes, we did infact agree to pay that much per night.
To distract ourselves from this awful detail we called Lance and headed back into Oktoberfest to meet up with him and Nick again. The others went to check for Macky's jacket at lost and found while Tim and I went and found Lance, Nick and their mates Brad and Andy. After about a steins length of time the others rejoined us, minus the jacket, and we got the day going properly.
At 3pm, when the majority of tables were booked out, we went outside where we were told we could only sit if we ordered food so, realising that this was a genious idea, we got a round of pork knuckles, which were huge and obscenely good. Nick also broke out his little box (which were sold all over the place) of snuff, which I sampled a little of and was just a bit of a minty feel but really wakes you up.
We then managed to somehow find Simon, who Tim and I hung out with in Bruges, who came and joined us for a while, but lost Macky and Jo who headed back to the hotel, Macky still unimpressed by the loss of his jacket. The rest of us headed back inside the tent around 6 where Tim proceeding to befriend a table of very gay men who he kept telling us were "really nice" but were quite clearly, at least to the rest of us, taking turns making plays for him. We were stood on the other side of a small wooden railing, refusing to join him, and spent a while talking with various people, including a canadian who kept dancing around and an English girl who worked as a lap dancer.
After a bunch more drinking and and table dancing all that remained was Lance, Nick, Brad and I and we left when the tents closed, my final moments in the glorious, debauched bonanza that is Oktoberfest.
We left together and then went our separate ways as we split off to our different destinations and I ended up joined by a bunch of germans for the walk back.
The next morning we said our farewells to Tim and then walked to the station to jump on our bus to Prague.
The next day, being Tim's birthday, began as appropriately as it could have, a 7am beer alarm so we could shower, have breakfast and still make it into the Oktoberfest grounds by 9am.
Oktoberfest is something very hard to describe, it is like a larger, considerably more majestic Sydney Royal Easter Show, except tailored to beer drinking alcoholics (I'm not an alcoholic, alcoholics go to rehab and rehab is for quitters!) rather than farmers. It is a huge series of beer tents, each with its own outdoor beer garden and indoor band stage, broken by rides, roller coasters and food (roast ox rolls, 50cm long sausages etc) and merchandise (silly hats and souvenir steins) stalls. We spent about half an hour wandering, wide eyed with awe, before at 9:30 we stumbled on a girl passed out, being tended by ambos, and realised that we had some catching up to do so we headed into the first beer garden we didnt have to line up for (yup, that early) for steins, which are $10 each.
We were shortly after joined by Lance, Tim and I's mate who now lives in Brisbane, and his mate Nick, and then befriended by a group of girls based on the fact that it was one of their birthdays also. One of which was a ranga who proceeded to cry to Macky about how "there used to be 4 types of freshwater dolphins and now there's only 3 *waaaaaah*".
After a large period of drinking, during which Tim at one point had 3 steins on the go and I managed to cheers so enthusiastically that I broke my stein, we all got separated. Lewis and Tim had a fight, Lance and Nick disappeared andJo went back to the hotel room then got lost and scared before finally finding Macky. I ended up going in search of Tim but stumbled on Lance instead and after a frustrating hour of trying to meet up with others who were "by the huge statue" which we were unable to find we just headed into a beer tent and spent the rest of the evening dancing drunkenly on tables with the rest of the tent to the band playing.
On the drunk walk back to the hotel I discovered the huge statue. It was appropriately huge and remarkably obvious. Oops.
Once back at the hotel we all managed to regroup, the only noteable tale being that of Tim, who was drugged and came to about an hour from the festival grounds in the wrong direction, minus his previously bought hat and his shirt and completely sober, then much needed bed.
The next morning, after breakfast and feeling happily un-hungover, we spent relaxing in the hotel room, having a few quiet beers and playing Munchkin before crossing the road to a pub for huge schnitzels for lunch. After lunch and a couple more beers we headed into the festival in early evening to try and properly experience the tents at night, which only I had made the previous night. With dinners of ox burgers or pork steak sandwiches under our belts we headed into the Paulaner tent where we stayed, drinking and dancing on the tables and stools, until it closed.
On closing Macky discovered that he had lost his much loved jacket and then on leaving Jo was groped and harassed by some drunk idiot until I pushed him away and told him to fuck off. This resulted in a somewhat unhappy group walking back to the hotel and began the saga of Macky and his jacket.
The next morning we had a fantastic sleep in, just made the 11am free breakfast cutoff and then inquired how much the hotel was owed. This was the point where we paniced slightly, did the maths, trawled through our emails to find the booking made a year ago and verified that yes, we did infact agree to pay that much per night.
To distract ourselves from this awful detail we called Lance and headed back into Oktoberfest to meet up with him and Nick again. The others went to check for Macky's jacket at lost and found while Tim and I went and found Lance, Nick and their mates Brad and Andy. After about a steins length of time the others rejoined us, minus the jacket, and we got the day going properly.
At 3pm, when the majority of tables were booked out, we went outside where we were told we could only sit if we ordered food so, realising that this was a genious idea, we got a round of pork knuckles, which were huge and obscenely good. Nick also broke out his little box (which were sold all over the place) of snuff, which I sampled a little of and was just a bit of a minty feel but really wakes you up.
We then managed to somehow find Simon, who Tim and I hung out with in Bruges, who came and joined us for a while, but lost Macky and Jo who headed back to the hotel, Macky still unimpressed by the loss of his jacket. The rest of us headed back inside the tent around 6 where Tim proceeding to befriend a table of very gay men who he kept telling us were "really nice" but were quite clearly, at least to the rest of us, taking turns making plays for him. We were stood on the other side of a small wooden railing, refusing to join him, and spent a while talking with various people, including a canadian who kept dancing around and an English girl who worked as a lap dancer.
After a bunch more drinking and and table dancing all that remained was Lance, Nick, Brad and I and we left when the tents closed, my final moments in the glorious, debauched bonanza that is Oktoberfest.
We left together and then went our separate ways as we split off to our different destinations and I ended up joined by a bunch of germans for the walk back.
The next morning we said our farewells to Tim and then walked to the station to jump on our bus to Prague.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Days 105-109 (Sept 19-23) - Amsterdam 2.0
Walked from Amsterdam Centraal Station to the "Globe Hostel", which wasn't an amazing hostel in terms of quality of facilities but had everything we needed; a bar with cheap beer and 2 happy hours (3-4 and 8-9), a smoking/pool room, beds. Checked in and went up to our rooms where we met 3 of our roommates, Julia and Maria from Germany and Christophe from France, who didn't speak any English but for some reason decided to hang out with us.
Joined by those 3 we went down to the bar, had a Heineken (seriously the only beer we drank in Amsterdam and now something I am trying to avoid as a result) and decided to go for a pub crawl around the red light district (our hostel was on the North East corner of it).
The first place we hit was a bit expensive so after a couple of beers and a lot of awkward glances at the couple at the table next to us who were essentially riding one another we moved to another, cheaper place. Here we randomly ran into Sarah and Lindsay from Bruges, who were in the midst of a rather messy looking paid pub crawl and Christophe, who hadn't really said much given his lack of communication options, bought us a round of jager bombs and then shortly after disappeared.
We then moved to a place in Rembrandtplein but the music it was playing was pretty awful so we grabbed pizza slices from one of the ten bazillion late night food places and chilled next to a canal before heading back to the hostel. On arrival, around 3am, I discovered a girl asleep in my bed and, in pitch black, managed to find the single empty bed in the room. Bed incident 2/3.
The next morning we discovered another great feature of our hostel; amazing, cheap food, so after an awesome full English breakfast Tim and I played some pool, had a few beers then went to look for an acceptable cafe to partake of some of Amsterdam's more infamous treats. The first few we found were all playing crappy dance music, which we felt was not the experience we desired, so we kept looking around until we found a place playing some Dub and grabbed a brownie each. After about 15 minutes, and feeling absolutely nothing, we asking a passing waitress how long they took to kick in ("about an hour") and whether 1 each was enough ("definitely"), then promptly bought another and headed back to the hostel to play some more pool and have a few more cheap beers.
After a while, probably about the hour predicted, I started to feel a bit high and then about half an hour after that we had to call it a day for pool as Tim was too high. Tim definitely got hit a lot harder by it than I did and we went back into the bar area where we were joined by Julia and Maria, who I talked to while Tim sat there, too out of it to converse with us.
Midnight rolled around, and we were by this point back to our stable point of just being quite drunk, and then shortly after began the most disturbing incident of our entire trip. A very drunk, as in very drunk compared to us, Welsh girl stumbled into the bar, ordered a beer and started loudly slur-yell-talking to a poor innocent guy standing at the bar for about 5 minutes before she started kissing him then abruptly stopped and came over and set next to us. After a couple of minutes of slur-yelling at us in an accent so thick we had no idea what she was saying she started getting a bit more focused and aggressive sounding to Julia (Maria having gone to bed) and the bartender came over and told us that "you 4 are making too much noise [while glaring at the Welsh girl] so I need you to all leave". We told him that we had no idea who she was or why she was talking to us, but subtly so she didn't notice because she seemed like a crazy person, and so he told her that she had to go. She apparently took this in as she nodded and stood up, so he walked off. She then, right in front of me and Julia and directly behind Tim, much to our horror (Tim picking up on it by our facial expressions and then the... sound effects), in one swift movement dropped her jeans and undies to her knees, squatted on the bar floor and commenced pissing like a firehose, just as the poor bartender walked behind her. The poor guy had to take a double take at a half naked girl squatting on the floor of the bar before bending down to see if she really was doing what he thought she was. I have never in my life seen a face say "fuck my life" as purely as his did. We took this as our cue to leave and hurriedly vacated the bar up to the safety of the staircase where we could check our shoes for... splashback... and spend another hour laughing and questioning what just happened. Ended up going to bed at 1:30 which seemed like the end of the matter.
At around 3am I awoke to someone shoving me and, from the stench of vomit and piss, loud, slurred voice and indecipherable accent realised that the drunk Welsh girl was not only somehow in our room or somehow pushing me but infact climbing into my bed. I told her, in quite simple, loud and possibly explicit terms, to get out of my bed but she tried to grab me then passed out so I escaped and went downstairs tp the reception where the old Scottish bloke working told me "that fooken betch, goo up thar, drag her oot of yur bed and throw her inta hers, its 302 [ours was 301] and if she causes anymore trooble I'm callin the fooken coppers". Armed with this information and threat I returned, woke her and, with surprisingly small difficulty, convinced her to get out my bed, although it was on the condition that I took her to her room, thankfully across the corridor. I got her into her room, a 20 bed dorm, and she commenced yelling about had anyone seen her friend and how she had lost her passport. She then turned to me and told me I had to hold her while she slept or she would come back to my bed. I managed to find her an empty bed and, thank god, she immediately passed out so I left, locked our door, and went to bed. 3/3.
Woke up, said our goodbyes to Julia and Maria and then befriended Alex from Melbourne, the girl who had taken my assigned bed, over tales of the previous nights... excitements and who had the unfortunate job, because I had definitely done enough, of taking the Welsh girls shoes and bag to her room. Had another awesome full cooked breakfast and a lazy morning sitting around the bar reading, playing pool and having a couple of lazy beers (at least until 3pm happy hour when it became more than a couple and less lazy), broken only by me deciding to be healthy and going to a supermarket for a couple of apples and some fruit juice.
At 4 Tim and I went to the "Heineken Experience", which was awesome. A very interesting tour of the brewing process, plus then a 10 minute brewing "ride" followed by a heineken tasting where we learnt the point of head (it keeps the beer cool and from going flat). At the tasting we befriended the bartender so after the rest of the group from the ride moved on we had a couple more free beers with him then we moved through the rest of the tour, which ended in a bar where we each got 2 free beers, counterbalanced by the loud, terrible music and floor so sticky that each step was a trial of keeping our shoes on.
We then went back to the hostel for more beer and pool and ended up hanging out with Alex and her friend David from Canada. Around midnight Alex, quite stoned, went to bed and Tim, David and I went for a drunk wander and found an amazing, cheap chicken burger joint.
Another morning passed with beers and fantastic breakfast then in the afternoon Tim and I went to check out the sex museum, which was very confronting, very interesting and quite obscene. A lot of ancient artistry and implements, a section dedicated to the Japanese, who are apparently quite the deviants and love to draw themselves with whale sized wangs, a somewhat scarily graphic room about fetishes and a lot of straight up porn.
We then went to see about going to the ice bar but it turned out you had to book and we didn't want to wait around for a couple of hours so we headed back to the hostel where we met David and his mate, a big Aussie bloke from Melbourne, had a couple more beers and decided we should check out the red light district and get some food. Ended up getting more chicken burgers and were back in the hostel, ready for an early night, by midnight.
Tim and I, fully aware of our lack of sleep and that we had to be up at 8:30 to checkout, decided to finish our beers and go to sleep. Of course, us being us, 2 minutes later 2 Pom girls, Yasmin and Kim, sat down across from us and starting talking to us. We then had 2 more beers each and ended up going out with them, accompanied by Yu, the 35 year old Chinese hostel manager the girls invited as a joke but actually said that he did want to come.
Yu first took us to a bar that was meant to be really good but was so crowded that we didn't bother so he took us on to a club called "Smokey", which definitely lived up to its name and had a dancing cage accessed by a staircase and hanging over the dance floor and 2 dancing poles, one on a raised platform and one on a bar, all used frequently. The club did 10 jager shots or 4 jager bombs for $15 so within half an hour we had each had 4 shots and a jager bomb and were quite happy. The club was filled with creepy guys, who for some reason kept trying to smell the girls hair and we ended up leaving at 3:30, getting bike rickshaws back to the hostel and then talking with some Irish on the staircase until 4:30. So much for a quiet night.
Woke up at 8:30, showered, checked out and walked to the station for our 8 hour train to Munich, which was excellent for catching up on sleep.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Days 101-105 (Sept 15-19) - Belgium
Arrive in Barcelona airport at about 3am, having had an hours sleep on the plane over, feeling somewhat tired and found the airport entirely deserted, which was very wierd, wandering an empty airport looking for the gate for my flight to Brussels. Managed to get 2 hours sleep by pulling a few chairs together to form a very uncomfortable bench bed then at 6am boarded the flight.
On arrival in Brussels, around 9am, I found Tim waiting outside baggage collection and we immediately headed to the airport bar for a quick drink and catch up. 2 hours later, with 4 empty pints in front of each of us, we left the airport and went for a wander around Brussels, theoretically to find the hostel but it ended up just being us, slightly drunk, aimlessly exploring a giant marble courthouse, a few awesome statues and a lookout over a bunch of the city before we gave up, got a cab and checked into the hostel about 2pm.
We left our luggage in the luggage room and went for a walk to find some more food and, having come across another bar on the way, eventually found a little Italian place that was really nice. Polished off a pizza and Tim's leftover half lasagna before we headed back to the hostel, grabbed our bags and had a "nap so we are good to go out tonight" at 5pm.
Woke up at 10am, having forgotten to set an alarm. Apparently we were tired. Went over to the supermarket for sandwiches and berries (us being the epitome of manliness) and then used the hostels computer, it lacking wifi, to check out hostels in Bruges. Found a nice looking place, St Christopher's Inn, but it didn't have space for both of us according to the websites so we decided to wing it. Walked over to Brussels station and jumped on the first train to Bruges.
Arrived in Bruges and Tim bought himself a can of beer while I grabbed a map and, after deciding we weren't in walking distance of the city center we got a quick cab to St Christopher's who had apparently got "loads of space". Got 2 beds in the back of a 10 bed dorm, dropped off our stuff and then went to check out the Hostel's bar.
At this point the time frames become a bit hesitant but we:
Woke up at 10am for the rugby game, had a terrible instant coffee for breakfast and went for a walk into Bruges center to find an Irish pub for the rugby game. In retrospect, given the Irish won convincingly, this was a mistake, however it did lead to us having a few beers and getting a little rivalry going.
Afterwards we went for an explore around Bruges, which is a really nice, picturesque little city, grabbed pizza for lunch and ended up back at the bar where we met Simon, from Melbourne, and Ashley from the shire, who was a little bit batshit insane. Left with them to go and play pool in another hostel, which was playing a lot of The Doors and had super cheap pool, which got a little odd with the lengths Ashley would go to put me and Simon off our shots but she eventually left, leaving us feeling slightly raped, and was never seen again.
After a significant amount of pool we left and went back to the bar for more drinks, where we were joined by Sarah and Lindsay from America. Tim passed out in a corner in the booth at around midnight and after being woken by the bar staff 3 times was asked to leave and went to bed. Not long after we headed to the hostel's nightclub, which was playing particularly bad dubstep and then went our separate ways.
Exhausted and not exactly sober by this point I got back to my bed, which was a top bunk and had a curtain along the edge to give sleepers privacy, pulled back the curtain and was confronted by a sleeping guy. I woke him up, told him he was in my bed and to get out. He looked at me, said "get in" and promptly rolled over and went to sleep again. Taken back by this and confused by what to do I went to reception, laughed about it with the Aussie guy on duty and was given a key to the "emergency room" which was completely empty and had way better beds. Victory.
Got to bed about 3, after what ended up being bed incident 1 of 3 of the Tim and Hugh awfuckolypse.
Woke up at 9:30 for checkout, had another nutritious breakfast of coffee and found Tim again. Grabbed our bags, went for an explore around the previously unexplored part of Bruges then got a bus to the train station. Grabbed a train to Antwerp.
We arrived in Antwerp with no idea where we were staying or where the hostels were so we first walked around until we found an Internet cafe where we got a vague photo of a map and 4 hostels to check. Walked to the first one, which took us about half an hour to get to but took us through the Jewish quarter which was very cool and a bit wierd seeing all the traditional Jewish clothing and hairstyle.
The first hostel was completely full so we moved on to the second. After another 20 minutes walking, and ending up back near the train station, we discovered the second hostel was either closed or hated us as we spent about 15 minutes knocking on the front door, various windows and the back door to no avail. Getting slightly frustrated by this point we walked a further 20 minutes to the third option, the "Kangaroo hostel", which now is actually a kebab place.
Our final option was left until last as it was the highest rated on hostelbookers.com and also in the very center of the city, thus making it a) the furthest away and b) the least likely to have beds, so it was a slightly concerned tram ride and 10 minute walk that took us there.
Miraculously they did infact have space for us so we checked in, dumped our stuff and then went to find a pub to watch the Chelsea vs Man Utd football game. The only place we found was called "The Old Trafford" and turned out to indeed by a Man Utd themed bar, complete with completely red painted interior, memorabilia and posters covering every available surface and a bartender/owner who was a Man Utd fan born in Chelsea. Very cautiously we sat down in a corner with our beers to watch the game. Going 3-0 down by half time made it at least safer, although I did get a lot of very angry looks and sworn at by a bartender when I cheered when Chelsea scored just after halftime but it ended 3-1. I still maintain Chelsea played better football and deserved to win.
Went for a wander to explore a bit of Antwerp, had dinner in a little restaurant near the river and actually got to bed at a reasonable time.
Woke up, had hostel breakfast, the first breakfast we successfully ate at, checked out, left our bags in the hostel and walked to the station. Found a cool church and went in for a quick look but ended up getting a free 30 minute tour by an old Belgian guy who worked there which was really interesting.
Found the bus station, jumped on a bus out to Westmalle and set off on our one planned venture of Belgium, visiting a Trappist monastery. Got off the bus in the middle of the countryside, with just a Westmalle Trappist beer cafe on one side and a paved track on the other. Walked up the track to the monastery, via a cool little building that appeared to be a war memorial chapel. The monastery looked very cool from the exterior but when we knocked on the giant door and asked the little old monk, who didn't really speak English, if they were open for visitors we were told no. Wandered around the monastery grounds a bit more then went back to the Trappist cafe where we sampled the amazing Trappist beer, had some very tasty pasta and then got a bus back to Antwerp.
Went for a walk around the north end of the city center via a crazy museum built in the middle of 2 docks the Napoleon had built and then down the river before collecting our bags, heading back to the train station and jumping on a train to Amsterdam.
On arrival in Brussels, around 9am, I found Tim waiting outside baggage collection and we immediately headed to the airport bar for a quick drink and catch up. 2 hours later, with 4 empty pints in front of each of us, we left the airport and went for a wander around Brussels, theoretically to find the hostel but it ended up just being us, slightly drunk, aimlessly exploring a giant marble courthouse, a few awesome statues and a lookout over a bunch of the city before we gave up, got a cab and checked into the hostel about 2pm.
We left our luggage in the luggage room and went for a walk to find some more food and, having come across another bar on the way, eventually found a little Italian place that was really nice. Polished off a pizza and Tim's leftover half lasagna before we headed back to the hostel, grabbed our bags and had a "nap so we are good to go out tonight" at 5pm.
Woke up at 10am, having forgotten to set an alarm. Apparently we were tired. Went over to the supermarket for sandwiches and berries (us being the epitome of manliness) and then used the hostels computer, it lacking wifi, to check out hostels in Bruges. Found a nice looking place, St Christopher's Inn, but it didn't have space for both of us according to the websites so we decided to wing it. Walked over to Brussels station and jumped on the first train to Bruges.
Arrived in Bruges and Tim bought himself a can of beer while I grabbed a map and, after deciding we weren't in walking distance of the city center we got a quick cab to St Christopher's who had apparently got "loads of space". Got 2 beds in the back of a 10 bed dorm, dropped off our stuff and then went to check out the Hostel's bar.
At this point the time frames become a bit hesitant but we:
- Got reasonably intoxicated on scotch, coke and Duvel
- Had awful kebabs for dinner at some point far past any civilised dinner time
- Hung out with a group of people from Melbourne and an Irish couple
- Talked a lot of crap with the Irish bartender's about the next mornings Australia vs Ireland rugby world cup match which ended up with me speaking in a fake Irish accent for the rest of the night (or Tim would "punish" me if I slipped up, which didn't happen) that I totally pulled off
- Went to the hostel's nightclub, which was small, dingy and playing crap music
- Left the nightclub and wandered around a bit
Woke up at 10am for the rugby game, had a terrible instant coffee for breakfast and went for a walk into Bruges center to find an Irish pub for the rugby game. In retrospect, given the Irish won convincingly, this was a mistake, however it did lead to us having a few beers and getting a little rivalry going.
Afterwards we went for an explore around Bruges, which is a really nice, picturesque little city, grabbed pizza for lunch and ended up back at the bar where we met Simon, from Melbourne, and Ashley from the shire, who was a little bit batshit insane. Left with them to go and play pool in another hostel, which was playing a lot of The Doors and had super cheap pool, which got a little odd with the lengths Ashley would go to put me and Simon off our shots but she eventually left, leaving us feeling slightly raped, and was never seen again.
After a significant amount of pool we left and went back to the bar for more drinks, where we were joined by Sarah and Lindsay from America. Tim passed out in a corner in the booth at around midnight and after being woken by the bar staff 3 times was asked to leave and went to bed. Not long after we headed to the hostel's nightclub, which was playing particularly bad dubstep and then went our separate ways.
Exhausted and not exactly sober by this point I got back to my bed, which was a top bunk and had a curtain along the edge to give sleepers privacy, pulled back the curtain and was confronted by a sleeping guy. I woke him up, told him he was in my bed and to get out. He looked at me, said "get in" and promptly rolled over and went to sleep again. Taken back by this and confused by what to do I went to reception, laughed about it with the Aussie guy on duty and was given a key to the "emergency room" which was completely empty and had way better beds. Victory.
Got to bed about 3, after what ended up being bed incident 1 of 3 of the Tim and Hugh awfuckolypse.
Woke up at 9:30 for checkout, had another nutritious breakfast of coffee and found Tim again. Grabbed our bags, went for an explore around the previously unexplored part of Bruges then got a bus to the train station. Grabbed a train to Antwerp.
We arrived in Antwerp with no idea where we were staying or where the hostels were so we first walked around until we found an Internet cafe where we got a vague photo of a map and 4 hostels to check. Walked to the first one, which took us about half an hour to get to but took us through the Jewish quarter which was very cool and a bit wierd seeing all the traditional Jewish clothing and hairstyle.
The first hostel was completely full so we moved on to the second. After another 20 minutes walking, and ending up back near the train station, we discovered the second hostel was either closed or hated us as we spent about 15 minutes knocking on the front door, various windows and the back door to no avail. Getting slightly frustrated by this point we walked a further 20 minutes to the third option, the "Kangaroo hostel", which now is actually a kebab place.
Our final option was left until last as it was the highest rated on hostelbookers.com and also in the very center of the city, thus making it a) the furthest away and b) the least likely to have beds, so it was a slightly concerned tram ride and 10 minute walk that took us there.
Miraculously they did infact have space for us so we checked in, dumped our stuff and then went to find a pub to watch the Chelsea vs Man Utd football game. The only place we found was called "The Old Trafford" and turned out to indeed by a Man Utd themed bar, complete with completely red painted interior, memorabilia and posters covering every available surface and a bartender/owner who was a Man Utd fan born in Chelsea. Very cautiously we sat down in a corner with our beers to watch the game. Going 3-0 down by half time made it at least safer, although I did get a lot of very angry looks and sworn at by a bartender when I cheered when Chelsea scored just after halftime but it ended 3-1. I still maintain Chelsea played better football and deserved to win.
Went for a wander to explore a bit of Antwerp, had dinner in a little restaurant near the river and actually got to bed at a reasonable time.
Woke up, had hostel breakfast, the first breakfast we successfully ate at, checked out, left our bags in the hostel and walked to the station. Found a cool church and went in for a quick look but ended up getting a free 30 minute tour by an old Belgian guy who worked there which was really interesting.
Found the bus station, jumped on a bus out to Westmalle and set off on our one planned venture of Belgium, visiting a Trappist monastery. Got off the bus in the middle of the countryside, with just a Westmalle Trappist beer cafe on one side and a paved track on the other. Walked up the track to the monastery, via a cool little building that appeared to be a war memorial chapel. The monastery looked very cool from the exterior but when we knocked on the giant door and asked the little old monk, who didn't really speak English, if they were open for visitors we were told no. Wandered around the monastery grounds a bit more then went back to the Trappist cafe where we sampled the amazing Trappist beer, had some very tasty pasta and then got a bus back to Antwerp.
Went for a walk around the north end of the city center via a crazy museum built in the middle of 2 docks the Napoleon had built and then down the river before collecting our bags, heading back to the train station and jumping on a train to Amsterdam.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Days 96-100 (Sept 10-14) - Lisbon
Slept terribly, got off the train at 8am and grabbed a bus which took us right to the hostel. Got there at 8:30am so we were too early to check in so left our bags in the luggage room and spent hours alternating between reading, napping and coffee.
The hostel, "Jardim de Santos Hostel" was the nicest hostel we visited on the entire trip, very laid back arty atmosphere, comfy beds, super fast wifi and amazing staff.
Had lunch from this cool little place that gave us bread, cheese, pate, mimosa and cheesey butter on entry and our first taste at the amazingness that is Portugese food, which is essentially meat with fries, rice and/or egg... heaven. Had a huge steak done with rosemary and coated in flat chips and an egg.
Spent the afternoon doing the same things we spent the morning doing before going to another little Portugese place which also had the amazing free entrees and then pork in a cream and olive sauce with rice.
Early bed for Macky and I while Lewis stayed up working.
Slept in til 12. Lewis again spent the whole day working while Macky and I chilled out until 3:30 when we went for a walk up to Praca Luis de Camoes for a free walking tour. Guide didn´t show up so we had a quick saunter around before heading back to the hostel.
Cooked a stir fry for dinner then plugged Lewis´ laptop into the TV and watched some Gormsby and Archer, which in hindsight may have horrified the rest of the hostel.
Caught up on my journal/blog and spent a while befriending Carla, the owner of the hostel, who is very helpful as well as being pretty cool and an interesting insight into how it would be to run a hostel.
The next morning we headed out for an 11am walking tour, run by an Austrian guy called Uwe, called "See Lisbon or die!". Starting at Praca Luis de Camoes we were given a quick overview of the city and its destruction by Earthquake in 1755 and then shown that the mosaic tiles lining the square actually make a huge sequence of penises before we headed down the hill into the city center. As we walked through we were given a bit more history about the rebuilding of the city and the restrictions placed upon it. We then headed through the Lisbon Arc de Triumphe and to a big statue of the king from the time of the earthquake, who apparently got a statue for being completely useless. It was here that I was tapped on the shoulder and turned around to a creepy looking guy in an overcoat with his hands held out, offering me sunglasses in one and hash in the other then running off when I refused. Apparently this is a common thing in Lisbon as the American couple next to me said they had been offered cocaine in this manner several times.
From here we walked up the other side of Lisbon and got to 2 big churches. One of the churches is the church of the patron saint of Lisbon and of finding husbands and they celebrate by having a month long party every July for singles to meet so that women can find their husbands and ending in a big marriage ceremony. We then headed up a series of steep, winding streets and stairs which apparently are the best route to take in the annual "get from the castle on the hill to the water through a course of your choice" bike race and ended up at a beautiful garden/lookout under the castle.
After the tour we headed on to "Lisbon's best burger place" for what were admittedly amazing burgers for a very late lunch before heading back to the hostel for another evening of Lewis working and Macky and I chilling out.
Woke up at about 6am to say farewell's to Macky, who was flying to meet up with Jo in Prague before taking her to Paris then spent the day doing very little, watching movies on the TV, talking more with Carla, updating this and reading while Lewis worked.
At 7 I left to go find a pub to watch the Chelsea vs Bayern Leverkusen game and found a magical place that was showing all 4 games on different TVs, sold cheap beer and did decent cheap food. Lewis joined me at half time for dinner and we had a couple of beers and enjoyed the 2-0 win.
The next morning was spent with yet more bumming and Lewis working until 2 when Lewis left to the airport for his flight to Liverpool. Lazed around some more then at 7:30 I grabbed my bags and, following the advice of Macky and Lewis, got a $10 cab to the airport, terrified the whole time by the drivers awful abuse of the steering wheel and accelerator.
Checked in fine then during the security check had to empty out my bag and the security guard took my sunscreen and (I didn't notice until after) my headphones. Disaster as my backup pair were these bright purple monstrosities I got from a Spanish train and were awful quality.
Had maccas airport dinner then headed to the gate for me 10pm flight, only to find it was delayed slightly. Slightly which turned out to mean the plane hadn't even left Barcelona and so we ended up leaving at 12:45am.
The hostel, "Jardim de Santos Hostel" was the nicest hostel we visited on the entire trip, very laid back arty atmosphere, comfy beds, super fast wifi and amazing staff.
Had lunch from this cool little place that gave us bread, cheese, pate, mimosa and cheesey butter on entry and our first taste at the amazingness that is Portugese food, which is essentially meat with fries, rice and/or egg... heaven. Had a huge steak done with rosemary and coated in flat chips and an egg.
Spent the afternoon doing the same things we spent the morning doing before going to another little Portugese place which also had the amazing free entrees and then pork in a cream and olive sauce with rice.
Early bed for Macky and I while Lewis stayed up working.
Slept in til 12. Lewis again spent the whole day working while Macky and I chilled out until 3:30 when we went for a walk up to Praca Luis de Camoes for a free walking tour. Guide didn´t show up so we had a quick saunter around before heading back to the hostel.
Cooked a stir fry for dinner then plugged Lewis´ laptop into the TV and watched some Gormsby and Archer, which in hindsight may have horrified the rest of the hostel.
Caught up on my journal/blog and spent a while befriending Carla, the owner of the hostel, who is very helpful as well as being pretty cool and an interesting insight into how it would be to run a hostel.
The next morning we headed out for an 11am walking tour, run by an Austrian guy called Uwe, called "See Lisbon or die!". Starting at Praca Luis de Camoes we were given a quick overview of the city and its destruction by Earthquake in 1755 and then shown that the mosaic tiles lining the square actually make a huge sequence of penises before we headed down the hill into the city center. As we walked through we were given a bit more history about the rebuilding of the city and the restrictions placed upon it. We then headed through the Lisbon Arc de Triumphe and to a big statue of the king from the time of the earthquake, who apparently got a statue for being completely useless. It was here that I was tapped on the shoulder and turned around to a creepy looking guy in an overcoat with his hands held out, offering me sunglasses in one and hash in the other then running off when I refused. Apparently this is a common thing in Lisbon as the American couple next to me said they had been offered cocaine in this manner several times.
From here we walked up the other side of Lisbon and got to 2 big churches. One of the churches is the church of the patron saint of Lisbon and of finding husbands and they celebrate by having a month long party every July for singles to meet so that women can find their husbands and ending in a big marriage ceremony. We then headed up a series of steep, winding streets and stairs which apparently are the best route to take in the annual "get from the castle on the hill to the water through a course of your choice" bike race and ended up at a beautiful garden/lookout under the castle.
After the tour we headed on to "Lisbon's best burger place" for what were admittedly amazing burgers for a very late lunch before heading back to the hostel for another evening of Lewis working and Macky and I chilling out.
Woke up at about 6am to say farewell's to Macky, who was flying to meet up with Jo in Prague before taking her to Paris then spent the day doing very little, watching movies on the TV, talking more with Carla, updating this and reading while Lewis worked.
At 7 I left to go find a pub to watch the Chelsea vs Bayern Leverkusen game and found a magical place that was showing all 4 games on different TVs, sold cheap beer and did decent cheap food. Lewis joined me at half time for dinner and we had a couple of beers and enjoyed the 2-0 win.
The next morning was spent with yet more bumming and Lewis working until 2 when Lewis left to the airport for his flight to Liverpool. Lazed around some more then at 7:30 I grabbed my bags and, following the advice of Macky and Lewis, got a $10 cab to the airport, terrified the whole time by the drivers awful abuse of the steering wheel and accelerator.
Checked in fine then during the security check had to empty out my bag and the security guard took my sunscreen and (I didn't notice until after) my headphones. Disaster as my backup pair were these bright purple monstrosities I got from a Spanish train and were awful quality.
Had maccas airport dinner then headed to the gate for me 10pm flight, only to find it was delayed slightly. Slightly which turned out to mean the plane hadn't even left Barcelona and so we ended up leaving at 12:45am.
Days 92-95 (Sept 6-9) - Madrid
Checked into our hostel in Madrid, "La Posada de Huertas Hostel", which was a nice place physically but had very little atmosphere and completely useless wifi, which while it sounds like a very minor gripe is kind of necessary for Lewis to work and for us to book our next steps and also isn´t a hard thing to implement reasonably. Hung around for a little while in the reception area (the only area with decent chairs) and befriended a cool geek girl from Melbourne called Ruby on her way to study in Salamanca.
At 7, with Ruby joining us, we went on the Tapas Tour, which is run by a group of hostels and is $10 for drinks and tapas from 3 different places, one for each North/South/Central style of tapas. First place wasn´t great, a little sangria and a couple of small dishes but second place had fantastic, large amounts of food and beer and 3rd place some amazingly strong Portugese cider. After the tour ended most people left to join a pub crawl but a group of us stayed at the 3rd place as it did sangria jugs for $7.
The next morning we went to find lunch but came to the unfortunate realisation that none of us had any cash on us so we went on an ATM hunt. Found 3 that didn´t work before we finally found one (they are scarce in Europe for some reason) and then grabbed burgers on the way back to the hostel.
Lewis spent the afternoon working while Macky and I bummed around and then at 5:30 with Ruby as well we all went to Reina Sofia museum, which we were told was free from 6pm. Rocked up and found that free entry starts at 7pm so we wandered up to a park where we spent an hour chilling out in the shade, surrounded by a rather intimate lesbian couple and another couple dry humping against a tree. Possibly we found the wrong park.
At 7 we went back down to the museum and spent a couple of hours checking out all the amazing pieces, the highlights being Dali, Picasso (including the original Guernica, which is enormous and takes up an entire wall) and some very cool modern art pieces. On the way back we finally found ourselves some Paella, which was pretty awesome, before meeting up with Ruby´s roommates Sarah (from France) and Margarida and Roderigo (from Portugal) and went to find a pub. Walked around up to an area meant to have good pubs but they were all either expensive or awful so we ended up back at the same sangria place as the previous night. Spent the walk alternating between deep, political and philosophical conversations with Ruby and messing with the vast amount of spruikkers that constant harassed us. Nothing like going from discussing legalisation of marijuana or Australia´s lack of decent leadership options to suddenly everyone clicking in unison or telling someone "I can´t, my cat is on fire".
Had pizza slices from outside the hostel for brunch before Lewis went back to work and Macky and I went for a wander and bought us our train tickets to Lisbon, which ended up requiring an overnight train as it has to go via Valencia, which is in the almost perfectly opposite direction. Also ended up extending our stay by a night as a result as we wouldn´t have time to fit in Porto. Made ourselves carbonara for dinner, which wasn´t bad but had too much egg in it.
The hostel was running drinking games in the evening and Macky and I distinguished ourselves by beating the defending champions at sangria pong before losing to a couple of American frat boys. Afterwards Macky, Ruby, Margarida, Roderigo and I, joined by some crazy American girl who works as a cinematographer on "Jerseylicious" (ew!), went to the sangria place again until 2, when we all headed to a club. The club looked really awful so Macky and I headed back. According to Margarida the next morning we made the right decision.
For the first morning in Madrid we woke up in time for the free hostel breakfast and then while Lewis worked Macky, Ruby and I went on a free walking tour lead by a super enthusiastic and very funny English girl called Harriot.
The tour started off at the official Madrid statue, which is a bear eating the berries off a special sort of tree who´s berries ferment and go alcoholic for a couple of weeks a year. From here we moved on to the Madrid theatre, founded by a queen who´s husband was gay and so dedicated herself to the arts. The theatre was the first funded one in Spain as the church refused to fund them at the time.
Next up was the Palace, which was massive and magnificent, and right next to it the cathedral, which they designed to be very plain so as not to outdo the palace, but the side facing away from the palace makes up for it by being amazingly ornate. From here Harriot took us to a little hidden garden where we got a lesson in the history of Spain and Madrid, from the Moorish times through freedom of religion and then onto the Catholic takeover and Inquisition.
We then moved on to the old central marketplace, which was built of wood and then burnt down accidentally 5 winters in a row before they rebuilt it one final time out of stone, and then up the new strip of Madrid, with big ornate buildings, each built to the style of the fashionable city of the time, which ends at the statue of Cybele, the unofficial symbol of the city and center of all Real Madrid celebrations. Next to the statue we chilled out in a park while Harriot gave us an overview of the various museums before she took those of us who wanted to a cheap little restaurant for lunch, where for $12.50 we got a huge 4 course meal, beer, paella, steak and chips, cake and finally coffee.
Headed back to the hostel where we said our farewells to our new friends, collected Lewis and then jumped on the metro to the train station for our train to Lisbon. Wrong station. Quickly caught a cab to the right station, which took us past the Bernabeu stadium which was cool. Got on our overnight train and discovered we were sharing our 8 seat section with a group of 5 from the Northern Suburbs. Small world.
At midnight, unable to sleep, we went and had a beer from the train´s bar and a chat with a couple of English girls and a New Zealand bloke.
At 7, with Ruby joining us, we went on the Tapas Tour, which is run by a group of hostels and is $10 for drinks and tapas from 3 different places, one for each North/South/Central style of tapas. First place wasn´t great, a little sangria and a couple of small dishes but second place had fantastic, large amounts of food and beer and 3rd place some amazingly strong Portugese cider. After the tour ended most people left to join a pub crawl but a group of us stayed at the 3rd place as it did sangria jugs for $7.
The next morning we went to find lunch but came to the unfortunate realisation that none of us had any cash on us so we went on an ATM hunt. Found 3 that didn´t work before we finally found one (they are scarce in Europe for some reason) and then grabbed burgers on the way back to the hostel.
Lewis spent the afternoon working while Macky and I bummed around and then at 5:30 with Ruby as well we all went to Reina Sofia museum, which we were told was free from 6pm. Rocked up and found that free entry starts at 7pm so we wandered up to a park where we spent an hour chilling out in the shade, surrounded by a rather intimate lesbian couple and another couple dry humping against a tree. Possibly we found the wrong park.
At 7 we went back down to the museum and spent a couple of hours checking out all the amazing pieces, the highlights being Dali, Picasso (including the original Guernica, which is enormous and takes up an entire wall) and some very cool modern art pieces. On the way back we finally found ourselves some Paella, which was pretty awesome, before meeting up with Ruby´s roommates Sarah (from France) and Margarida and Roderigo (from Portugal) and went to find a pub. Walked around up to an area meant to have good pubs but they were all either expensive or awful so we ended up back at the same sangria place as the previous night. Spent the walk alternating between deep, political and philosophical conversations with Ruby and messing with the vast amount of spruikkers that constant harassed us. Nothing like going from discussing legalisation of marijuana or Australia´s lack of decent leadership options to suddenly everyone clicking in unison or telling someone "I can´t, my cat is on fire".
Had pizza slices from outside the hostel for brunch before Lewis went back to work and Macky and I went for a wander and bought us our train tickets to Lisbon, which ended up requiring an overnight train as it has to go via Valencia, which is in the almost perfectly opposite direction. Also ended up extending our stay by a night as a result as we wouldn´t have time to fit in Porto. Made ourselves carbonara for dinner, which wasn´t bad but had too much egg in it.
The hostel was running drinking games in the evening and Macky and I distinguished ourselves by beating the defending champions at sangria pong before losing to a couple of American frat boys. Afterwards Macky, Ruby, Margarida, Roderigo and I, joined by some crazy American girl who works as a cinematographer on "Jerseylicious" (ew!), went to the sangria place again until 2, when we all headed to a club. The club looked really awful so Macky and I headed back. According to Margarida the next morning we made the right decision.
For the first morning in Madrid we woke up in time for the free hostel breakfast and then while Lewis worked Macky, Ruby and I went on a free walking tour lead by a super enthusiastic and very funny English girl called Harriot.
The tour started off at the official Madrid statue, which is a bear eating the berries off a special sort of tree who´s berries ferment and go alcoholic for a couple of weeks a year. From here we moved on to the Madrid theatre, founded by a queen who´s husband was gay and so dedicated herself to the arts. The theatre was the first funded one in Spain as the church refused to fund them at the time.
Next up was the Palace, which was massive and magnificent, and right next to it the cathedral, which they designed to be very plain so as not to outdo the palace, but the side facing away from the palace makes up for it by being amazingly ornate. From here Harriot took us to a little hidden garden where we got a lesson in the history of Spain and Madrid, from the Moorish times through freedom of religion and then onto the Catholic takeover and Inquisition.
We then moved on to the old central marketplace, which was built of wood and then burnt down accidentally 5 winters in a row before they rebuilt it one final time out of stone, and then up the new strip of Madrid, with big ornate buildings, each built to the style of the fashionable city of the time, which ends at the statue of Cybele, the unofficial symbol of the city and center of all Real Madrid celebrations. Next to the statue we chilled out in a park while Harriot gave us an overview of the various museums before she took those of us who wanted to a cheap little restaurant for lunch, where for $12.50 we got a huge 4 course meal, beer, paella, steak and chips, cake and finally coffee.
Headed back to the hostel where we said our farewells to our new friends, collected Lewis and then jumped on the metro to the train station for our train to Lisbon. Wrong station. Quickly caught a cab to the right station, which took us past the Bernabeu stadium which was cool. Got on our overnight train and discovered we were sharing our 8 seat section with a group of 5 from the Northern Suburbs. Small world.
At midnight, unable to sleep, we went and had a beer from the train´s bar and a chat with a couple of English girls and a New Zealand bloke.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Days 88-92 (Sept 2-6) - Barcelona
Checked in to our hostel, Sant Jordi Diagonal, (there are 5 Sant Jordi hostels in Barcelona that do pub crawls together) which was a very nice place but had seemingly no atmosphere. They did a pub crawl every night at 11pm but before then nobody was in the common rooms, people just turned up at reception at 11, which seemed odd after our previous experiences where everyone would hang out and pre drink together. I call it a pub crawl but in reality it was 1 bar where the people from each Sant Jordi hostel met up and then everyone going to a club about 1:30-2.
Spent the afternoon watching European Championship football with our roommate Josh and a crazy black frenchman.
Went on the pub crawl alone, as Lewis was working and Macky tired... Befriended a group of 4 Irish blokes from the hostel on the walk to the bar and when we arrived we discovered it empty aside from us. We grabbed some pints and a booth and played a drinking version of 20 questions, only to discover the bar suddenly full when we went for the next round. Got separated at the bar and started talking with a pair of sisters from perth and their friend from Boston and hung out with them until at 1am we were moved on to our destination club. The club itself was pretty shitty and I spent the rest of the evening alternating between the Irish guys and saving the girls from a very determined group of creepy French guys.
We all left together and as we did another guy made a very... physical... move on one of the sisters so I walked them back to their hostel. It was at this point that I realised that it was 5am and I was drunk, alone and lost in a foreign, non-English speaking city, so I just grabbed the first cab that came past who drove me 100m up the road, turned a corner, drove another 100m and dropped me outside the hostel for $4.
Slept in and when I awoke we, along with Josh, went and grabbed a kebab for lunch before bumming around the hostel for a few hours while Lewis worked. At about 5 I rallied the troops and we all headed up to Parc Guell, a nice park on a hilltop overlooking the city and filled with cool little winding paths and cacti with little red fruit growing on them, which tasted like very flavorsome but pip-filled watermelon. The hill up to the park is very steep but luckily this was solved by outdoor escalators. Genious!
Got back to the hostel and went on a mission to find a nearby recommended Paella place but ended up spending about an hour wandering around the area it was meant to be in and coming up empty so, starving by this point, we grabbed some burgers. Turns out there is no Paella place in our area whatsoever, they are all on the waterfront.
On the way back from dinner we stopped in a corner store for some drinks and discovered the best thing about Spain. 1.5L of 7% sangria for $2. Had some drinks in the hostel before once again attempting to pub crawl with the others. Lewis working. Macky booking tickets. I headed out all on my lonesome again.
First pub this time was a massive, beer hall themed place playing old school rock music. Much better. Hung out with the Irish guys again as well as the rest of the group from the hostel, a very cool guy from Miama, Meggie from Melbourne, Katie from Canada and a few others, including an Iraqi and an Israeli who befriended one another through the wonderful medium of beer and declared their country´s war a "politicians war the people don´t want". Very cool. The pub also served giant 4L tubes of beer, which between the 10 or so of us we got through 5 of.
At 2am we all moved on to the club of the night, Razzmatazz, which the Irish guys had been to the previous night after the other club and had encountered a bunch of people doing cocaine off one anothers shoulders, but was actually pretty tame. Headed back to the hostel about 4:30 and hung out a bit more with the Israeli and Miami guys before bed.
Up at midday and went and got some of these amazing sausage in pastry things I had had the previous night from up the road before spending the afternoon being lazy, reading and listening to music while Lewis worked and Macky complained of boredom. Should have come out with me the previous night and booked tickets now.
In the evening we went up the road to the hostel´s recommended Tapas place, "BO", which was really good and relatively cheap, all sorts of tasty little dishes and the best sangria we had in Spain. After dinner headed back to the hostel and while Lewis worked Macky and I spent the evening playing drinking games with Meggie and a couple of others and finished off all our remaining beer and sangria.
Hung around hostel with Lewis, Macky, Meggie and Josh until about 1 when, joined by Josh´s friends Pauline and Nadine, Dutch and Italian girls studying together in Bristol, we went up the street to a $10 all you can eat Japanese buffet place. Best place ever, more variety than I have ever seen, huge tables of sushi, noodles and rice, seafood, veggies, dim sums and spring rolls, meat, plus a bbq where you filled your plate and a chef bbqed it for you and ice creams, cakes and lollies. Stayed for about 2 and a half hours before we separated and I lead Macky and Lewis on another Hugh-designed walking tour.
First stop was the giant palace on the hill, fronted by a very cool boulevard, the "Magic Fountain", which lost some of its magic due to being turned off, a columnade and another set of outdoor escalators. From here we moved on to Estatua de Colon, a massive statue on the waterfront surrounded by smaller statues of lions at its base, which Macky had to ride before we walked up the main tourist street, stopping only to watch a street vendor/artist doing spray paint art.
Worked our way through the backstreets of the gothic quarter (architecture, not a whole area dedicated to goths, as hilarious as that would be) which was cool and emerged onto a large boulevard, next to a little area set up for the locals to play a variation of bowls on. The boulevard ended at the Barcelona Arc de Triumphe which was very impressive but not quite as beautiful as the Paris one.
Took the metro to our final stop, Sagrada Familia, the huge Catholic church designed by Gaudi and still under construction, showing an interesting colouring where the old, darker stone meets the new light stone. Sagrada Familia is intensely beautiful, awe striking with its very different style of architecture, lots of spires and traditional church statuery but combined with lots of smooth curves and also cubist style sculptures and with the spires lined with animal carvings and many of them with trees or fruit for the pinnacle.
Headed back for Thai dinner, which was very good although somewhat concerning as we were the only patrons, before Lewis and I (Macky´s legs being too sore) met up with Pauline and Nadine and joined the pub crawl group briefly at a pub called "La Gata Negro" (The Black Cat) which was so cool. The pub had I think 250 shots on offer for $2.50 each and every shot involved some sort of spectacle, be it fire, breathing through straws while drinking, melting fruit, bartender interaction or sexual themes and jokes.
Stayed there for a couple of shots before we went for a wander and ended up buying 6 beers off a street vendor for $6 and chilling on the beach. The beach in Barcelona was the first sand beach we had seen since Aus and it felt so good, and quite nostalgic, to be able to sit on a sandy beach again. Stayed there until about 5 when we walked back to the metro, said our farewells and headed back to the hostel.
Slept in until 10, checked out and headed to the station. Got there a little early so had coffee and donut breakfast before jumping onto the train to Madrid.
I really loved Barcelona. I can´t explain why exactly, be it the weather, atmosphere, beaches, architecture or whatever but it has a very Sydney feel to it and I felt more at home there than at any other city we had visited.
Spent the afternoon watching European Championship football with our roommate Josh and a crazy black frenchman.
Went on the pub crawl alone, as Lewis was working and Macky tired... Befriended a group of 4 Irish blokes from the hostel on the walk to the bar and when we arrived we discovered it empty aside from us. We grabbed some pints and a booth and played a drinking version of 20 questions, only to discover the bar suddenly full when we went for the next round. Got separated at the bar and started talking with a pair of sisters from perth and their friend from Boston and hung out with them until at 1am we were moved on to our destination club. The club itself was pretty shitty and I spent the rest of the evening alternating between the Irish guys and saving the girls from a very determined group of creepy French guys.
We all left together and as we did another guy made a very... physical... move on one of the sisters so I walked them back to their hostel. It was at this point that I realised that it was 5am and I was drunk, alone and lost in a foreign, non-English speaking city, so I just grabbed the first cab that came past who drove me 100m up the road, turned a corner, drove another 100m and dropped me outside the hostel for $4.
Slept in and when I awoke we, along with Josh, went and grabbed a kebab for lunch before bumming around the hostel for a few hours while Lewis worked. At about 5 I rallied the troops and we all headed up to Parc Guell, a nice park on a hilltop overlooking the city and filled with cool little winding paths and cacti with little red fruit growing on them, which tasted like very flavorsome but pip-filled watermelon. The hill up to the park is very steep but luckily this was solved by outdoor escalators. Genious!
Got back to the hostel and went on a mission to find a nearby recommended Paella place but ended up spending about an hour wandering around the area it was meant to be in and coming up empty so, starving by this point, we grabbed some burgers. Turns out there is no Paella place in our area whatsoever, they are all on the waterfront.
On the way back from dinner we stopped in a corner store for some drinks and discovered the best thing about Spain. 1.5L of 7% sangria for $2. Had some drinks in the hostel before once again attempting to pub crawl with the others. Lewis working. Macky booking tickets. I headed out all on my lonesome again.
First pub this time was a massive, beer hall themed place playing old school rock music. Much better. Hung out with the Irish guys again as well as the rest of the group from the hostel, a very cool guy from Miama, Meggie from Melbourne, Katie from Canada and a few others, including an Iraqi and an Israeli who befriended one another through the wonderful medium of beer and declared their country´s war a "politicians war the people don´t want". Very cool. The pub also served giant 4L tubes of beer, which between the 10 or so of us we got through 5 of.
At 2am we all moved on to the club of the night, Razzmatazz, which the Irish guys had been to the previous night after the other club and had encountered a bunch of people doing cocaine off one anothers shoulders, but was actually pretty tame. Headed back to the hostel about 4:30 and hung out a bit more with the Israeli and Miami guys before bed.
Up at midday and went and got some of these amazing sausage in pastry things I had had the previous night from up the road before spending the afternoon being lazy, reading and listening to music while Lewis worked and Macky complained of boredom. Should have come out with me the previous night and booked tickets now.
In the evening we went up the road to the hostel´s recommended Tapas place, "BO", which was really good and relatively cheap, all sorts of tasty little dishes and the best sangria we had in Spain. After dinner headed back to the hostel and while Lewis worked Macky and I spent the evening playing drinking games with Meggie and a couple of others and finished off all our remaining beer and sangria.
Hung around hostel with Lewis, Macky, Meggie and Josh until about 1 when, joined by Josh´s friends Pauline and Nadine, Dutch and Italian girls studying together in Bristol, we went up the street to a $10 all you can eat Japanese buffet place. Best place ever, more variety than I have ever seen, huge tables of sushi, noodles and rice, seafood, veggies, dim sums and spring rolls, meat, plus a bbq where you filled your plate and a chef bbqed it for you and ice creams, cakes and lollies. Stayed for about 2 and a half hours before we separated and I lead Macky and Lewis on another Hugh-designed walking tour.
First stop was the giant palace on the hill, fronted by a very cool boulevard, the "Magic Fountain", which lost some of its magic due to being turned off, a columnade and another set of outdoor escalators. From here we moved on to Estatua de Colon, a massive statue on the waterfront surrounded by smaller statues of lions at its base, which Macky had to ride before we walked up the main tourist street, stopping only to watch a street vendor/artist doing spray paint art.
Worked our way through the backstreets of the gothic quarter (architecture, not a whole area dedicated to goths, as hilarious as that would be) which was cool and emerged onto a large boulevard, next to a little area set up for the locals to play a variation of bowls on. The boulevard ended at the Barcelona Arc de Triumphe which was very impressive but not quite as beautiful as the Paris one.
Took the metro to our final stop, Sagrada Familia, the huge Catholic church designed by Gaudi and still under construction, showing an interesting colouring where the old, darker stone meets the new light stone. Sagrada Familia is intensely beautiful, awe striking with its very different style of architecture, lots of spires and traditional church statuery but combined with lots of smooth curves and also cubist style sculptures and with the spires lined with animal carvings and many of them with trees or fruit for the pinnacle.
Headed back for Thai dinner, which was very good although somewhat concerning as we were the only patrons, before Lewis and I (Macky´s legs being too sore) met up with Pauline and Nadine and joined the pub crawl group briefly at a pub called "La Gata Negro" (The Black Cat) which was so cool. The pub had I think 250 shots on offer for $2.50 each and every shot involved some sort of spectacle, be it fire, breathing through straws while drinking, melting fruit, bartender interaction or sexual themes and jokes.
Stayed there for a couple of shots before we went for a wander and ended up buying 6 beers off a street vendor for $6 and chilling on the beach. The beach in Barcelona was the first sand beach we had seen since Aus and it felt so good, and quite nostalgic, to be able to sit on a sandy beach again. Stayed there until about 5 when we walked back to the metro, said our farewells and headed back to the hostel.
Slept in until 10, checked out and headed to the station. Got there a little early so had coffee and donut breakfast before jumping onto the train to Madrid.
I really loved Barcelona. I can´t explain why exactly, be it the weather, atmosphere, beaches, architecture or whatever but it has a very Sydney feel to it and I felt more at home there than at any other city we had visited.
Days 85-88 (August 30 - Sept 2) - Valencia
Landed in Madrid airport, happy to once again see the sun and feel properly warm in shorts. Got the metro across the city to the coach station and got onto the 4pm coach to Valencia. Finally got to our hotel (we had booked a year in advance for this and Oktoberfest accomodation as they were the 2 big dates for the trip and we wanted somewhere decent, plus it was nice a cheap due to advanced booking) about 9pm, checked in and found ourselves in a very swanky 4 star hotel, feeling somewhat like we didn´t deserve to be in such a nice place.
Starving, we found the first food place that we found and managed to stumble upon the best sandwich place any of us had every experienced. These were less sandwiches and more sexwiches. A side dish of good quality chips, and next to them... the sandwich. One piece of perfectly toasted bread, coated in a thin level of mayo and then a decent amount of quality shredded tuna. On top of this they had placed, artists that they are, another piece of ubertoast, and then on top of this bacon, thick and tasty, before a large and tender piece of pork. Yes, 3 types of amazing meat. Still not finished, they then added tomato and, the piece de resistance, egg, before a third piece of toast, also adorned with mayo. In hindsight, I´m upgrading them yet again to godwiches.
Then bed after long day of travel.
Wednesday the 31st of August, La Tomatina.
Up at 7 and changed into our crap, ruinable clothes, or at least I did, and jumped onto the metro to the train station in south Valencia where the trains to Bunol left from. Waited in line for 30 mins just to get into the station before crushing onto the train itself for the 40 minute trip to Bunol.
Bunol is a very nice little Spanish town on the side of a hill, lots of little streets winding around and very typical Spanish housing, lots of tree´s and a very nice feel to it, and La Tomatina happens right in the center of it. Got off the train and joined the scrum of people making their way down the hill. Stopped halfway down for breakfast, a cheese and salami baguette and half a litre of sangria.
The area that the actual tomato fight takes place in is based around one main-ish road and the little roads that come off it, and somehow we managed to end up right in the middle of the main road itself. The locals have probably a better time (at least in the morning before the cleanup) than the people in the fight, covering their houses in tarps then sitting on their rooves, drinking, bbqing and throwing bucketloads of water on the crowd below. The fight itself starts when someone manages to get a ham off the top of a telegraph pole sized pole. This is made harder by the water throwing locals and the fact the pole is viciously greased up, but solved by making a huge human pyramid around the pole and then having people scrabble up and try to make the last bit of distance, and the completion of this is marked by a gunshot, at which point a series of 8 trucks, at about 10 minute intervals, drive up the main road, forcing everyone to hug the walls, loaded to the brim with over-ripe tomatos and people in them throwing the tomatos out into the crowd. Each truck also occasionally stops to open its back and dump a giant pile of tomatos in the middle of the street. I ended up standing, or occasionally swimming, in what was essentially a mid-thigh depth sea of tomatos in various states of solidity. The fight itself lasts about an hour and a half and was an obscene amount of fun, although tomato juice stings the eyes more than I could possibly have realised. Macky, Lewis and I made a gentleman´s agreement not to go for one another, which only Lewis broke. He was subsequently, and thoroughly, punished.
After it ended we wandered through the back streets searching for the showers, stopping along the way when we came upon a group of people standing around 2 girls in bikinis sitting in the tomato sea. Macky managed to get a "fight, fight, fight" chant going, which the girls obeyed, before yelling "finish her!" and one jumping the other. Our work there done, we moved on.
Showered, discarded my socks and shirt, changed into clean clothes and got the equally crowded but now considerably stankier train back to Valencia.
After second, more thorough, showers and then spent hours washing our shoes, boardies and the others shirts in the bathtub with large amounts of detergent before leaving them to soak overnight and going for more godwiches. Macky had to take the tomato out of his as he couldn´t deal with anymore.
At 7pm I lay down to read and promptly fell asleep.
Slept in until 11. Apparently I was tired. Spent another couple of hours dealing with our tomato clothes before draping them to dry on all available surfaces and doing what we could to deal with the fact that we had accidentally turned the bathtub a nice shade of tomato red.
Went out and grabbed some miscellaneous pastries from the supermarket for lunch to eat in the park then went back to hotel room only to find 2 cleaners outside our room looking remarkably unhappy. Walked past and spent the majority of the afternoon in the lobby with Lewis working and Macky and I reading instead until they were gone. Oops.
In the evening we went out and found ourselves some horchata, a traditional Valencian drink made of sugar, water and ground tigernuts that tastes like a sedimenty coconut milk, but was good.
Had a steak, chips and spanish sauces dinner and another quiet evening.
Woke up, checked out and took the metro to the train station for our trip onwards to Barcelona.
Starving, we found the first food place that we found and managed to stumble upon the best sandwich place any of us had every experienced. These were less sandwiches and more sexwiches. A side dish of good quality chips, and next to them... the sandwich. One piece of perfectly toasted bread, coated in a thin level of mayo and then a decent amount of quality shredded tuna. On top of this they had placed, artists that they are, another piece of ubertoast, and then on top of this bacon, thick and tasty, before a large and tender piece of pork. Yes, 3 types of amazing meat. Still not finished, they then added tomato and, the piece de resistance, egg, before a third piece of toast, also adorned with mayo. In hindsight, I´m upgrading them yet again to godwiches.
Then bed after long day of travel.
Wednesday the 31st of August, La Tomatina.
Up at 7 and changed into our crap, ruinable clothes, or at least I did, and jumped onto the metro to the train station in south Valencia where the trains to Bunol left from. Waited in line for 30 mins just to get into the station before crushing onto the train itself for the 40 minute trip to Bunol.
Bunol is a very nice little Spanish town on the side of a hill, lots of little streets winding around and very typical Spanish housing, lots of tree´s and a very nice feel to it, and La Tomatina happens right in the center of it. Got off the train and joined the scrum of people making their way down the hill. Stopped halfway down for breakfast, a cheese and salami baguette and half a litre of sangria.
The area that the actual tomato fight takes place in is based around one main-ish road and the little roads that come off it, and somehow we managed to end up right in the middle of the main road itself. The locals have probably a better time (at least in the morning before the cleanup) than the people in the fight, covering their houses in tarps then sitting on their rooves, drinking, bbqing and throwing bucketloads of water on the crowd below. The fight itself starts when someone manages to get a ham off the top of a telegraph pole sized pole. This is made harder by the water throwing locals and the fact the pole is viciously greased up, but solved by making a huge human pyramid around the pole and then having people scrabble up and try to make the last bit of distance, and the completion of this is marked by a gunshot, at which point a series of 8 trucks, at about 10 minute intervals, drive up the main road, forcing everyone to hug the walls, loaded to the brim with over-ripe tomatos and people in them throwing the tomatos out into the crowd. Each truck also occasionally stops to open its back and dump a giant pile of tomatos in the middle of the street. I ended up standing, or occasionally swimming, in what was essentially a mid-thigh depth sea of tomatos in various states of solidity. The fight itself lasts about an hour and a half and was an obscene amount of fun, although tomato juice stings the eyes more than I could possibly have realised. Macky, Lewis and I made a gentleman´s agreement not to go for one another, which only Lewis broke. He was subsequently, and thoroughly, punished.
After it ended we wandered through the back streets searching for the showers, stopping along the way when we came upon a group of people standing around 2 girls in bikinis sitting in the tomato sea. Macky managed to get a "fight, fight, fight" chant going, which the girls obeyed, before yelling "finish her!" and one jumping the other. Our work there done, we moved on.
Showered, discarded my socks and shirt, changed into clean clothes and got the equally crowded but now considerably stankier train back to Valencia.
After second, more thorough, showers and then spent hours washing our shoes, boardies and the others shirts in the bathtub with large amounts of detergent before leaving them to soak overnight and going for more godwiches. Macky had to take the tomato out of his as he couldn´t deal with anymore.
At 7pm I lay down to read and promptly fell asleep.
Slept in until 11. Apparently I was tired. Spent another couple of hours dealing with our tomato clothes before draping them to dry on all available surfaces and doing what we could to deal with the fact that we had accidentally turned the bathtub a nice shade of tomato red.
Went out and grabbed some miscellaneous pastries from the supermarket for lunch to eat in the park then went back to hotel room only to find 2 cleaners outside our room looking remarkably unhappy. Walked past and spent the majority of the afternoon in the lobby with Lewis working and Macky and I reading instead until they were gone. Oops.
In the evening we went out and found ourselves some horchata, a traditional Valencian drink made of sugar, water and ground tigernuts that tastes like a sedimenty coconut milk, but was good.
Had a steak, chips and spanish sauces dinner and another quiet evening.
Woke up, checked out and took the metro to the train station for our trip onwards to Barcelona.
Days 80-85 (August 25-30) - Leeds Festival
Lewis took over driving after we got off the ferry in Dover around 4 and took us on what should have been the last 3 hours of the trip. Traffic in England being what it is we ended up having to go the opposite way around the M25 (the big motorway that circles London), stopping only once, for fuel and transmission fluid for Cumu and Burger King for us, and finally arrived at our destination at 10:30. As the festival was sold out we had organised tickets through gumtree and the girl we were buying them had asked to meet in a KFC carpark. Bets, which could I suppose be called somewhat racist, were placed on her skin colour as a result of her chosen meeting point. I lost. The transaction itself went really smoothly but must have looked so suspicious, late at night a group of guys driving into a carpark, getting out of the car to meet some chav girl and handing her a large wad of cash in exchange for an unmarked envelope before both cars drive off. This was confirmed by the cop car that tore in with lights flashing and sirens blaring just as we left.
Parked in the "Guests and Residents" carpark on the advice of Jo, who assured us it would be fine providing we told them we were just dropping stuff off. Stuff like ourselves for a few days. Set up our tent and by 11pm we were sitting around a campfire, beer in hand, with Steph & Jo, and their friends Kristian, a very fun but intense gamer guy, Jono, who was quiet but awesome, Johnny & Antonia, a cool couple and Lydia, Antonia´s sister, who had a habit of smoking, drinking, passing out and repeating the cycle.
After a few drinks we headed out to the carnival area next to the arenas and after checking out the pretty shitastic D´n´B DJ tent we spent several hours being morons in the silent disco, which was awesome.
Woke up, cracked a beer and hung around the campfire until we all headed into the arena for the first time to see the best named band of the festival: Danananakroyd before moving on to the main stage for Taking Back Sunday. It was at this point I realised the downside to English festivals, and also the reason why everyone wears wellington boots. Mud. Deep, thick, slippery, everywhere mud.
I´m also going to interject at this point that this brief sojourn into England was the first time we were cold and wet since... England. It rained on and off the whole time we were there. Yay.
Retreated back under cover to the main tent stage to check out Cage the Elephant, who Macky and I were very keen to see even though we only knew one song and really took us by surprise by how good they were and how much stage presence they had. We then swam back across the arena area to the main stage for Enter Shikari, who I was expecting, based off "Sorry Your Not A Winner" to be very metal but ended up sounding a lot more like a slightly heavier Pendulum.
After Enter Shikari, cold and wet, we escaped due to a break in the decent bands to Jo´s car and its heater, stopping only briefly in camp for dry clothes, alcohol and a deck of cards. The car must have looked pretty dodgy to anyone walking by, 2 girls in bikinis and 5 guys squashed into a little car with a bunch of liquor and misted up windows.
Eventually re-emerged into the world, drunker, drier and warmer, and headed back into the mudpit to see Muse, who never fail to put on a fantastic show. It was the 10 year anniversary of the release of Origin of Symmetry and they played the entire album through before launching into all the classics. Tired and not wanting to deal with the weather anymore we all went to bed after Muse finished.
Woke up to a breakfast of champions; peanut butter sandwiches and strongbow. Hung around the campsite for a few hours, mostly amusing ourselves by taping Kristian´s hands into a pair of Steph´s socks so he couldn´t use his fingers and then taping one arm to his camp chair and challenging him to find a stranger walking past our site to rescue him. He would only appeal to the hot girls, and his calls of "baby I like your hair, can you help me?" or "bitch, I´ll treat you right" didn´t help his cause. After lowering his standards somewhat and still getting no help (to one girl who refused: "I hope your children are born with your nose") he finally found one to help, only for a friend of theirs, Chad, to appear out of thin air and threaten to pour coke on her if she did and then pelting Kristian with Maltesers. He needed the toilet so badly that he eventually gave up and went with his chair, Macky following to record the results, which were that people wanted photos with him but would still refuse to help him. Eventually we let him go as he, Macky, Jo and I left the others to go spend the day at the main stage. First band on was The Blackout, who I had never heard of but blew me away. We all pushed forwards to the front for New Found Glory but Macky decided at one point that he was close enough and pushed sideways towards the middle and we got separated by the crowd. Ended up 3 people back from the front and New Found Glory were excellent.
After NFG we decided we needed food and I promptly found a "Great Australian Pie Shop". The pies were pretty great but the offered side dishes of mash, gravy or mushy peas detracted from the Australian part. We then spent the next 20 minutes searching the mosh pit for Macky but to no avail before Bring Me The Horizon turned it into one enormous fight circle. "Northern monkeys" will fight circle to anything, but when the lead singer of a hardcore band is yelling "BIGGER" for 5 minutes it gets a little surreal. BMTH once again really impressed me with their live show and energy, although I suspect that their recorded stuff will be a let down.
Spent the half hour interval again failing to find Macky but then Rise Against came on and I had to immediately make my own way to the front to go a little mental. They played all the songs I love off their new album as well as all their best other stuff and, even without Macky to mosh with, were fantastic.
By now however I was concerned by our inability to find Macky and we went back to camp to see if he had left the arena (and maybe for another drink or 2). He hadn´t. Regrouped with the rest of the group (minus Macky) at our pre-decided meeting point, an ice cream van, and we all headed forward for The Offspring, who put on a great show with everyone singing along to every song but are really, noticeably, aged.
Sucking up my inhibitions I then joined Johnny, Kristian and Jo and we moved forward for 30 Seconds to Mars who I will sum up with the following 5 words: Jared Leto is a tool. Left halfway through to have another search for Macky but he wasn´t at the campsite or the car so I made my way back and we once again regrouped at the ice cream van for My Chemical Romance. I was really expecting MCR to be awful, emo crap but they ended up surprising me with the quality of show they put on.
Still tense with the lack of Macky I then pushed back to camp and he arrived triumphant 5 minutes later after having spent 10 straight hours at the very front of the stage. Relieved, we had some drinks and crashed.
Woke up nice and perky to find Jo, Kristian, Antonia and Johnny all in a state of uber-hangover thanks to the "Crunk Juice" that had consumed the previous night. Crunk Juice is apparently a result of "Lil Jon, the King of Crunk, who created the drink for his bitches and hos so they would get really fucked and do crazy shit". It is about 12%, comes in a giant can, is illegal to import to the UK and tastes like a "raspberry abortion".
Spent the morning hanging around the campsite, laughing at the poor hungover kids, working on polishing off the alcohol and packing up as we were told we should leave after the days bands rather than stay the night as "people start burning everything". Julia, a pretty blonge girl with dreadlocks who Kristian had been after the whole festival turned up just in time to see him passed out, half naked, in the mud and offer to take him to the welfare tent.
Loaded the cars, left everything we weren´t taking in Lydia´s tent which was being left and then I sprinted off alone to see Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Drunk and alone I pushed to the front of the stage just in time for a full set of happy, hippy sing-alongs and awesome music. Also had some crazily hippy girl with dreadlocks plaited with flowers offer me LSD but turned it down like a good boy.Afterwards I made my way to the ice cream van to meet up with the others, in a super good mood, tromping through the mud singing "Home" to myself and feeling more hippy than I ever have before.
Met up with the others and headed closer to main stage for Madness, who I had never heard of but knew a few songs and were very old school ska, and Jimmy Eat World, who always get the crowd going well, then went back to the campsite to burn the remainder of the wood and drink the last drinks. Found Lydia´s tent ransacked and torn apart and the wood stolen by next site over, but we reclaimed it, grabbed the few last cans and hung around until about 9 when we (Macky, Lewis, Steph and I) drove to Steph´s where we had been offered a place to crash for the night and finally got ourselves a decent meal, badly needed shower and a really comfy (couch) bed.
Woke up to a full english breakfast. Fantastic. Baked beans are something we could not find anywhere in mainland Europe, so they were hugely appreciated, by Lewis in particular. Left at about midday, dropped Steph off at Jo´s place but had to decline her offer to show the poms how to play cricket (possibly not her exact wording) and get back to London. Booked our flights for the next day to Valencia as we drove, got again stuck in traffic and arrived back at Stephen´s in Walton about 6pm.
Unpacked everything from Cumu, donating any of our food and camping equipment that was wanted to Pen & Stephen and while we were doing so Stephen went upstairs and wrote us a letter to cancel the insurance. Our flight was leaving at 8am the next morning and Stephen then offered to talk to Jerry, his friend we bought Cumu off and then the insurance company. We ended up somehow getting Jerry to buy the car back and pay for repairs and cancelling the insurance and probably made back about 50% of what we initially paid. Stephen is some sort of miracle worker/saint.
Cumu ended up doing, in around 2 and a half months, 8000 miles (12,800km) which averages at 105 miles (170km) a day and even with her cantankerous nature and eventual gearbox cancer is sorely missed.
Spent the evening washing all our clothes and talking with Pen and Stephen before getting an early night.
Woke up at 6 and Stephen (again, saint) drove us to the airport where we got on our plane to Madrid, which we had to book as there was no flights left to Valencia.
Parked in the "Guests and Residents" carpark on the advice of Jo, who assured us it would be fine providing we told them we were just dropping stuff off. Stuff like ourselves for a few days. Set up our tent and by 11pm we were sitting around a campfire, beer in hand, with Steph & Jo, and their friends Kristian, a very fun but intense gamer guy, Jono, who was quiet but awesome, Johnny & Antonia, a cool couple and Lydia, Antonia´s sister, who had a habit of smoking, drinking, passing out and repeating the cycle.
After a few drinks we headed out to the carnival area next to the arenas and after checking out the pretty shitastic D´n´B DJ tent we spent several hours being morons in the silent disco, which was awesome.
Woke up, cracked a beer and hung around the campfire until we all headed into the arena for the first time to see the best named band of the festival: Danananakroyd before moving on to the main stage for Taking Back Sunday. It was at this point I realised the downside to English festivals, and also the reason why everyone wears wellington boots. Mud. Deep, thick, slippery, everywhere mud.
I´m also going to interject at this point that this brief sojourn into England was the first time we were cold and wet since... England. It rained on and off the whole time we were there. Yay.
Retreated back under cover to the main tent stage to check out Cage the Elephant, who Macky and I were very keen to see even though we only knew one song and really took us by surprise by how good they were and how much stage presence they had. We then swam back across the arena area to the main stage for Enter Shikari, who I was expecting, based off "Sorry Your Not A Winner" to be very metal but ended up sounding a lot more like a slightly heavier Pendulum.
After Enter Shikari, cold and wet, we escaped due to a break in the decent bands to Jo´s car and its heater, stopping only briefly in camp for dry clothes, alcohol and a deck of cards. The car must have looked pretty dodgy to anyone walking by, 2 girls in bikinis and 5 guys squashed into a little car with a bunch of liquor and misted up windows.
Eventually re-emerged into the world, drunker, drier and warmer, and headed back into the mudpit to see Muse, who never fail to put on a fantastic show. It was the 10 year anniversary of the release of Origin of Symmetry and they played the entire album through before launching into all the classics. Tired and not wanting to deal with the weather anymore we all went to bed after Muse finished.
Woke up to a breakfast of champions; peanut butter sandwiches and strongbow. Hung around the campsite for a few hours, mostly amusing ourselves by taping Kristian´s hands into a pair of Steph´s socks so he couldn´t use his fingers and then taping one arm to his camp chair and challenging him to find a stranger walking past our site to rescue him. He would only appeal to the hot girls, and his calls of "baby I like your hair, can you help me?" or "bitch, I´ll treat you right" didn´t help his cause. After lowering his standards somewhat and still getting no help (to one girl who refused: "I hope your children are born with your nose") he finally found one to help, only for a friend of theirs, Chad, to appear out of thin air and threaten to pour coke on her if she did and then pelting Kristian with Maltesers. He needed the toilet so badly that he eventually gave up and went with his chair, Macky following to record the results, which were that people wanted photos with him but would still refuse to help him. Eventually we let him go as he, Macky, Jo and I left the others to go spend the day at the main stage. First band on was The Blackout, who I had never heard of but blew me away. We all pushed forwards to the front for New Found Glory but Macky decided at one point that he was close enough and pushed sideways towards the middle and we got separated by the crowd. Ended up 3 people back from the front and New Found Glory were excellent.
After NFG we decided we needed food and I promptly found a "Great Australian Pie Shop". The pies were pretty great but the offered side dishes of mash, gravy or mushy peas detracted from the Australian part. We then spent the next 20 minutes searching the mosh pit for Macky but to no avail before Bring Me The Horizon turned it into one enormous fight circle. "Northern monkeys" will fight circle to anything, but when the lead singer of a hardcore band is yelling "BIGGER" for 5 minutes it gets a little surreal. BMTH once again really impressed me with their live show and energy, although I suspect that their recorded stuff will be a let down.
Spent the half hour interval again failing to find Macky but then Rise Against came on and I had to immediately make my own way to the front to go a little mental. They played all the songs I love off their new album as well as all their best other stuff and, even without Macky to mosh with, were fantastic.
By now however I was concerned by our inability to find Macky and we went back to camp to see if he had left the arena (and maybe for another drink or 2). He hadn´t. Regrouped with the rest of the group (minus Macky) at our pre-decided meeting point, an ice cream van, and we all headed forward for The Offspring, who put on a great show with everyone singing along to every song but are really, noticeably, aged.
Sucking up my inhibitions I then joined Johnny, Kristian and Jo and we moved forward for 30 Seconds to Mars who I will sum up with the following 5 words: Jared Leto is a tool. Left halfway through to have another search for Macky but he wasn´t at the campsite or the car so I made my way back and we once again regrouped at the ice cream van for My Chemical Romance. I was really expecting MCR to be awful, emo crap but they ended up surprising me with the quality of show they put on.
Still tense with the lack of Macky I then pushed back to camp and he arrived triumphant 5 minutes later after having spent 10 straight hours at the very front of the stage. Relieved, we had some drinks and crashed.
Woke up nice and perky to find Jo, Kristian, Antonia and Johnny all in a state of uber-hangover thanks to the "Crunk Juice" that had consumed the previous night. Crunk Juice is apparently a result of "Lil Jon, the King of Crunk, who created the drink for his bitches and hos so they would get really fucked and do crazy shit". It is about 12%, comes in a giant can, is illegal to import to the UK and tastes like a "raspberry abortion".
Spent the morning hanging around the campsite, laughing at the poor hungover kids, working on polishing off the alcohol and packing up as we were told we should leave after the days bands rather than stay the night as "people start burning everything". Julia, a pretty blonge girl with dreadlocks who Kristian had been after the whole festival turned up just in time to see him passed out, half naked, in the mud and offer to take him to the welfare tent.
Loaded the cars, left everything we weren´t taking in Lydia´s tent which was being left and then I sprinted off alone to see Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. Drunk and alone I pushed to the front of the stage just in time for a full set of happy, hippy sing-alongs and awesome music. Also had some crazily hippy girl with dreadlocks plaited with flowers offer me LSD but turned it down like a good boy.Afterwards I made my way to the ice cream van to meet up with the others, in a super good mood, tromping through the mud singing "Home" to myself and feeling more hippy than I ever have before.
Met up with the others and headed closer to main stage for Madness, who I had never heard of but knew a few songs and were very old school ska, and Jimmy Eat World, who always get the crowd going well, then went back to the campsite to burn the remainder of the wood and drink the last drinks. Found Lydia´s tent ransacked and torn apart and the wood stolen by next site over, but we reclaimed it, grabbed the few last cans and hung around until about 9 when we (Macky, Lewis, Steph and I) drove to Steph´s where we had been offered a place to crash for the night and finally got ourselves a decent meal, badly needed shower and a really comfy (couch) bed.
Woke up to a full english breakfast. Fantastic. Baked beans are something we could not find anywhere in mainland Europe, so they were hugely appreciated, by Lewis in particular. Left at about midday, dropped Steph off at Jo´s place but had to decline her offer to show the poms how to play cricket (possibly not her exact wording) and get back to London. Booked our flights for the next day to Valencia as we drove, got again stuck in traffic and arrived back at Stephen´s in Walton about 6pm.
Unpacked everything from Cumu, donating any of our food and camping equipment that was wanted to Pen & Stephen and while we were doing so Stephen went upstairs and wrote us a letter to cancel the insurance. Our flight was leaving at 8am the next morning and Stephen then offered to talk to Jerry, his friend we bought Cumu off and then the insurance company. We ended up somehow getting Jerry to buy the car back and pay for repairs and cancelling the insurance and probably made back about 50% of what we initially paid. Stephen is some sort of miracle worker/saint.
Cumu ended up doing, in around 2 and a half months, 8000 miles (12,800km) which averages at 105 miles (170km) a day and even with her cantankerous nature and eventual gearbox cancer is sorely missed.
Spent the evening washing all our clothes and talking with Pen and Stephen before getting an early night.
Woke up at 6 and Stephen (again, saint) drove us to the airport where we got on our plane to Madrid, which we had to book as there was no flights left to Valencia.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Days 75-80 (August 20-25) - Grenoble & Paris
About halfway through our long drive from Pisa to Grenoble, just on the Italian side of the Alps, Cumu decided to pack it in. Disaster! Lewis pulled over into a small rest stop halfway up an Alp where the mechanic mimed that she was done. After our own careful inspection, much frustration and an hour of letting her cool off we discovered that the transmission fluid was empty and decided to top it off and try and make it to Grenoble where we might be able to find a mechanic we could communicate with. Limped on to Grenoble, where we arrived at the "Hotel Kyriad" (there being no hostels and this still being the considerably cheapest option) at about 10pm, had a quick kebab dinner and fell into bed.
Slept in until almost midday as it was Sunday and so, in true European fashion, absolutely nothing (particularly mechanics) would be open. Our intention was to spend the day by going for a hike but after consulting both the receptionist and our stomachs we decided that lunch should come first, and that Maccas was our only real option. This then lead the others to the conclusion that the 15 minute walk in the sun there and back was enough hiking for them and so the call was made to relax around the hotel instead.
Around 5, with Lewis working and Macky skyping, I went for a walk to end my boredom and explored around for about half an hour before I found a servo and bought us another bottle of transmission fluid for Cumu and a 500ml can of Jamiroqui brand beer for me, which I enjoyed while wandering around a park listening to dub (not dubstep, real dub, which the others had banned me from playing in Cumu).
For dinner, with no Cumu to transport us, I asked the lady in reception for information on whether there were any busses into the center of Grenoble, but the result was not good. However she then offered to give us a ride in when she finished work at 9. The condition being that 2 of us would have to ride in the back of the van, which contained only a mattress and no light. Being the gentleman that I am I immediately accepted and happily volunteered the others for those positions while I enjoyed the drive down the tree lined roads with the cool breeze of a window and the ability to foresee turns and breaking. Had a bit of a wander around Grenoble then grabbed ourselves some Indian, which was a very nice change of pace, and a cab back to the hotel.
Up the next morning bright and early (by our standards) in order to take Cumu to the Honda repair place we had discovered. Unfortunately this mechanic also had no English but we stumbled through and he took her for a quick drive and realised there was a problem. While Cumu was being thoroughly explored (dirty slut that she is) we grabbed some breakfast and more thongs for Lewis (who lost his in Corfu) and then went exploring properly in Grenoble.
After a quick jaunt through the backstreets we jumped in a cable car up to the Bastille on the hill, which was very impressive and commanded a fantastic view of the city and the Alps than enclose it. Had a coffee up on the top and took in both the views and the history of the Bastille and the city before descending back down to continue on. Our steps took us through a nice little park and past a couple of cool churches (after so many I feel we are starting to grow less impressed by them than we used to) before ending up at Place Notre-Dame where we acquired for ourselves a 3L tube of beer to wittle away the remaining time until Cumu was ready.
Half an hour later we got the call and, hearts in mouths, headed back to the garage, where the mechanic mimed and used broken English to confirm our suspicions, Cumu´s gearbox was terminal. Limped her back to the hotel where we made the plan to try and get her back to London, where we could either repair her or dump her, via Paris as it was on the way.
Checked out at 8:30 to begin our long, potentially ardous trek North to Paris. Stopped at a few servos before we found one that sold transmission fluid so we could keep Cumu topped up but otherwise she behaved herself remarkably well and we got to our hostel at about 6pm. The "Aloha Hostel" was a pretty nice place with decent atmosphere but sadly lacking in any aloha theme. Met our 3 aussie (seriously, we are like a plague on Europe, just all up in everywhere) roommates who invited us to join them on a pub crawl so after scrounging foods from Cumu and making chilli pasta for dinner we set out with them and a girl called Megan who had, from what we could discover, just spent 3 months in an American bible camp.
The pub crawl was based around the area with the infamous Moulin Rouge (which we didn´t sadly enter) and begun from (even more sadly) an Australian themed pub that served only Fosters. However the pub crawl had a "buy one beer, get one free shot" rule in place so we made do. Ended the night in a decent, packed but not over-crowded club after a succession of average pubs and headed back around 3,
Up around 11, had brunch from a bakery then I led us out on our expertly devised tour of Paris. The Eiffel tower was pretty much as advertised, big, Eiffely and surrounded by tourists. The most remarkable things being the large group of people trying to collect "donations" for being "deaf mutes" but who were often observed talking, and the pick pocket who started following Macky after he saw his camera until I spotted him and pulled us aside until he left.
The Arc de Triumphe was very impressive, lots of impressive statues and I had also not realised that it was the Parisian tomb of the unknown soldier (war memorial). The views down the Champs Elysees were also really awesome, its a pretty damn big boulevard (although Bucharest´s one is 1m wider, suck it France!). Got the metro down the Champs Elysees and came up into the remarkably decadent park that leads to the Louvre. The park itself was amazing, filled with little points of interest at the start and then turning into a huge collection of statues, fountains and flowers as one nears the Louvre itself, which is kind of just a big glass pyramid from the outside. We avoided the giant queue due to time constraints and moved on yet again to the cathedral of Notre Dame, which was huge and fantastic, if sadly lacking in hunchbacks. It did make up for it however by having what we dubbed the "birdmaster" outside, a man almost coated in swallows and with an army of pigeons at his feet.
After this I took us on a detour I wanted for myself, to a huge graveyard in the East of Paris to visit and pay my respects to the grave of Jim Morrison. The grave itself was comparably plain next to the huge ones around it but covered in flowers and gifts. We then also went to Oscar Wilde´s grave, which was larger and almost completely coated in red kiss marks left by fans. Our final stop was the catacombs but they were closed so, alas, we headed back to the hostel.
Made spur of the moment plans, after being invited by Steph & Jo from Corfu, to head to Leeds Festival the next day, made a giant spag bol and had an early night.
Got up at 6:30 to begin yet another epic voyage, this time to North England, and checked out by 7:15. The ferry was booked for 12 but traffic was appalling and we arrived 5 minutes after final check in and had to wait for the 2pm ferry. This at least afforded me the chance for a shower after driving for almost 5 straight hours, even if I had to sneak in as it was meant to be only for truckers. Also gave Macky his birthday present early. I had been carrying it since Download Festival but knew there would be more available at Leeds Fest so had to give it to him before he got himself one. A skull printed face mask which he wore more often than not the entire time we were in England.
Slept in until almost midday as it was Sunday and so, in true European fashion, absolutely nothing (particularly mechanics) would be open. Our intention was to spend the day by going for a hike but after consulting both the receptionist and our stomachs we decided that lunch should come first, and that Maccas was our only real option. This then lead the others to the conclusion that the 15 minute walk in the sun there and back was enough hiking for them and so the call was made to relax around the hotel instead.
Around 5, with Lewis working and Macky skyping, I went for a walk to end my boredom and explored around for about half an hour before I found a servo and bought us another bottle of transmission fluid for Cumu and a 500ml can of Jamiroqui brand beer for me, which I enjoyed while wandering around a park listening to dub (not dubstep, real dub, which the others had banned me from playing in Cumu).
For dinner, with no Cumu to transport us, I asked the lady in reception for information on whether there were any busses into the center of Grenoble, but the result was not good. However she then offered to give us a ride in when she finished work at 9. The condition being that 2 of us would have to ride in the back of the van, which contained only a mattress and no light. Being the gentleman that I am I immediately accepted and happily volunteered the others for those positions while I enjoyed the drive down the tree lined roads with the cool breeze of a window and the ability to foresee turns and breaking. Had a bit of a wander around Grenoble then grabbed ourselves some Indian, which was a very nice change of pace, and a cab back to the hotel.
Up the next morning bright and early (by our standards) in order to take Cumu to the Honda repair place we had discovered. Unfortunately this mechanic also had no English but we stumbled through and he took her for a quick drive and realised there was a problem. While Cumu was being thoroughly explored (dirty slut that she is) we grabbed some breakfast and more thongs for Lewis (who lost his in Corfu) and then went exploring properly in Grenoble.
After a quick jaunt through the backstreets we jumped in a cable car up to the Bastille on the hill, which was very impressive and commanded a fantastic view of the city and the Alps than enclose it. Had a coffee up on the top and took in both the views and the history of the Bastille and the city before descending back down to continue on. Our steps took us through a nice little park and past a couple of cool churches (after so many I feel we are starting to grow less impressed by them than we used to) before ending up at Place Notre-Dame where we acquired for ourselves a 3L tube of beer to wittle away the remaining time until Cumu was ready.
Half an hour later we got the call and, hearts in mouths, headed back to the garage, where the mechanic mimed and used broken English to confirm our suspicions, Cumu´s gearbox was terminal. Limped her back to the hotel where we made the plan to try and get her back to London, where we could either repair her or dump her, via Paris as it was on the way.
Checked out at 8:30 to begin our long, potentially ardous trek North to Paris. Stopped at a few servos before we found one that sold transmission fluid so we could keep Cumu topped up but otherwise she behaved herself remarkably well and we got to our hostel at about 6pm. The "Aloha Hostel" was a pretty nice place with decent atmosphere but sadly lacking in any aloha theme. Met our 3 aussie (seriously, we are like a plague on Europe, just all up in everywhere) roommates who invited us to join them on a pub crawl so after scrounging foods from Cumu and making chilli pasta for dinner we set out with them and a girl called Megan who had, from what we could discover, just spent 3 months in an American bible camp.
The pub crawl was based around the area with the infamous Moulin Rouge (which we didn´t sadly enter) and begun from (even more sadly) an Australian themed pub that served only Fosters. However the pub crawl had a "buy one beer, get one free shot" rule in place so we made do. Ended the night in a decent, packed but not over-crowded club after a succession of average pubs and headed back around 3,
Up around 11, had brunch from a bakery then I led us out on our expertly devised tour of Paris. The Eiffel tower was pretty much as advertised, big, Eiffely and surrounded by tourists. The most remarkable things being the large group of people trying to collect "donations" for being "deaf mutes" but who were often observed talking, and the pick pocket who started following Macky after he saw his camera until I spotted him and pulled us aside until he left.
The Arc de Triumphe was very impressive, lots of impressive statues and I had also not realised that it was the Parisian tomb of the unknown soldier (war memorial). The views down the Champs Elysees were also really awesome, its a pretty damn big boulevard (although Bucharest´s one is 1m wider, suck it France!). Got the metro down the Champs Elysees and came up into the remarkably decadent park that leads to the Louvre. The park itself was amazing, filled with little points of interest at the start and then turning into a huge collection of statues, fountains and flowers as one nears the Louvre itself, which is kind of just a big glass pyramid from the outside. We avoided the giant queue due to time constraints and moved on yet again to the cathedral of Notre Dame, which was huge and fantastic, if sadly lacking in hunchbacks. It did make up for it however by having what we dubbed the "birdmaster" outside, a man almost coated in swallows and with an army of pigeons at his feet.
After this I took us on a detour I wanted for myself, to a huge graveyard in the East of Paris to visit and pay my respects to the grave of Jim Morrison. The grave itself was comparably plain next to the huge ones around it but covered in flowers and gifts. We then also went to Oscar Wilde´s grave, which was larger and almost completely coated in red kiss marks left by fans. Our final stop was the catacombs but they were closed so, alas, we headed back to the hostel.
Made spur of the moment plans, after being invited by Steph & Jo from Corfu, to head to Leeds Festival the next day, made a giant spag bol and had an early night.
Got up at 6:30 to begin yet another epic voyage, this time to North England, and checked out by 7:15. The ferry was booked for 12 but traffic was appalling and we arrived 5 minutes after final check in and had to wait for the 2pm ferry. This at least afforded me the chance for a shower after driving for almost 5 straight hours, even if I had to sneak in as it was meant to be only for truckers. Also gave Macky his birthday present early. I had been carrying it since Download Festival but knew there would be more available at Leeds Fest so had to give it to him before he got himself one. A skull printed face mask which he wore more often than not the entire time we were in England.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Days 73-75 (August 18-20) - Florence and Pisa
Lewis drove us the first half of the way to Florence then I took over and brought us to the "Ostello Europa Villa Camerata". Worst hostel so far. No air conditioning or fans, mosquitos everywhere, hot, stuffy rooms, useless wifi and somehow the showers only ran cold but the taps only ran hot.
Just before sunset we drove to Piazza Michaelangelo, which is a hilltop square with a replice of the statue of David on the south edge of Florence and commands views over the whole city. Watched the sunset over Florence, romantics that we are, which was spectacular then drove down into the city center and found a really nice but not overly priced place called La Spada. You know a place is fancy when it has its own vintage of wine and they give you a free glass on entry while you wait to be seated. Fitting in with the fanciness we had wild boar salami as a starter/experiment, really tasty pasta mains and then were given complementary biscotti and shots of some brandy-esque liquor.
Drove back to hostel about 11 but, even given my previous nights lack of sleep, couldn't sleep due to the heat, mozzies and old snoring American.
Got up, barely rested, at 11 and drove into central Florence to explore. Left Cumu at the free parking at Piazza Michaelangelo then lead the others down and across the bridge to a Piazza which had a huge collection of replicas of cool, famous statues at one end and a big church at the other. From there headed north to Piazza de la Duome, home of the 4th largest church in the world, which was breathtaking in size and the intricacies of its decorations. Line to go in, as all tourist attraction lines are, was massive so we headed on to the Accademia Gallery. The gallery had a really good collection of big religious paintings and a lot of sculptures, primarily by Bartolini, but most famously is the home to Michaelangelo's David, which was surprisingly big (5.17m tall) and astoundingly detailed.
Afternoon was getting on so we wandered our way back through some street markets and then crossed over the river on the "Golden bridge", a really cool bridge which has both sides lined the entire way by nothing but expensive jewelry shops. Had our final Italian dinner at a Pizzeria near the hostel.
This was also the first day Cumu started playing up, slipping when shifting gears, especially when cold and in low gears.
Exhausted, having lost the snoring American, and armed with mosquito repellent we managed to get at least some decent sleep.
Woke up in time to get the complementary but craptastic breakfast, supplemented by a tin of fruit salad from Cumu, then checked out. For all that the hostel was awful, Florence itself is a truly beautiful city, lots of tree lined buildings, very clean, art everywhere. By far my favourite city in Italy although that isn't saying much given that we invented a city rating system just to show how bad we rated both Rome and Napoli.
Drove an hour to Pisa, Cumu occasionally complaining a bit, parked in a "Pam" supermarket, much to our amusement, and walked to the tower. As summed up by Macky: "A monument to Italy's fail, not that we need another after Napoli and Rome". Tower was pretty cool, somewhat brought down by the endless lines of tourists taking photos pretending to be holding up the tower. The church next to the tower is actually, all leaning aside, far more impressive as a structure.
"Pam" supplied our lunch then we got back on the road towards Grenoble, which we had selected as Nice and Marseilles were outrageously expensive, possibly due to our tendency to book at the last minute.
Just before sunset we drove to Piazza Michaelangelo, which is a hilltop square with a replice of the statue of David on the south edge of Florence and commands views over the whole city. Watched the sunset over Florence, romantics that we are, which was spectacular then drove down into the city center and found a really nice but not overly priced place called La Spada. You know a place is fancy when it has its own vintage of wine and they give you a free glass on entry while you wait to be seated. Fitting in with the fanciness we had wild boar salami as a starter/experiment, really tasty pasta mains and then were given complementary biscotti and shots of some brandy-esque liquor.
Drove back to hostel about 11 but, even given my previous nights lack of sleep, couldn't sleep due to the heat, mozzies and old snoring American.
Got up, barely rested, at 11 and drove into central Florence to explore. Left Cumu at the free parking at Piazza Michaelangelo then lead the others down and across the bridge to a Piazza which had a huge collection of replicas of cool, famous statues at one end and a big church at the other. From there headed north to Piazza de la Duome, home of the 4th largest church in the world, which was breathtaking in size and the intricacies of its decorations. Line to go in, as all tourist attraction lines are, was massive so we headed on to the Accademia Gallery. The gallery had a really good collection of big religious paintings and a lot of sculptures, primarily by Bartolini, but most famously is the home to Michaelangelo's David, which was surprisingly big (5.17m tall) and astoundingly detailed.
Afternoon was getting on so we wandered our way back through some street markets and then crossed over the river on the "Golden bridge", a really cool bridge which has both sides lined the entire way by nothing but expensive jewelry shops. Had our final Italian dinner at a Pizzeria near the hostel.
This was also the first day Cumu started playing up, slipping when shifting gears, especially when cold and in low gears.
Exhausted, having lost the snoring American, and armed with mosquito repellent we managed to get at least some decent sleep.
Woke up in time to get the complementary but craptastic breakfast, supplemented by a tin of fruit salad from Cumu, then checked out. For all that the hostel was awful, Florence itself is a truly beautiful city, lots of tree lined buildings, very clean, art everywhere. By far my favourite city in Italy although that isn't saying much given that we invented a city rating system just to show how bad we rated both Rome and Napoli.
Drove an hour to Pisa, Cumu occasionally complaining a bit, parked in a "Pam" supermarket, much to our amusement, and walked to the tower. As summed up by Macky: "A monument to Italy's fail, not that we need another after Napoli and Rome". Tower was pretty cool, somewhat brought down by the endless lines of tourists taking photos pretending to be holding up the tower. The church next to the tower is actually, all leaning aside, far more impressive as a structure.
"Pam" supplied our lunch then we got back on the road towards Grenoble, which we had selected as Nice and Marseilles were outrageously expensive, possibly due to our tendency to book at the last minute.
Days 68-73 (August 13-18) - Naples & Rome
Cumu's re-emergence as navigator caused immediate havoc as she took us off the motorway and down a side road where we saw our first Italians... an entire bevy of scantily clad, butter faced, Italian hookers and then a police car watching for anyone with low enough standards to actually pull over.
I stepped back up, slapped Cumu into submission a little and we arrived a few hours later in Pompei where, priorities being what they are, we experienced our first Italian pizza. Italian food and coffee is amazing, it almost makes up for Italian people and Italian cities. Almost. Explored the ruins for 3 hours under the shadow of Vesuvius, their creator. They covered a huge area and were amazingly well preserved, and awe-inspiring given the vast amount of destruction and loss of life that happened so suddenly and without warning and yet the area is repopulated by people who apparently live their life with either a death wish or gigantic balls.
I drove to Napoli (Naples) which was a 45 minute nightmare of Italian drivers, Italian unmarked roads and useless navigation. My first ever case of road rage ensued. Lewis agreed to drive for the rest of Italy.
Checked into our hotel, the "Hotel Casanova" which was a fairly standard small hotel, went out and found ourselves some fantastic pasta then went back to to hotel to chill out and ended up befriending a french girl called Mathilde who was travelling with her mum and seemed desperate for some same-age company.
The next day we intended to use to take care of some boring but much needed tasks, haircuts, laundry, car maintainence, shopping, pharmacy for Macky and catching up on our sleep.
Sleep in until midday: Check.
Every other task: Fail. We should probably have realised that it was a sunday but alas, every single shop, cafe and restaurant was closed. It took us half an hour of walking through an endless succession of shuttered shop fronts and garbage everywhere (I'm not even kidding, EVERYWHERE) just to find pizza. Pizza. In Italy! Then another 15 minutes to find coffee. Unimpressed by Napoli, everything is dirty, garbage and graffiti are all over and the people are, without fail, rude.
Ended up having a lazy day around the hotel, getting dinner from the single restaurant open on the main road fronting the hotel and then another evening of chilling in the lobby and talking with Mathilde.
Woke up early, desiring nothing more than coffee, pastries and to flee Napoli. Did all three in rapid succession and Lewis drove us to Rome where we checked into the "Youth Station Hostel" in the Bologna region of Rome. Hostel was quite nice and seemed completely empty until suddenly it was swarming with 14 year old American Catholic children wearing crosses and bright green shirts. We made a private joke about how all they needed to do was start a prayer circle. 5 minutes later they did. Turns out we showed up in Rome, Catholic center of the world, on World Youth Day. Shit. With almost the entire city closed and an army of 14 year old zealots invading the hostel we fled to go and try find a pharmacy for Macky, who was rapidly dieing. Walk to Termini station, the central transport hub which was also purported to have open shops, was a 20 minute insight into a post-apocalyptic world. A long walk through completely empty, shuttered streets, without another person in sight, the occasional car in the distance or lone dog howling just adding to the eerie feeling.
Got Macky his medicine, had a crazy chicken kebab style thing then made our way back to the hostel which had thankfully been vacated by the legion. Had a fancy backpacker dinner of 2 minute noodles and tinned tuna and befriended 2 girls from Cornwall, Jen and Jenny.
Woke up after the others to find them with milk and having finally opened the cereal we had been carting around since London. This day became attempt #2 of our Napoli day of chores as we gathered our considerable amount of washing and wandered up to the nearby Indian-run laundromat as it was another Italian holiday. The helpful guy at the laundromat told us that our best chance for haircuts would be Piazza Vittorio as it apparently is the Indian/Bangladeshi quarter so we trained over to there, only to discover that a) its actually the Chinese quarter and b) everything was closed too. Again had trouble even finding food. Never had trouble finding simple amenities as we did in Italy.
Finally found a barber that was open at 3pm and got our mullets finally removed, all done while explaining what we wanted through the medium of mime as the barber spoke no English. I, being either the bravest or most foolish, volunteered to be the guinea pig and suffered no major problems.
Headed back after to pick up our washing, had a refreshing coffee/beer then chilled for a couple of hours in the hostel. At 8, with Lewis grumpy and working and Macky sick, I ventured out and got us dinner and another drink each then at 8:45 I left them to their sulking and went with Jen and Jenny to pub crawl.
Arrived at the meeting point outside Termini station to find it deserted aside from 2 chavs from Manchester who were looking for it also. After Jen called the company and harassed them a little we found they were "on holiday" and that the other company was running from the Spanish Steps. Hurriedly made our way through the station, both to get there before it was too late and to lose the chavs. Gave them the slip but by the time we arrived at the Steps at 10:15 it was too late and there was noone around.
Determined to have a night out nonetheless we went searching for an open pub or bar but, it being an Italian holiday, even they were all closed. We ended up crossing the Tiber river to check out the clubs that line its edge but they were, while open, completely deserted so we set upon a market, which oddly enough was open, and made odder by the man trying to demo and sell vacuum cleaners at 11pm and the Elvis impersonator band. Eventually gave up and got the last bus back to the hostel where we arrived at 12:30 stone cold sober.
Woke up to both Macky and now Lewis sick, had breakfast then commenced our long day of guided walking tours of Rome. Started out at the previously found Spanish Steps, then moved on to the mausoleum of Emporer Augustus, which was impressively big and round and old, before crossing the Tiber, checking out a couple of ornate palaces, another mausoleum that was converted with additional fortifications into a fort in medieval times and then ended up at St. Peters Basilica at the entrance to the Vatican. The Vatican itself is enormous and St. Peters square was pretty amazing, 2 huge curved columnades encircling the most of it with a tall spire in the middle and the basilica at the join of the 2 columnades, all of which were lined with statues of saints. Also lots of dodgy people offering to show us "free entry with no lines" or "free tickets", including a particularly persistent English woman who, after accepting we didn't want her ticket, offered to sell me a bag, which I also declined. We decided not to actually enter the Vatican as it was expensive, the line was enormous, time was of the essence and we were also afraid of bursting into flames.
Had a quick lasagne lunch then got back to the Spanish Steps again just in time for our next tour which would take us in the other direction through Rome. Stopped first at a giant, carved column in a piazza, then moved on to a monument to Italy's very brief period as a monarchy, which they cut out half of a hill filled with ancient Roman ruins to build. From here visited te old Roman forum, which was massive and really well preserved aside from the road disecting it built by Mussolini and then finished up at the Coloseum, which was pretty much as advertised by so much popular culture. Would have liked to spend more time exploring it and to see the Pantheon but the others were withering under the heat and sickness so we headed back to the hostel for much appreciated naps and showers.
Ordered pizzas at 7pm so that we would have time to eat them before I left at 8:15 with Jen and Jenny for attempt 2 at pub crawling in Rome. The pizza arrived at 8 but luckily the terrible chef had left all the ingredients on one half so I had the good half, sculled my beer and left with the girls.
Pub crawl attempt 2 was a much greater success. We headed straight to the Spanish Steps were we found a large group of people, a little man selling beers for $1 out of a plastic back and I somehow ran into Robbie Resch again, twice in 2 pub crawls, such a small world at times. Pub crawl theme was Jager, and everyone was given 3 tokens for free jager bombs which we all immediately redeemed on entry to the starter pub. Ben, a friend of Robbie, and I then went on to have another couple as they were $3. At 11, after our numerous jager bombs and an hour and a half of all you can drink beer and wine we moved on to a couple of clubs on the river, which turned out to sell beers for $10 so I only had the one, not that I needed more. The final club also had a giant pool (yup, on the side of a river, makes sense?) but going in would get you kicked out so we didnt. No real memory of leaving the clubs but I am informed I left with Jen and Jenny and we bussed back to the hostel. Based on my drunk facebook activity I believe I got to bed around 5am.
Up at 8am the next morning as the hostel had 9am check out time. Got up, changed, packed my back and checked out. Do not remember any of this. Left the others in the hostel eating cereal while I trained back to the Coloseum to collect my free pub crawl shirt and returned to find Macky looking remarkably unimpressed with a bag of frozen peas. He apparently smashed his head on a granite shelf. Came to the realisation that I am a hangover witch, every time I should have a hangover someone else seems to suffer and I get off scot free. I am ok with this.
I stepped back up, slapped Cumu into submission a little and we arrived a few hours later in Pompei where, priorities being what they are, we experienced our first Italian pizza. Italian food and coffee is amazing, it almost makes up for Italian people and Italian cities. Almost. Explored the ruins for 3 hours under the shadow of Vesuvius, their creator. They covered a huge area and were amazingly well preserved, and awe-inspiring given the vast amount of destruction and loss of life that happened so suddenly and without warning and yet the area is repopulated by people who apparently live their life with either a death wish or gigantic balls.
I drove to Napoli (Naples) which was a 45 minute nightmare of Italian drivers, Italian unmarked roads and useless navigation. My first ever case of road rage ensued. Lewis agreed to drive for the rest of Italy.
Checked into our hotel, the "Hotel Casanova" which was a fairly standard small hotel, went out and found ourselves some fantastic pasta then went back to to hotel to chill out and ended up befriending a french girl called Mathilde who was travelling with her mum and seemed desperate for some same-age company.
The next day we intended to use to take care of some boring but much needed tasks, haircuts, laundry, car maintainence, shopping, pharmacy for Macky and catching up on our sleep.
Sleep in until midday: Check.
Every other task: Fail. We should probably have realised that it was a sunday but alas, every single shop, cafe and restaurant was closed. It took us half an hour of walking through an endless succession of shuttered shop fronts and garbage everywhere (I'm not even kidding, EVERYWHERE) just to find pizza. Pizza. In Italy! Then another 15 minutes to find coffee. Unimpressed by Napoli, everything is dirty, garbage and graffiti are all over and the people are, without fail, rude.
Ended up having a lazy day around the hotel, getting dinner from the single restaurant open on the main road fronting the hotel and then another evening of chilling in the lobby and talking with Mathilde.
Woke up early, desiring nothing more than coffee, pastries and to flee Napoli. Did all three in rapid succession and Lewis drove us to Rome where we checked into the "Youth Station Hostel" in the Bologna region of Rome. Hostel was quite nice and seemed completely empty until suddenly it was swarming with 14 year old American Catholic children wearing crosses and bright green shirts. We made a private joke about how all they needed to do was start a prayer circle. 5 minutes later they did. Turns out we showed up in Rome, Catholic center of the world, on World Youth Day. Shit. With almost the entire city closed and an army of 14 year old zealots invading the hostel we fled to go and try find a pharmacy for Macky, who was rapidly dieing. Walk to Termini station, the central transport hub which was also purported to have open shops, was a 20 minute insight into a post-apocalyptic world. A long walk through completely empty, shuttered streets, without another person in sight, the occasional car in the distance or lone dog howling just adding to the eerie feeling.
Got Macky his medicine, had a crazy chicken kebab style thing then made our way back to the hostel which had thankfully been vacated by the legion. Had a fancy backpacker dinner of 2 minute noodles and tinned tuna and befriended 2 girls from Cornwall, Jen and Jenny.
Woke up after the others to find them with milk and having finally opened the cereal we had been carting around since London. This day became attempt #2 of our Napoli day of chores as we gathered our considerable amount of washing and wandered up to the nearby Indian-run laundromat as it was another Italian holiday. The helpful guy at the laundromat told us that our best chance for haircuts would be Piazza Vittorio as it apparently is the Indian/Bangladeshi quarter so we trained over to there, only to discover that a) its actually the Chinese quarter and b) everything was closed too. Again had trouble even finding food. Never had trouble finding simple amenities as we did in Italy.
Finally found a barber that was open at 3pm and got our mullets finally removed, all done while explaining what we wanted through the medium of mime as the barber spoke no English. I, being either the bravest or most foolish, volunteered to be the guinea pig and suffered no major problems.
Headed back after to pick up our washing, had a refreshing coffee/beer then chilled for a couple of hours in the hostel. At 8, with Lewis grumpy and working and Macky sick, I ventured out and got us dinner and another drink each then at 8:45 I left them to their sulking and went with Jen and Jenny to pub crawl.
Arrived at the meeting point outside Termini station to find it deserted aside from 2 chavs from Manchester who were looking for it also. After Jen called the company and harassed them a little we found they were "on holiday" and that the other company was running from the Spanish Steps. Hurriedly made our way through the station, both to get there before it was too late and to lose the chavs. Gave them the slip but by the time we arrived at the Steps at 10:15 it was too late and there was noone around.
Determined to have a night out nonetheless we went searching for an open pub or bar but, it being an Italian holiday, even they were all closed. We ended up crossing the Tiber river to check out the clubs that line its edge but they were, while open, completely deserted so we set upon a market, which oddly enough was open, and made odder by the man trying to demo and sell vacuum cleaners at 11pm and the Elvis impersonator band. Eventually gave up and got the last bus back to the hostel where we arrived at 12:30 stone cold sober.
Woke up to both Macky and now Lewis sick, had breakfast then commenced our long day of guided walking tours of Rome. Started out at the previously found Spanish Steps, then moved on to the mausoleum of Emporer Augustus, which was impressively big and round and old, before crossing the Tiber, checking out a couple of ornate palaces, another mausoleum that was converted with additional fortifications into a fort in medieval times and then ended up at St. Peters Basilica at the entrance to the Vatican. The Vatican itself is enormous and St. Peters square was pretty amazing, 2 huge curved columnades encircling the most of it with a tall spire in the middle and the basilica at the join of the 2 columnades, all of which were lined with statues of saints. Also lots of dodgy people offering to show us "free entry with no lines" or "free tickets", including a particularly persistent English woman who, after accepting we didn't want her ticket, offered to sell me a bag, which I also declined. We decided not to actually enter the Vatican as it was expensive, the line was enormous, time was of the essence and we were also afraid of bursting into flames.
Had a quick lasagne lunch then got back to the Spanish Steps again just in time for our next tour which would take us in the other direction through Rome. Stopped first at a giant, carved column in a piazza, then moved on to a monument to Italy's very brief period as a monarchy, which they cut out half of a hill filled with ancient Roman ruins to build. From here visited te old Roman forum, which was massive and really well preserved aside from the road disecting it built by Mussolini and then finished up at the Coloseum, which was pretty much as advertised by so much popular culture. Would have liked to spend more time exploring it and to see the Pantheon but the others were withering under the heat and sickness so we headed back to the hostel for much appreciated naps and showers.
Ordered pizzas at 7pm so that we would have time to eat them before I left at 8:15 with Jen and Jenny for attempt 2 at pub crawling in Rome. The pizza arrived at 8 but luckily the terrible chef had left all the ingredients on one half so I had the good half, sculled my beer and left with the girls.
Pub crawl attempt 2 was a much greater success. We headed straight to the Spanish Steps were we found a large group of people, a little man selling beers for $1 out of a plastic back and I somehow ran into Robbie Resch again, twice in 2 pub crawls, such a small world at times. Pub crawl theme was Jager, and everyone was given 3 tokens for free jager bombs which we all immediately redeemed on entry to the starter pub. Ben, a friend of Robbie, and I then went on to have another couple as they were $3. At 11, after our numerous jager bombs and an hour and a half of all you can drink beer and wine we moved on to a couple of clubs on the river, which turned out to sell beers for $10 so I only had the one, not that I needed more. The final club also had a giant pool (yup, on the side of a river, makes sense?) but going in would get you kicked out so we didnt. No real memory of leaving the clubs but I am informed I left with Jen and Jenny and we bussed back to the hostel. Based on my drunk facebook activity I believe I got to bed around 5am.
Up at 8am the next morning as the hostel had 9am check out time. Got up, changed, packed my back and checked out. Do not remember any of this. Left the others in the hostel eating cereal while I trained back to the Coloseum to collect my free pub crawl shirt and returned to find Macky looking remarkably unimpressed with a bag of frozen peas. He apparently smashed his head on a granite shelf. Came to the realisation that I am a hangover witch, every time I should have a hangover someone else seems to suffer and I get off scot free. I am ok with this.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Days 63-68 (August 8-13) - Corfu
Having called our hostel at 4 to let them know we would be arriving at 7 we hopped off the ferry and found the location we were meant to meet their courtesy bus but, at 7:30 without any sign of the bus we called again and were told it had left the hostel 15 minutes ago and would be 10 minutes. At 8:30 when I called again we were met by a "oh, you aren't here yet? what happened?" and an assurance that this time the bus would really be 10 minutes, which thankfully it was.
Got to the hostel, which Kenny from Thessaloniki, at about 9. The "Pink Palace" is a huge complex of bright pink painted buildings stretching from the main road halfway up a hill all the way down to the beach via several long, pink staircases and a couple of rather steep hills, all surrounded by yet more pink monstrosities. However it did only cost us $30 a night which for the Greek isles is super cheap and includes breakfast and a 3 course dinner every night, plus access to its range of "safaris" (tours) and nightly drinking activities. On arrival we dropped off our luggage, got rushed to dinner to just make the cut off then finalised our check in, got given our welcome shots of Ouzo and then went to bed.
Woke up, walked out our room to be almost blinding by the vast amount of pink surrounded us and made our way over to the beachside kitchen for complementary breakfast of bread, eggs, cheese, ham, jam and complementary wasps (om nom nom) then headed back up the giant hill to reception to book ourselves onto the kayak safari.
Kayaking was awesome, a much needed work out after 2 months of drinking and general fitness destroying laziness and super smooth, crystal clear blue-green water. Went to a monastery on a little island, a 2 storey cliff jump and then spent the last hour of the tour chilling on an empty beach.a
Safari's run by the hostel include free lunch and "Pink Palace themed introductions" which gave us our first insight into the debauchery we had stumbled upon. Pink Palace introductions were the following questions: Name, where you come from, availability, most interesting flag of someone you have had sex with, most interesting place you have had sex and who you would turn gay for.
Got back just in time for dinner and were seated with 2 English girls, Jo and Steph, 2 American guys, Ian and Zach, and an American girl, Rebecca, who told us about how she had been in the jacuzzi with 4 guys "the other night" and had been "splashed in the eye" and now had a serious eye infection. Previously, on the kayak safari, we were told that we should avoid the "jizzcuzzi" and told a story about how "the other night" a girl had had sex with 4 guys in it. We have our suspicions.
Steph and Jo had just arrived and were tired to they left after dinner and the rest of us went downstairs to the "Palladium" for drinks and to compete in the flip cup competition. Flip cup is surprisingly fun, and our team, the "multipl e scoregasms" only lost 2 rounds but didn't win so we each (there was 6 on a team) bought the team a round of shots and spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing.
Woke up just in time for Macky and I to make breakfast (Lewis not being the best at waking up, let alone after a big night) then went up to reception to utilise the crappy wifi and see what our daily safari options were, which was limited to quad biking due to the sea being "too rough" (it was pretty standard Aussie ocean to be honest, useless Greeks!). Lewis and Macky weren't up for it so I joined Zach, Ian and Rebecca, along with new friends Haviland, Paige and her sister, and went quad biking.
The quad safari was amazing. Lots of really fun driving, visited a couple of cool little monasterys and look outs that showed all of Corfu and, from one, mainland Greece and Albania, a beach for a refreshing and much needed swim and ended up at a bar, of course, for a round of "happy, horny juice" which was tasty but unidentifiable. It also included a 40 minute off road section that was a huge amount of fun, an Italian going off a small cliff (he was fine, just a mild concussion but, given what I now know about Italian drivers it serves him right), Mark, an American who epitomises the stereotype of the American frat boy, going to fast and trying to drift around a corner and breaking his knee by going straight into a wall and another round of "Pink Palace style" introductions but with different, equally obscene, questions.
Got back and had dinner with Lewis, Macky and my quad biking friends before going down to the Palladium for "Cross Dress Wednesday" where guys and girls are meant to just swap clothes with each other, and happened surprisingly often and in somewhat shocking detail. The three of us ended up playing pool with the English girls from the previous nights dinner, Jo and Steph, and Lewis and I ended up swapping clothes with them (almost exactly 10 minutes after Macky challenged me to finish his drink then told me it was a cocktail with 5 shots of rum in and my response was "well then, in 10 minutes I will probably be in a dress") which made pool somewhat more uncomfortable for everyone else as we had to bend over in our short shorts or short dress to take our shots. We also found Zach looking lovely in a long blue dress and eyeliner and Ian in short shorts so tight he had to keep the fly down which did not leave much left for the imagination.
At about midnight we collectively moved down to the beach for a late night swim, which ended up going somewhat awry as Steph's bag was stolen and Jo ended up skinning her palms and knees going down the hill after going back to check the Palladium in case the bag had been left there. It turned out that a security guard had moved the bag to mess with us and somewhat killed the evening as we retreated to our room where Steph, training as a medic, disinfected Jo's war wounds while she sobbed into my shoulder while my shorts got damp to mid thigh.
Thinking our night essentially over, fools that we are, we then walked back up to the reception to help the girls with their walking with sore knees and avoiding creepy Italian problems and then Lewis and I were almost immediately after confronted by a guy in a bikini lying, crying, on the ground as Zach came over the top of the hill with a friend of his and the guys girlfriend who was crying inconsolably and had been raped on the beach by an Italian. Italians; every time we hear anything about you lot it just makes you worse and worse, please collectively kill yourselves, I am not in any way kidding. We did what we could for the poor couple, found a couple of female staff members and then, definitely less upbeat than when we left the Palladium, headed back to bed.
Woke up just in time for breakfast, somewhat the worse for wear, and stumbled our way across to breakfast where we ran into Steph and Jo, who, poor thing, was still very sore, and after helping them with beach chairs we headed up to reception to try and find a couple of items that had gone missing at the same time as Steph's bag was relocated, my dinner card and Lewis' locker key and thongs. Luckily reception had the locker key, which had Lewis' laptop and passport in, but the thongs and dinner card were gone.
At about 1 we headed to the beach to walk down, again joined by the girls, to go into town to get what Macky and Lewis promised us were the best gyros ever. They did not disappoint, and for $3 it was even more fantastic. We then walked back up the hill towards the hostel but stopped just before to go into another hotel's public pool and escape the Pink Palace for a few hours where we swam, drank and relaxed for a couple of hours.
At 5 we headed back to the hostel to go and watch the "Ouzo Cup" which, at the time of registration, and very fortuitously, we were not up for competing in. The Ouzo Cup was a 10Euro entry fee volleyball contest where in between each couple of points teams competed to do outdo one another in various drinking or debauchery based challenges for bonus points, such as sculling beers, swapping clothes between team mates of different sexes in front of everyone (and all competitors were in boardies or bikinis so that got a big... confronting), body shots and ended up being won when 4 girls on one team, 2 of whom were sisters, nuded up and 69ed whipped cream off each others... secret places...
After seeing this we retreated up to dinner then went downstairs for some quiet games of pool before grabbing the laptop and watching KickAss before bed.
Woke up at 8:30, rush packed and checked out at 9 (what sort of party hostel makes its checkout time 9am, thats just rude!) then grabbed breakfast, again with Jo and Steph, then played a bunch of cards with our newly acquired, free on check out, Ancient Greek Sex Position cards, which made it a continual process of dealing, giggling at the cards then continuing.
Had another round of lunch gyros followed by pool relaxation before at 4 heading back to the hostel reception to organise busses back to the other side of the island, where us 3 would be ferrying back to Igoumenitsa and the girls were moving to a more sedate hostel. Said our farewells at the port bus stop then jumped on the ferry back to Igoumenitsa.
Found Cumu still intact, if somewhat coated in a layer of salt and dust, packed her back up and then checked in to the overnight car ferry to Bari on the Italian east coast. Had cheap, crappy dinner at the duty free place in the international port then drove onto the ferry.
Slept pretty awfully on the ferry as we did not really think about the whole temperature thing and could not re-access Cumu so had to sleep in a cold recliner seat in boardies, a t shirt and thongs, which was something of a rookie mistake. However on getting back to Cumu we discovered that her nav(wo)man part was back in business, which is something of a two-edged sword.
Got to the hostel, which Kenny from Thessaloniki, at about 9. The "Pink Palace" is a huge complex of bright pink painted buildings stretching from the main road halfway up a hill all the way down to the beach via several long, pink staircases and a couple of rather steep hills, all surrounded by yet more pink monstrosities. However it did only cost us $30 a night which for the Greek isles is super cheap and includes breakfast and a 3 course dinner every night, plus access to its range of "safaris" (tours) and nightly drinking activities. On arrival we dropped off our luggage, got rushed to dinner to just make the cut off then finalised our check in, got given our welcome shots of Ouzo and then went to bed.
Woke up, walked out our room to be almost blinding by the vast amount of pink surrounded us and made our way over to the beachside kitchen for complementary breakfast of bread, eggs, cheese, ham, jam and complementary wasps (om nom nom) then headed back up the giant hill to reception to book ourselves onto the kayak safari.
Kayaking was awesome, a much needed work out after 2 months of drinking and general fitness destroying laziness and super smooth, crystal clear blue-green water. Went to a monastery on a little island, a 2 storey cliff jump and then spent the last hour of the tour chilling on an empty beach.a
Safari's run by the hostel include free lunch and "Pink Palace themed introductions" which gave us our first insight into the debauchery we had stumbled upon. Pink Palace introductions were the following questions: Name, where you come from, availability, most interesting flag of someone you have had sex with, most interesting place you have had sex and who you would turn gay for.
Got back just in time for dinner and were seated with 2 English girls, Jo and Steph, 2 American guys, Ian and Zach, and an American girl, Rebecca, who told us about how she had been in the jacuzzi with 4 guys "the other night" and had been "splashed in the eye" and now had a serious eye infection. Previously, on the kayak safari, we were told that we should avoid the "jizzcuzzi" and told a story about how "the other night" a girl had had sex with 4 guys in it. We have our suspicions.
Steph and Jo had just arrived and were tired to they left after dinner and the rest of us went downstairs to the "Palladium" for drinks and to compete in the flip cup competition. Flip cup is surprisingly fun, and our team, the "multipl e scoregasms" only lost 2 rounds but didn't win so we each (there was 6 on a team) bought the team a round of shots and spent the rest of the night drinking and dancing.
Woke up just in time for Macky and I to make breakfast (Lewis not being the best at waking up, let alone after a big night) then went up to reception to utilise the crappy wifi and see what our daily safari options were, which was limited to quad biking due to the sea being "too rough" (it was pretty standard Aussie ocean to be honest, useless Greeks!). Lewis and Macky weren't up for it so I joined Zach, Ian and Rebecca, along with new friends Haviland, Paige and her sister, and went quad biking.
The quad safari was amazing. Lots of really fun driving, visited a couple of cool little monasterys and look outs that showed all of Corfu and, from one, mainland Greece and Albania, a beach for a refreshing and much needed swim and ended up at a bar, of course, for a round of "happy, horny juice" which was tasty but unidentifiable. It also included a 40 minute off road section that was a huge amount of fun, an Italian going off a small cliff (he was fine, just a mild concussion but, given what I now know about Italian drivers it serves him right), Mark, an American who epitomises the stereotype of the American frat boy, going to fast and trying to drift around a corner and breaking his knee by going straight into a wall and another round of "Pink Palace style" introductions but with different, equally obscene, questions.
Got back and had dinner with Lewis, Macky and my quad biking friends before going down to the Palladium for "Cross Dress Wednesday" where guys and girls are meant to just swap clothes with each other, and happened surprisingly often and in somewhat shocking detail. The three of us ended up playing pool with the English girls from the previous nights dinner, Jo and Steph, and Lewis and I ended up swapping clothes with them (almost exactly 10 minutes after Macky challenged me to finish his drink then told me it was a cocktail with 5 shots of rum in and my response was "well then, in 10 minutes I will probably be in a dress") which made pool somewhat more uncomfortable for everyone else as we had to bend over in our short shorts or short dress to take our shots. We also found Zach looking lovely in a long blue dress and eyeliner and Ian in short shorts so tight he had to keep the fly down which did not leave much left for the imagination.
At about midnight we collectively moved down to the beach for a late night swim, which ended up going somewhat awry as Steph's bag was stolen and Jo ended up skinning her palms and knees going down the hill after going back to check the Palladium in case the bag had been left there. It turned out that a security guard had moved the bag to mess with us and somewhat killed the evening as we retreated to our room where Steph, training as a medic, disinfected Jo's war wounds while she sobbed into my shoulder while my shorts got damp to mid thigh.
Thinking our night essentially over, fools that we are, we then walked back up to the reception to help the girls with their walking with sore knees and avoiding creepy Italian problems and then Lewis and I were almost immediately after confronted by a guy in a bikini lying, crying, on the ground as Zach came over the top of the hill with a friend of his and the guys girlfriend who was crying inconsolably and had been raped on the beach by an Italian. Italians; every time we hear anything about you lot it just makes you worse and worse, please collectively kill yourselves, I am not in any way kidding. We did what we could for the poor couple, found a couple of female staff members and then, definitely less upbeat than when we left the Palladium, headed back to bed.
Woke up just in time for breakfast, somewhat the worse for wear, and stumbled our way across to breakfast where we ran into Steph and Jo, who, poor thing, was still very sore, and after helping them with beach chairs we headed up to reception to try and find a couple of items that had gone missing at the same time as Steph's bag was relocated, my dinner card and Lewis' locker key and thongs. Luckily reception had the locker key, which had Lewis' laptop and passport in, but the thongs and dinner card were gone.
At about 1 we headed to the beach to walk down, again joined by the girls, to go into town to get what Macky and Lewis promised us were the best gyros ever. They did not disappoint, and for $3 it was even more fantastic. We then walked back up the hill towards the hostel but stopped just before to go into another hotel's public pool and escape the Pink Palace for a few hours where we swam, drank and relaxed for a couple of hours.
At 5 we headed back to the hostel to go and watch the "Ouzo Cup" which, at the time of registration, and very fortuitously, we were not up for competing in. The Ouzo Cup was a 10Euro entry fee volleyball contest where in between each couple of points teams competed to do outdo one another in various drinking or debauchery based challenges for bonus points, such as sculling beers, swapping clothes between team mates of different sexes in front of everyone (and all competitors were in boardies or bikinis so that got a big... confronting), body shots and ended up being won when 4 girls on one team, 2 of whom were sisters, nuded up and 69ed whipped cream off each others... secret places...
After seeing this we retreated up to dinner then went downstairs for some quiet games of pool before grabbing the laptop and watching KickAss before bed.
Woke up at 8:30, rush packed and checked out at 9 (what sort of party hostel makes its checkout time 9am, thats just rude!) then grabbed breakfast, again with Jo and Steph, then played a bunch of cards with our newly acquired, free on check out, Ancient Greek Sex Position cards, which made it a continual process of dealing, giggling at the cards then continuing.
Had another round of lunch gyros followed by pool relaxation before at 4 heading back to the hostel reception to organise busses back to the other side of the island, where us 3 would be ferrying back to Igoumenitsa and the girls were moving to a more sedate hostel. Said our farewells at the port bus stop then jumped on the ferry back to Igoumenitsa.
Found Cumu still intact, if somewhat coated in a layer of salt and dust, packed her back up and then checked in to the overnight car ferry to Bari on the Italian east coast. Had cheap, crappy dinner at the duty free place in the international port then drove onto the ferry.
Slept pretty awfully on the ferry as we did not really think about the whole temperature thing and could not re-access Cumu so had to sleep in a cold recliner seat in boardies, a t shirt and thongs, which was something of a rookie mistake. However on getting back to Cumu we discovered that her nav(wo)man part was back in business, which is something of a two-edged sword.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)