i caught an overnight bus to San Sebastian, if you've been reading this blog a while you'll probably know how much i hate overnight transport, it just totally ruins you for the next day, but it does save you a bit of money. i don't think i got one wink of sleep but having said that, the bus was a lot more roomy than other buses i've been on, which make it a bit more comfortable. while i'm on the bus i had a spanish girl sit next to me on the bus who wanted to talk to me, problem was, she didn't speak any english and i don't speak spanish, i tried to explain to her i had no idea what she was saying, but it didn't stop her. after a solid hour of one sided conversation, she got the picture. when i finally arrived at about 7am in the morning i was pretty tired to say the least, but i couldn't check into my hostel until noon. so i just dropped my bag off and had a wander around. i was a bit worried at first the weather wasn't looking very good, and San Sebastian is right on the water and pretty much everything revolves around the beach. so if the weather was crap, i was expecting my time here wouldn't be too grand either. lucky for me the weather came out and i sat down next to the water and sunned myself like a lizard. i nearly fell asleep in the process.
since i've been here in Spain, i've already experienced a few little changes in culture. got in on a Sunday which in Europe is generally a really quiet day, but for some reason, people were everywhere and San Sebastian had plenty of stuff going on ie: markets, soccer games on the beaches and a number of shops open. i found out later that in spain some shops will stay open on a sunday and close on a monday, which is a bit different to the rest of europe.
i haven't been caught out by the town shutting down from everyone going for a 'siesta' as yet, which is what i kind of expected coming to a smaller town because thats what i experienced when i was in Cinque Terre in Italy, things close but not to the extent that its a ghost town. but, then again, i do say 'yet', its still early days.
also i dunno what it is, but it seems that every second person has a body piercing. bottom lips and noses in particular.
my old work mate Aaron, who is also quite well travelled, told me that while i was here i should check out a place that sold really good local food. it took me a little while to find it, but the search was well worth it. the place was packed, standing room only, and there was a real vibrance in the air. i shuffled my way to the bar, problem was, i couldn't see a menu so, the guy behind me saw that i had no idea, so he said 'do you want me to help you order?' to which i replied 'yeah, that would be brilliant!'. he orded me 2 different dishes, the first was a meat dish that was so tender it seriously melted in my mouth. The other one he ordered for me was cod in a light batter, which also was cooked to perfection. best of all it wasn't expensive at all, in fact the perfect price for a traveller so i invited a few people from the hostel to show them how good it was, they all loved it too. if you're ever in San Sebastian make sure to check out 'La Cuchara de San Telmo', just look for a red spoon hanging out the front. i found while i was here i found out that its considered polite to throw your servette on the ground, and that tapas here is called 'pintxos', supposidly tapas is what they say in Barcelona, i heard that one of the languages they speak in Barcelona, called Catalan, sounds totally different to normal spanish, so tapas could be a Catalan thing. but it hasn't all been fine dining, i've been cooking for myself as well, i went to a little butcher and brought some sausages and cooked them up, they were delightful. i've found the fresh food here quite good compared to other countries i've visited.
San Sebastian is a really pretty place. really clean and from what i can gather its a bit of a swanky holidaying area, but if you're looking for sights you're not really going to find much here. there originally was a wall around parts of the town (i think to stop others attacking from the sea, but don't quote me on that) but most of it has been pulled down over the years to expand the city. they have some sculptures here that they are pretty proud of, one of them is called 'El Peine del viento' which is kind of looks like giant rusted steel forks coming out of rocks, i think the main reason the locals like it so much is because the artist, Eduardo Chillida, used to be the goal keeper for the local soccer team here.
on the top of one of the hills is a kind of fortress thingy that has a giant jesus on the top of it. it was kind of a poor mans version of 'Christ the Redeemer' the well known Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. except he didnt have his arms out he was giving the peace sign. it could be the delinquint in me but while i was up there looking at the view (which was pretty by the way) i was thinking to myself 'if you knocked off the pointer finger it would look like he was giving the bird to boats floating passed' of course i didn't do it, but it shows how much spare time i had on my hands while i was here.
i pretty much spent a lot of the time chilling out on the beach and enjoying the scenery. something that was rather funny, i was walking to the beach and i ran into a guy called Kyle, who i used to go to high school with and i hadn't seen him since we finshed. he was here for a couple of days for business, i hate saying this word but it was really 'random', i never expect to meet people that i know.
while i was here i did a day trip to Bilbao, which was an enjoyable hour bus ride through the hills. Bilbao is a nice little place, not really much there except for the thing i went to Bilboa for, the Guggenheim. going to the Guggenheim was on my 'must do' list when i came to spain, its a pretty amazing space to see and walk through. apart from being another of, Frank Gehry's Architectual masterpieces (you may have noticed, if you'be been reading the blog for a while, i have seen a few of his buildings now) its contents are pretty good. they had some Richard Serra sculpture, i saw his 'clara clara' piece in Paris (click here to read the Paris blog) but they had a room at the Guggenheim that was given to him to design something for it, so that was pretty interesting.
also they had a Japanese artist called 'Murakami' who is pretty cool, i've known about him for a little while now, some of his work hung at GoMA while i was living in Brisvegas. i quite like his stuff, he does work in a number of different mediums: sculpture, animation and painting to name a couple. all of it tends to have a very sickly sweet anime quality to it, but on the other hand, its very sexual. i wouldn't be surprised if he's quite heavily into Andy Warhol because he kind of blurs the lines between artist and commercial artist, for instance he did some designs for patterns on Louis Vuitton handbags, he also sells wallpaper and action figures of his work.
they also have a couple of Jeff Koons sculptures. i missed out on his exhibition in Berlin by a couple of days so i was glad to be able to see some of his work while i was here. one was just outside of the main entrance, its of a giant dog (probably about 20m high) made out out earth, and had flowers growing all over it, which was pretty cool.
the hostel i stayed in was pretty chilled out and the people that worked there were really friendly, i also met some cool people while i was here, i got on really well with a swedish guy in particular, his name was David, and had just moved to Spain for work, from what i could gather, he designs websites. i dunno what it is about the Swedes but everyone of them i've met have turned out to be awesome. i liked San Sebastian, i think i would've liked it a bit more if it was just a little bit hotter so i could enjoy the beaches, but oh well. now i'm putting the rest of my spanish exploring off for a moment and heading off to Porto in Portugal for a while. i think its going to be another epic train ride, i'll do my best not to rant to much on the next blog.
Barcelona
truth is, i'm a bit of a homebody at heart. I've noticed that ever time i get settled for a little bit, like staying at Celeste's or at Sarah's i find it really hard to get back into the groove of traveling again. i've been in two minds about heading home. mainly because i'm going broke thick and fast, as well as i wasn't really enjoying it as much. but gave myself a good slapping across the face, pulled myself together and decided to give spain ago, hoping that it would change my mind. i boarded the plane and in under 2 hours i was in Genova Airport, from there i caught a bus to Barcelona. when i got to the bus station i had to figure out how to get to my hostel. i had to catch the tube a couple of stops then change a couple of times. i had no idea what i was doing, and i think i ended up buying more tickets then i had to but i didn't really mind, i was there. as soon as i got onto La Rambla (which is the main road), i could feel a real buzz in the air. something that really struck me though was, as i was walking down La Rambla i couldn't get over how often i was offered drugs. not just pot, but class-A drugs, like cocaine. either i look like a really big stoner or drugs are rife here. maybe that was the buzz i could feel? anyway i found the hostel that i wanted to stay at, it was in Plaza Real, it included breakfast, dinner and did tours as well, but most of all it was a really friendly environment. but unfortuately it was fully booked out, not surprising really, so i ended up staying at an OK hostel just across the plaza. it was a little bit more than i would've normally paid but it was in a good location and offered breakfast. the only crap thing was there was a guy in my room who snored and, i think, he was sick because he was making all these strange noises that were all phlemy and yuck!
Generally, well i think, La Rambla is pretty rubbish, with tourist trap resturants (when you see what they are serving, you just know its going to be average), dodgy street preformers (since when has a guy dressed up as a statue been entertainment?), but occationally you find a good musician that are quite good to listen to, but you dont have to be on La Rambla to hear music, it seems to be everywhere. anyway, one hot tip that i got, was to check out 'La Boqueria' which is the market just off La Rambla. it was the best market i think i've ever been to. i swear there must be animals that i'm not aware of becuase i've never seen so many different types of meat, it was mental! i had lunch there a couple of times, also they had fruit and veg and they sold all different kinds of freshly squeezed juice, i dunno what it is, but when you travel the food you taste always seems to taste 10 times better than you've had before. it might be becuase i've been eating rubbish most of the time i've been traveling, so when i do get to try something good, its generally better.
while i was walking around i found a little area that had good food at a reasonable price (actually so far, i've found Spain to be quite expensive, i was kind of hoping that it wouldn't be. but then again, i am in a major city it might be better then i head to smaller towns). i had a Seafood Paella, which is kind of like a rice dish, it was brilliant, and really filling.
one of the reasons i wanted to go to Spain was to see some of Antoni Gaudí's work. Gaudí was an architect that did a number of really crazy buildings, its pretty hard not to see one while your here, they are everywhere. i was thinking to myself as i walked passed one on the way to La Pedrera, which is an apartment block he designed that doubles as a Gaudí museum, 'this guy looks like he was dropping acid, then playing with shells and bones to create houses' and it turns out i wasn't far off. he didn't drop acid, but he did use natural elements, like shells and bones, as inspiration for a lot of his work. so i guess 2 out of 3 ain't bad. i found his buidings almost dream like, it was quite fasinating really, some of the stuff he used to make designs for his buildings were really clever, i even saw broken bottles in the roof. i was looking at some of his furniture designs too, and i wouldn't be surprised if he was the grand daddy of ergonomics, just the way the chairs were moulded to suit the bodies shape and even the door handles in some of the houses he did were made by taking a cast of plastecine that had been grasped, to fit the hand perfectly.
a lot of the buidlings he created are now world heritage listed. so i went to a couple of other buildings that he did, like the Sagrada Família which is a church that is considered to be his master piece, but he never saw it finished, actually i think they are still trying to complete it. but, to be honest, i found it a bit of a let down. don't get me wrong, the outside is quite amazing to look at, but to get inside you had to pay something like 11 EURO then if you wanted to go up in a lift you had to wait in a really long line and pay a further 3 EURO. i found it a bit of a rip off and didn't go up and i was kind of kicking myself that i paid to go in. the other thing of his that i would recommend to other people to see is Park Güell which, in case you haven't guessed, is a park that he was commissioned to do. there are heaps of buildings within the park but i found the wall of the park quite interesting to look at. best of all its free to go in an have a look around.
Generally, well i think, La Rambla is pretty rubbish, with tourist trap resturants (when you see what they are serving, you just know its going to be average), dodgy street preformers (since when has a guy dressed up as a statue been entertainment?), but occationally you find a good musician that are quite good to listen to, but you dont have to be on La Rambla to hear music, it seems to be everywhere. anyway, one hot tip that i got, was to check out 'La Boqueria' which is the market just off La Rambla. it was the best market i think i've ever been to. i swear there must be animals that i'm not aware of becuase i've never seen so many different types of meat, it was mental! i had lunch there a couple of times, also they had fruit and veg and they sold all different kinds of freshly squeezed juice, i dunno what it is, but when you travel the food you taste always seems to taste 10 times better than you've had before. it might be becuase i've been eating rubbish most of the time i've been traveling, so when i do get to try something good, its generally better.
while i was walking around i found a little area that had good food at a reasonable price (actually so far, i've found Spain to be quite expensive, i was kind of hoping that it wouldn't be. but then again, i am in a major city it might be better then i head to smaller towns). i had a Seafood Paella, which is kind of like a rice dish, it was brilliant, and really filling.
one of the reasons i wanted to go to Spain was to see some of Antoni Gaudí's work. Gaudí was an architect that did a number of really crazy buildings, its pretty hard not to see one while your here, they are everywhere. i was thinking to myself as i walked passed one on the way to La Pedrera, which is an apartment block he designed that doubles as a Gaudí museum, 'this guy looks like he was dropping acid, then playing with shells and bones to create houses' and it turns out i wasn't far off. he didn't drop acid, but he did use natural elements, like shells and bones, as inspiration for a lot of his work. so i guess 2 out of 3 ain't bad. i found his buidings almost dream like, it was quite fasinating really, some of the stuff he used to make designs for his buildings were really clever, i even saw broken bottles in the roof. i was looking at some of his furniture designs too, and i wouldn't be surprised if he was the grand daddy of ergonomics, just the way the chairs were moulded to suit the bodies shape and even the door handles in some of the houses he did were made by taking a cast of plastecine that had been grasped, to fit the hand perfectly.
a lot of the buidlings he created are now world heritage listed. so i went to a couple of other buildings that he did, like the Sagrada Família which is a church that is considered to be his master piece, but he never saw it finished, actually i think they are still trying to complete it. but, to be honest, i found it a bit of a let down. don't get me wrong, the outside is quite amazing to look at, but to get inside you had to pay something like 11 EURO then if you wanted to go up in a lift you had to wait in a really long line and pay a further 3 EURO. i found it a bit of a rip off and didn't go up and i was kind of kicking myself that i paid to go in. the other thing of his that i would recommend to other people to see is Park Güell which, in case you haven't guessed, is a park that he was commissioned to do. there are heaps of buildings within the park but i found the wall of the park quite interesting to look at. best of all its free to go in an have a look around.
i checked out the Olympic stadium which was originally built for an earlier games that was interupted by the Spanish Civil War. the only way i knew of it was from the 1992 Olympics, when the stadium was redeveloped. i still have memories of watching it on TV, because it was the first time i really remember an Olympic games. i remember the song that one of the guys from the 3 tenors sung at the Openning and Closing ceremony. also the guy shooting the flame up into the cauldron to begin the games. but probably my strongest memory is Dad and i going down the street to, probably, go and get bread and the news paper for breakfast. i remember us walking past a Retravision, or some store like that, where all these people where hanging out the front to watch Kieren Perkins on TV win the gold medal in the 1500m swim. i find it funny when i think of things like that, because back then i don't think i could've dreamed of being there, Barcelona seemed so far away.
i really liked wandering around the Gothic part of town with all the old buildings and such. as i think i've said before, i'm a little bit over churches now, but i ran into one that was quite good. i can't remember the name of it though, i think it was build during a time when the romans were here. anyway, it didn't really have a roof because it had a garden growing in the middle of it with a pond. i actually thought to myself 'this is probably one of the best churches i've been in' mainly because i felt it showed what religion should be all about, showing off god's creations for us all to admire and enjoy. sure beats getting preached to, don't you think?
i went to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, which is the national museum, but it was originally built for the World Fair (do we even still have those? if anyone knows, leave me a comment?) the building and its surounding area is quite symetrical and impressive. i climbed the stairs to the top and i thought, while i was up there, i should have a look around inside. i only went into the free area of the gallery but i noticed that the art work was really rich in colour and quite flowing, it wasn't like they were, i guess, how do i explain this... like trying to tell a kid to 'colour between the lines'. sometimes it crossed over the lines. but it wasnt messy or anything. i'm a fan of roughly drawn or painted work i think it describes the moment you are in while your painting it. i've always found painting a little bit scary, because i find it hard to paint myself out of trouble, but its thrilling at the same time. anyway thats enough about that. i'm constantly amazed at what some tourist will take photos of, i particularly like it when they pose in a way to make them look like there not posing. i watched this guy get his mate to take a photo of him looking at a painting, but then it wasn't right so he had to take another. another classic was i saw this girl on the top of a open-air double decker bus who wanted to get her photo taken, looking into middle distance with her hair blowing in the wind, her friend was just about to take her photo when the bus stopped, she made the gesture to her friend to wait, then when the bus started moving again she began looking into middle distance again, ready for the shot to be taken. why you would go to such effort i have no idea, what happened to the good old smile to camera?
i think i was getting used to small little towns because i totally underestimated the size of Barcelona, its freakin' HUGE! i don't generally like catching buses and trains becuase i feel sometimes you really miss out on seeing things, so i do a lot of walking, but here, i walked A LOT. but the weather has been nice and with the sun on my back, its been a pleasure, but i definately fall in a heap at the end of the day. Though spanish architecture has its own flavour, ie: fresco's, mosaics, ornate carvings, sandy coloured, quite rugged etc, everything you'd expect from a mediterranean city. something i did noticed while i was here, and it could be just me, but the buildings and general layout of Barcelona reminds me quite a lot of Paris. there buildings are quite high and some (not all) are very similar in style. also the layout of the roads is have a really big road followed by smaller ones that run in between the bigger one which is kind of how Paris works too. they even have an Arch de Triumph look alike, and guess what its called... yep, you guess it 'Arc de Triomf'. to me, it kind of makes sence to have a french connection because they are so close to one another, but then again, it could just be me. but i found it a little bit easier to navigate around here than i did in Paris.
i found the people here are pretty friendly, always putting there hands in your pockets and stuff, only kidding, you definately have to be careful of pick pockets here, La Rambla has a bit of reputation in particular, i didn't have a problem. but honestly, i did find Barcelona to have a friendly atmosphere. but i found some couples EXTREMELY touchy-feely, it was a bit much at times. but i like the old guys that get dressed up in there sunday best (no matter how hot it is) and sit on the bench at beach and just watch life pass by (and they probably do a little bit of perving while there at it too), people here are generally pretty relaxed but not many speak english, and i think its only going to get harder for me to communicate from now on.
i really enjoyed Barcelona, its probably been one of my favourite cities, it always seemed like there was something always going on, at midnight when most cities are winding down, its like Barcelona is only getting started, and there are heaps of cool little bars, with lots of character to get started in. even though i think i did a really good chunck of Barcelona, more than i could write about. i could easily spend weeks apon weeks here just wandering, what seem to be, endless streets. but i had already booked a cheap flight to Sofia in a months time, and i wanted to see a fair bit more of Spain while i'm here so i couldn't stay longer. if i do have some time left over i think i might come back. i suppose in a lot of ways i have to say a big 'Gracias' (pronounced 'Gra-th-e-us-th', as if you have a lisp) to Barcelona, because its made me start to enjoy traveling again. anyway, its time to say 'Hola!' to Sans Sebastian. more when i get there.
Chester
i was very excited about my next stop. not just because Chester is meant to be very pretty, but i was meeting up with my friend Celeste. For those who don't know Celeste, or Lesty as i call her, we have been friends since we were in Uni and we started our professional lives working together as a creative team at an advertising agency. her and her boyfriend, Dusty (no, he's not a cowboy), moved over her at the start of the year so it was always my plan to come here and see them at some stage.
let me tell you, Lesty is living the dream. not only did she pick me up in Dustys work car, a brand new Jag, her place is awesome! its a fully furnished 3 level apartment with a brilliant location, just a stone throw from the main strip. i wasn't stuck on the couch either, i was lucky enough to get my own room with a double bed, and there was even a TV in the bathroom, when i saw that i thought i was living at Graceland! OK, i'm starting to sound like a real estate agent so i'd better stop, all i'm saying is maybe i should visit Chester more often.
Celeste is a bit of a movie buff, and always fills me in with whats good to watch, so the majority of the time i was here i spent it with Celeste watching pirated DVD's, i can't figure out where the pirates would come from, Chester is landlocked, celeste said not to ask questions. anyway, we saw pretty much all of the 1st season of '30 Rock' which could be my new favourite TV show, its really well written. 'Slumdog Millionaire' which is a really good film, its kind of strange no one has thought of it before. 'Australia', which was better than i expected. also the new Kate Winslet movie 'the Reader', which i also thought was really good, but i kind of find it hard to take Kate Winslet serious after seeing her in 'Extras'. if you don't know what i mean, there is an episode of 'Extras' where one of the characters has just got a boyfriend who likes to talk dirty on the phone, the character is quite awkward about it all so Kate Winslet gives her some advice, i'll leave you with a clip of how it all pans out. very funny.
when i finally got my arse into gear and ventured outside it turned out that Chester is a really cute little place. which kind of surprised me a little bit because i expected it to be a little bit more working class, because its so close to Liverpool. the town itself is full of tudor buildings which are really beautiful. the thing that astounds me is how they are built, they are really top heavy. the top floor almost always leans out over the floor below it, it kind of defies logic. wouldn't you build, the levels below, wider to give it more strength? strange. something else i noticed on the building was the brick work, some of them had some great patterns.
Chester is a walled city, well at least it used to be, its sprawled out a little bit over the year. you can do a walk around the walls, so Celeste and I did that which was nice except the wind was absolutly freezing, but it gave us a good chance to catch up and chat about old times. i like to think Celeste are pretty tight knit, we've known each other for quite a while now, and i guess when you work with someone one on one for many years you get to know them quite well, and i guess in a lot of ways, celeste knows me better than most people. i'm really lucky to have a friend as caring as Celeste, and in a lot of ways i guess i look at her more as a sister. i'm quite close to her family also and i was a bit shattered when i found out i was going to just miss out on seeing her mum and dad, Tina and Richard, but we got to skype them which was great. Richard is a photographer and was telling about a new piece of equipment that he brought for his camera that is kind of like a GPS, because it remembers where the photo was taken, and then you can upload it Google maps to the exact position from where you took the shot. how cool is that!
also during my time here i decided to get clean and made the first step in breaking my coke addiction, admitting that have a problem. i couldn't afford the Betty Ford clinic so Celeste's place had to do. i always thought i didn't have a problem, i always said 'i could give up at anytime', but didn't realise how much coca-cola had taken over my life, i was getting serious headaches from not having it, it was kind of frightening but in the same breath its funny becuase i thought i was being so well behaved, cutting down my cokes to just a couple a day, there was a time when i was having more. anyway, i'm feeling clean and have a new lease on life, i'm sure it will all eventually feature in the made-for-TV movie on my life, so you will be able to see how i kicked the habit cold turkey with someone devilishly handsome and charasmatic, like a Brad Pitt, playing my character. then again it will probably be someone a little more washed up, someone like Nudge from 'Hey Dad'.
i had a great time in Chester, it was really great to see Celeste and have some home cooked meals, i lived with Celeste for a little while and let me tell you, her mashed potato can't be beaten, this is starting to sound like a quote from the movie 'the Castle' but, i dunno what she does with it, but its brilliant! all i'm saying is, if her and Dusty go for a trip to Ireland, Dusty had better watch his back.
anyway, next time i'm writing another post i will be doing so while eating tapas and fending off pick pockets, thats right, i'm off to Spain. but first i have to go to Liverpool for a night, then fly out of there for Barcelona, truth be told i just wanted to fly out of an airport thats called 'John Lennon International Airport'. i'm actually really looking forward to a bit of a change in culture, and i think Spain is just what the doctor ordered. more when i get there!
let me tell you, Lesty is living the dream. not only did she pick me up in Dustys work car, a brand new Jag, her place is awesome! its a fully furnished 3 level apartment with a brilliant location, just a stone throw from the main strip. i wasn't stuck on the couch either, i was lucky enough to get my own room with a double bed, and there was even a TV in the bathroom, when i saw that i thought i was living at Graceland! OK, i'm starting to sound like a real estate agent so i'd better stop, all i'm saying is maybe i should visit Chester more often.
Celeste is a bit of a movie buff, and always fills me in with whats good to watch, so the majority of the time i was here i spent it with Celeste watching pirated DVD's, i can't figure out where the pirates would come from, Chester is landlocked, celeste said not to ask questions. anyway, we saw pretty much all of the 1st season of '30 Rock' which could be my new favourite TV show, its really well written. 'Slumdog Millionaire' which is a really good film, its kind of strange no one has thought of it before. 'Australia', which was better than i expected. also the new Kate Winslet movie 'the Reader', which i also thought was really good, but i kind of find it hard to take Kate Winslet serious after seeing her in 'Extras'. if you don't know what i mean, there is an episode of 'Extras' where one of the characters has just got a boyfriend who likes to talk dirty on the phone, the character is quite awkward about it all so Kate Winslet gives her some advice, i'll leave you with a clip of how it all pans out. very funny.
when i finally got my arse into gear and ventured outside it turned out that Chester is a really cute little place. which kind of surprised me a little bit because i expected it to be a little bit more working class, because its so close to Liverpool. the town itself is full of tudor buildings which are really beautiful. the thing that astounds me is how they are built, they are really top heavy. the top floor almost always leans out over the floor below it, it kind of defies logic. wouldn't you build, the levels below, wider to give it more strength? strange. something else i noticed on the building was the brick work, some of them had some great patterns.
Chester is a walled city, well at least it used to be, its sprawled out a little bit over the year. you can do a walk around the walls, so Celeste and I did that which was nice except the wind was absolutly freezing, but it gave us a good chance to catch up and chat about old times. i like to think Celeste are pretty tight knit, we've known each other for quite a while now, and i guess when you work with someone one on one for many years you get to know them quite well, and i guess in a lot of ways, celeste knows me better than most people. i'm really lucky to have a friend as caring as Celeste, and in a lot of ways i guess i look at her more as a sister. i'm quite close to her family also and i was a bit shattered when i found out i was going to just miss out on seeing her mum and dad, Tina and Richard, but we got to skype them which was great. Richard is a photographer and was telling about a new piece of equipment that he brought for his camera that is kind of like a GPS, because it remembers where the photo was taken, and then you can upload it Google maps to the exact position from where you took the shot. how cool is that!
also during my time here i decided to get clean and made the first step in breaking my coke addiction, admitting that have a problem. i couldn't afford the Betty Ford clinic so Celeste's place had to do. i always thought i didn't have a problem, i always said 'i could give up at anytime', but didn't realise how much coca-cola had taken over my life, i was getting serious headaches from not having it, it was kind of frightening but in the same breath its funny becuase i thought i was being so well behaved, cutting down my cokes to just a couple a day, there was a time when i was having more. anyway, i'm feeling clean and have a new lease on life, i'm sure it will all eventually feature in the made-for-TV movie on my life, so you will be able to see how i kicked the habit cold turkey with someone devilishly handsome and charasmatic, like a Brad Pitt, playing my character. then again it will probably be someone a little more washed up, someone like Nudge from 'Hey Dad'.
i had a great time in Chester, it was really great to see Celeste and have some home cooked meals, i lived with Celeste for a little while and let me tell you, her mashed potato can't be beaten, this is starting to sound like a quote from the movie 'the Castle' but, i dunno what she does with it, but its brilliant! all i'm saying is, if her and Dusty go for a trip to Ireland, Dusty had better watch his back.
anyway, next time i'm writing another post i will be doing so while eating tapas and fending off pick pockets, thats right, i'm off to Spain. but first i have to go to Liverpool for a night, then fly out of there for Barcelona, truth be told i just wanted to fly out of an airport thats called 'John Lennon International Airport'. i'm actually really looking forward to a bit of a change in culture, and i think Spain is just what the doctor ordered. more when i get there!
Snowdonia
to be totally honest, i had no idea what i was going to do after Cardiff. i hadn't really met many people that had travelled to Wales so i didn't really know which towns to visit. all i knew of Wales was Cardiff and that the Snowdonia area at the top of Wales was worth a look. i was lucky that the girl that worked in the hostel had a good knewledge of the area and pointed out a few different places for me to check out. it was lucky i did because she also showed me of how to get there.
good transport here in Wales is as fictional as the dragon on the Welsh flag. i heard that wales has some really beautiful country side so i wanted to at least travel through some of it on the way to Snowdonia, but the only way by train to get to the top of wales goes back out to england then shoots back into wales at the end, putting on a lot more travel time and missing out on some of the best bits of scenery, so i decided to used the local buses. it took me longer in the long run because the bus companies don't offer many runs so i would sometimes have to wait a couple of hours for a connecting bus, but in the end i think it was worth it. along the way i noticed that spring has definately sprung, with flowers begining to bloom as well as plently of baby lambs running about with there, yet-to-be-docked tails in endless fields sectioned off by hedges or stone walls. actually the Welsh kind of get treated by the English similar to the way Aussies treat New Zealanders, plenty of sheep jokes and stuff like that. which made me think, i've been through a fair bit of the United Kingdom but to be honest theres nothing united about it, the Scots hate the English, the English hate the Irish and the Welsh hate everyone.
after going through a number of cute little towns my first stop was Aberystwyth (try saything that 10 times fast) which is a little seaside town. i couldn't get into a hostel there so i had to stay in a B&B which ended up being quite nice and right on the water, and the cooked breakfast was just what the doctor ordered. Aberystwyth itself isn't very big but a nice spot, as i mentioned its right on the water and it has the ruins of an old castle but there isn't a hell of a lot of things to do there, which pretty much sums up the majority of wales, and the rest of this blog to be honest. its mainly just a pretty place to hang out.
next stop was Llanberis which is a little town at the foot of Mt Snowdon (if you hadn't guessed thats were Snowdonia gets its name from) to get there i had to get 2 small train rides then catch a bus and wait for an hour for another bus. it was while waiting i met a guy who was also waiting for the bus, he told me his name but i'm hopeless at remembering names, it mightt have been Adam. anyway, we got chatting because we were the only two people there, and it turned out he was in the airforce, he used to be a pilot but had an injury and couldn't continue flying. we got talking about a number of things, it turned out that his parents were killed in a car accident (on christmas day too i might add) when he was only 3 and his fiance, who i imagine he met while serving in the airforce, was killed in battle. naturally, i started to feeling sorry for the guy, but i was thinking to myself, why is this guy telling me so much about himself? he hardly knew me at all. anyway, the bus came and we got off at the same stop, i told him earlier that i was going to the hostel in the town so he said he'd show me where it was. anyway we got there and i checked in but i couldn't go up to my room because it was getting cleaned. i thought that once this guy had shown me the hostel he would go on his way but he insisted on showing me around the town, there wasn't really much to point out, it was quite small, it had a couple of shops and a lake behind it, he suggested that we head to the lake, but i was starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable about this guy, sure he's really helpful, but what is he getting out of it? i decided that going to a remote area like a lake wasn't such a good idea. so i said 'if you show me everything now, i'm not going to have anything left to explore, do you know where i can ge some internet?' he pointed out a library up the road, then i said 'i hope you don't miss your connecting bus just to show me around, what time did it get here again?' i thought i was never going to shake him, but after a few more minutes he left to catch his bus. he might have meant well and just been one of those people that was overly friendly, but i just got a bad feeling from him after a while, i might have been over reacting but i didn't fancy getting chopped up into little pieces, well, not today anyway. i think sometimes you have to follow your instict and i guess being alone i'm an easy target.
Anyway, the rest of the time in Llanbreris was quite nice, and pretty relaxed. theres a little train here that goes up to Snowdons peak but it was closed for maintenace so i caught a bus up to a point and did a bit of a walk around but nothing too over the top, there were a couple of lakes about half way up, so i sat there and read for a while and made the most of the sunshine. if your a fan of the outdoors, Wales is definately for you, there seems to be a huge treking and climbing community here.
while i was here i did a 'Britney Spears'. no, i didnt forget to wear underwear or have a wardrobe malfunction. i shaved my hair off. i was sick of having to to get it cut all the time and having longer hair while your traveling can be a nightmare at times, so i went to the hairdresses and got them to give me a number 4 all over, just for there own amusement they gave me a mo hawk for a bit. the little old ladys who were in there getting there blue rinse were loving it. its a strange feeling because i've never really had short hair before and it looks better than i expected. its good for a change, but it think i prefer having my hair longer.
i didn't mention this in my Cardiff post but you learn pretty quick that Wales is a bilingual country. whenever you see road signs they are both in English and Welsh. supposedly when they get there bills around here, they are given 2, one in english and one in welsh. sounds like a terrible waste of paper to me. whenever i see the Welsh words they don't look like you could pronouce them at all. the letters that sit next to one another look strange, i suppose its becuase i only know how to speak english i always look at it and try to apply the english rules, which simply just don't work. something interesting i noticed was, in Cardiff most people spoke english, but the further north in wales you go the more people speak welsh.
after Llanberis i headed off to the little, seaside, walled town of Caernarfon, which was originally built by Edward I and has a castle that connects to the walls and sits right on the water. in hindsight, heading to wales and putting a ban on myself seeing castles was probably a bad idea, i've seen a stupid amount of castles since i've been in europe and they are all pretty much the same, but the majority of things to see in Wales are castles, supposidly they have more than anyone. again, unless you count the castle theres not really much to see a guess, but its still quite a pretty little place to wander around and look in shops etc. the hostel i stayed at had a young family that ran it who were really nice, but they had a little Jack Russell that reminded me of my dog, Eddie, so it was nice having a dog to pat and play with.
i had to head to Bangor because i was going to Chester the next day and the train left from there, so i spent a day up there. i knew of Bangor because the Beatles came here once to do listen to the Maharishi do a seminar on meditation. anyway, Bangor is also a seaside village but probably bigger than the other towns i went to. they have a university here which is quite old and beautiful to walk around but probably the best thing about having a university in a town is the students, i found this place a bit more youthful, with cafes and bars etc. but more importantly for me a music shop, i was desperate to play guitar, even if i had to pose as a man in the market for a new guitar, i think the fake moustache and glasses through off the sales assistant because he let me play for a while.
i suppose because i didn't know much about wales it was always going to be a little bit hit and miss, but thinking back, i think i hit more than i missed in Wales, though on the train to Chester i noticed a town called Conwy that looked like an interesting spot, almost a combination of a number of places i visited, but i suppose you can't do everything. i'm writing this blog a in Chester becuase there was hardly any internet access in wales, i hope you haven't been hanging on the edge of your seat, don't blame me, blame the welsh! anyway, more about Chester in the next blog.
good transport here in Wales is as fictional as the dragon on the Welsh flag. i heard that wales has some really beautiful country side so i wanted to at least travel through some of it on the way to Snowdonia, but the only way by train to get to the top of wales goes back out to england then shoots back into wales at the end, putting on a lot more travel time and missing out on some of the best bits of scenery, so i decided to used the local buses. it took me longer in the long run because the bus companies don't offer many runs so i would sometimes have to wait a couple of hours for a connecting bus, but in the end i think it was worth it. along the way i noticed that spring has definately sprung, with flowers begining to bloom as well as plently of baby lambs running about with there, yet-to-be-docked tails in endless fields sectioned off by hedges or stone walls. actually the Welsh kind of get treated by the English similar to the way Aussies treat New Zealanders, plenty of sheep jokes and stuff like that. which made me think, i've been through a fair bit of the United Kingdom but to be honest theres nothing united about it, the Scots hate the English, the English hate the Irish and the Welsh hate everyone.
after going through a number of cute little towns my first stop was Aberystwyth (try saything that 10 times fast) which is a little seaside town. i couldn't get into a hostel there so i had to stay in a B&B which ended up being quite nice and right on the water, and the cooked breakfast was just what the doctor ordered. Aberystwyth itself isn't very big but a nice spot, as i mentioned its right on the water and it has the ruins of an old castle but there isn't a hell of a lot of things to do there, which pretty much sums up the majority of wales, and the rest of this blog to be honest. its mainly just a pretty place to hang out.
next stop was Llanberis which is a little town at the foot of Mt Snowdon (if you hadn't guessed thats were Snowdonia gets its name from) to get there i had to get 2 small train rides then catch a bus and wait for an hour for another bus. it was while waiting i met a guy who was also waiting for the bus, he told me his name but i'm hopeless at remembering names, it mightt have been Adam. anyway, we got chatting because we were the only two people there, and it turned out he was in the airforce, he used to be a pilot but had an injury and couldn't continue flying. we got talking about a number of things, it turned out that his parents were killed in a car accident (on christmas day too i might add) when he was only 3 and his fiance, who i imagine he met while serving in the airforce, was killed in battle. naturally, i started to feeling sorry for the guy, but i was thinking to myself, why is this guy telling me so much about himself? he hardly knew me at all. anyway, the bus came and we got off at the same stop, i told him earlier that i was going to the hostel in the town so he said he'd show me where it was. anyway we got there and i checked in but i couldn't go up to my room because it was getting cleaned. i thought that once this guy had shown me the hostel he would go on his way but he insisted on showing me around the town, there wasn't really much to point out, it was quite small, it had a couple of shops and a lake behind it, he suggested that we head to the lake, but i was starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable about this guy, sure he's really helpful, but what is he getting out of it? i decided that going to a remote area like a lake wasn't such a good idea. so i said 'if you show me everything now, i'm not going to have anything left to explore, do you know where i can ge some internet?' he pointed out a library up the road, then i said 'i hope you don't miss your connecting bus just to show me around, what time did it get here again?' i thought i was never going to shake him, but after a few more minutes he left to catch his bus. he might have meant well and just been one of those people that was overly friendly, but i just got a bad feeling from him after a while, i might have been over reacting but i didn't fancy getting chopped up into little pieces, well, not today anyway. i think sometimes you have to follow your instict and i guess being alone i'm an easy target.
Anyway, the rest of the time in Llanbreris was quite nice, and pretty relaxed. theres a little train here that goes up to Snowdons peak but it was closed for maintenace so i caught a bus up to a point and did a bit of a walk around but nothing too over the top, there were a couple of lakes about half way up, so i sat there and read for a while and made the most of the sunshine. if your a fan of the outdoors, Wales is definately for you, there seems to be a huge treking and climbing community here.
while i was here i did a 'Britney Spears'. no, i didnt forget to wear underwear or have a wardrobe malfunction. i shaved my hair off. i was sick of having to to get it cut all the time and having longer hair while your traveling can be a nightmare at times, so i went to the hairdresses and got them to give me a number 4 all over, just for there own amusement they gave me a mo hawk for a bit. the little old ladys who were in there getting there blue rinse were loving it. its a strange feeling because i've never really had short hair before and it looks better than i expected. its good for a change, but it think i prefer having my hair longer.
i didn't mention this in my Cardiff post but you learn pretty quick that Wales is a bilingual country. whenever you see road signs they are both in English and Welsh. supposedly when they get there bills around here, they are given 2, one in english and one in welsh. sounds like a terrible waste of paper to me. whenever i see the Welsh words they don't look like you could pronouce them at all. the letters that sit next to one another look strange, i suppose its becuase i only know how to speak english i always look at it and try to apply the english rules, which simply just don't work. something interesting i noticed was, in Cardiff most people spoke english, but the further north in wales you go the more people speak welsh.
after Llanberis i headed off to the little, seaside, walled town of Caernarfon, which was originally built by Edward I and has a castle that connects to the walls and sits right on the water. in hindsight, heading to wales and putting a ban on myself seeing castles was probably a bad idea, i've seen a stupid amount of castles since i've been in europe and they are all pretty much the same, but the majority of things to see in Wales are castles, supposidly they have more than anyone. again, unless you count the castle theres not really much to see a guess, but its still quite a pretty little place to wander around and look in shops etc. the hostel i stayed at had a young family that ran it who were really nice, but they had a little Jack Russell that reminded me of my dog, Eddie, so it was nice having a dog to pat and play with.
i had to head to Bangor because i was going to Chester the next day and the train left from there, so i spent a day up there. i knew of Bangor because the Beatles came here once to do listen to the Maharishi do a seminar on meditation. anyway, Bangor is also a seaside village but probably bigger than the other towns i went to. they have a university here which is quite old and beautiful to walk around but probably the best thing about having a university in a town is the students, i found this place a bit more youthful, with cafes and bars etc. but more importantly for me a music shop, i was desperate to play guitar, even if i had to pose as a man in the market for a new guitar, i think the fake moustache and glasses through off the sales assistant because he let me play for a while.
i suppose because i didn't know much about wales it was always going to be a little bit hit and miss, but thinking back, i think i hit more than i missed in Wales, though on the train to Chester i noticed a town called Conwy that looked like an interesting spot, almost a combination of a number of places i visited, but i suppose you can't do everything. i'm writing this blog a in Chester becuase there was hardly any internet access in wales, i hope you haven't been hanging on the edge of your seat, don't blame me, blame the welsh! anyway, more about Chester in the next blog.
Cardiff
i decided that on the way to Cardiff i would stop off in Bristol because i'm a big fan of the street artist, Banksy. he is from here and you can see a number of is work around town (if you haven't heard of Bansky before click here to check out his website which displays some of his work). before i came here i got told that Bristol is a really rough place, but i didn't find it like that at all, it kind of reminded me of Liverpool a little bit, of course, like anywhere there are bad parts, the Stokes Croft area where a number of Banksy's was a bit rough around the edges but apart from that i thought it was quite good with many cool and creative things happening around town. in some ways i was a little bit annoyed at myself for buying a ticket to cardiff, it would've been nice to spend a couple of days here.
the thing i like about Banksy is his appropriation, the place he puts his work and the stuff designed for the space is very clever and, i think, makes you think. for instance this piece is one of the many i saw in Bristol
i think its quite clever on its own, but the thing that adds so much more to the piece is that its painted on the side of a sexual health clinic.
another thing i like about his is he has change peoples opinions on street art. before him, a number of people felt that it was mindless and a plague on society, and to be fair there is some aspects of it that aren't that good ie: tagging. but now Banksy's work is admired throughout the world and his work is highly sort after, for instance some people have even taken insurance out on the wall his work was painted on. people here seem to be really proud of his work too, i asked a number of people where i could find some of his stuff and they were more than happy to point out stuff to me even the little old lady in the tourist office showed me where to find a couple.
at some train stations that i've visited throughout europe i've been able to leave my backpack but in the UK its a bit different, they are a bit paranoid about terrorism, which i can understand, these are the times we live in, its kind of surprising that other places throughout europe offer lockers for bags come to think of, anyway, this meant i had to lug my backpack around for the day but i think it was well worth it.
anyway, on to Cardiff. i got off my the train and found my hostel which pretty easy to find, it was right near the big rugby stadium and a short walk from the station. when i got there i thought i got the wrong place, the hostel was more like a hotel! the best part of all is they made a bit of mix up and they put me in a 4 person dorm with a TV, lounges, an amazing view over the river and an ensuite but most importantly i got the room all to myself so i caught up on some much needed sleep, i stayed in that room for a couple of nights before they realised and then they moved me to a dorm, which was still pretty good. i met a guy from Sydney called Byron, top bloke, him and i had a similar sence of humour and got on quite well. We pretty much hung out together the whole time i was here.
one night we went out with a couple of people we met from the hostel. one of the girls we went out with turned out to be a HUGE liability, she said that some guy threw a drink at her so she grabbed a drink and threw it all over him. Byron and I didn't see it happen but obviously the guy was rather annoyed and it was getting pretty heated so we made the decision to get the group together and head off. problem was, the guy who had the drink poured over him, followed us out of the club and kept egging us on to try and make us fight him, Byron and i didn't really give a shit about what the guy was saying, we knew what he was trying to do, but the girl just made it worst, by giving the guy the finger. By this stage Byron and i were pretty sick of this chick, becuase if there was going to be a fight i'm pretty sure it wasn't going to be her that was going to get a knuckle sandwich, it was going to be us, so we told her to pull her head in. i think they must have a few problems with fighting and other drink related stuff becuase on the Saturday i was here they totally shut down the main street of Cardiff off to traffic so that the police and the ambulance can get through. and i dunno what they feed the guys here but they are all built like german tanks, they are massive so there not the kind of people you want to get on the bad side of. anyway, the moral of the story is, don't party with girls from far north Queensland.
Something that was fun was Wales played Italy in the rugby, i wouldn't say i'm not a huge sports fan but i figured that watching a Rugby match in wales is probably a 'must do'. so Byron and i went to a little pub and watched it on the big screen. the vibe in the pub was brillant and funnily enough, a little less troublesome than the previous night. the game didnt start off too well, italy scored first and it wasn't looking good for a while there but they came back and won the match.
to be totally honest, Cardiff is a little bit on the boring side, its not very big and there isn't really a lot to do here. they have a castle here but i'm a little bit castled out having been in europe 6 months now, i think i've seen enough castles to last me a lifetime, but there is a really big park right next to it which was nice to walk around in.
i went out to Cardiff bay which was quite nice, it was a nice day weather wise so i think that helped. it looked like they had pumped a hell of a lot of money into the area, with heaps of new buildings around and the older ones being renovated. probably one of the more interesting of the newer buildings is the Wales Millennium Centre, which got the nick name 'the armadillo' because it has copper plates all over it that resemble the animals protective armour. apart from that there aren't too many sights, i suppose you could add the National Museum which had a number of big artist hanging in there.
anyway, i think i was quite lucky i to have met Byron, he made my stay here bareable. having said that i haven't given up on Wales quite just yet, i'm looking forward to heading up north towards the Snowdonia mountain range, which is meant to have some beautiful sweeping country side, so don't expect an exciting action packed blog when i get around to writing about it i think it will be for my viewing pleasure rather than your reading pleasure. more when i get around to writing more i suppose. bye for now!
the thing i like about Banksy is his appropriation, the place he puts his work and the stuff designed for the space is very clever and, i think, makes you think. for instance this piece is one of the many i saw in Bristol
i think its quite clever on its own, but the thing that adds so much more to the piece is that its painted on the side of a sexual health clinic.
another thing i like about his is he has change peoples opinions on street art. before him, a number of people felt that it was mindless and a plague on society, and to be fair there is some aspects of it that aren't that good ie: tagging. but now Banksy's work is admired throughout the world and his work is highly sort after, for instance some people have even taken insurance out on the wall his work was painted on. people here seem to be really proud of his work too, i asked a number of people where i could find some of his stuff and they were more than happy to point out stuff to me even the little old lady in the tourist office showed me where to find a couple.
at some train stations that i've visited throughout europe i've been able to leave my backpack but in the UK its a bit different, they are a bit paranoid about terrorism, which i can understand, these are the times we live in, its kind of surprising that other places throughout europe offer lockers for bags come to think of, anyway, this meant i had to lug my backpack around for the day but i think it was well worth it.
anyway, on to Cardiff. i got off my the train and found my hostel which pretty easy to find, it was right near the big rugby stadium and a short walk from the station. when i got there i thought i got the wrong place, the hostel was more like a hotel! the best part of all is they made a bit of mix up and they put me in a 4 person dorm with a TV, lounges, an amazing view over the river and an ensuite but most importantly i got the room all to myself so i caught up on some much needed sleep, i stayed in that room for a couple of nights before they realised and then they moved me to a dorm, which was still pretty good. i met a guy from Sydney called Byron, top bloke, him and i had a similar sence of humour and got on quite well. We pretty much hung out together the whole time i was here.
one night we went out with a couple of people we met from the hostel. one of the girls we went out with turned out to be a HUGE liability, she said that some guy threw a drink at her so she grabbed a drink and threw it all over him. Byron and I didn't see it happen but obviously the guy was rather annoyed and it was getting pretty heated so we made the decision to get the group together and head off. problem was, the guy who had the drink poured over him, followed us out of the club and kept egging us on to try and make us fight him, Byron and i didn't really give a shit about what the guy was saying, we knew what he was trying to do, but the girl just made it worst, by giving the guy the finger. By this stage Byron and i were pretty sick of this chick, becuase if there was going to be a fight i'm pretty sure it wasn't going to be her that was going to get a knuckle sandwich, it was going to be us, so we told her to pull her head in. i think they must have a few problems with fighting and other drink related stuff becuase on the Saturday i was here they totally shut down the main street of Cardiff off to traffic so that the police and the ambulance can get through. and i dunno what they feed the guys here but they are all built like german tanks, they are massive so there not the kind of people you want to get on the bad side of. anyway, the moral of the story is, don't party with girls from far north Queensland.
Something that was fun was Wales played Italy in the rugby, i wouldn't say i'm not a huge sports fan but i figured that watching a Rugby match in wales is probably a 'must do'. so Byron and i went to a little pub and watched it on the big screen. the vibe in the pub was brillant and funnily enough, a little less troublesome than the previous night. the game didnt start off too well, italy scored first and it wasn't looking good for a while there but they came back and won the match.
to be totally honest, Cardiff is a little bit on the boring side, its not very big and there isn't really a lot to do here. they have a castle here but i'm a little bit castled out having been in europe 6 months now, i think i've seen enough castles to last me a lifetime, but there is a really big park right next to it which was nice to walk around in.
i went out to Cardiff bay which was quite nice, it was a nice day weather wise so i think that helped. it looked like they had pumped a hell of a lot of money into the area, with heaps of new buildings around and the older ones being renovated. probably one of the more interesting of the newer buildings is the Wales Millennium Centre, which got the nick name 'the armadillo' because it has copper plates all over it that resemble the animals protective armour. apart from that there aren't too many sights, i suppose you could add the National Museum which had a number of big artist hanging in there.
anyway, i think i was quite lucky i to have met Byron, he made my stay here bareable. having said that i haven't given up on Wales quite just yet, i'm looking forward to heading up north towards the Snowdonia mountain range, which is meant to have some beautiful sweeping country side, so don't expect an exciting action packed blog when i get around to writing about it i think it will be for my viewing pleasure rather than your reading pleasure. more when i get around to writing more i suppose. bye for now!
Bath
call me a nerd (i know that i would) but i love public transport, mainly because everyone can use it, its not exclusive but also it kind of fascinates me how it all works, like who decides bus routes? why do they go through those destinations? i noticed that in london a lot of buses ran from low socio economic areas into high socio economic areas, was it done that way originally so that servants for the rich could get to work? just a thought. anyway, i saw on the news that bus companies were stopping some less popular services because of the economic crisis it wasn't viable for them to run to run it anymore which has left people in remote areas high and dry. its a real shame i think, esspecially for the elderly that can no longer drive and probably can't afford a taxi either. alot of transport in the UK is privately owned and so a lot of things cost an arm and a leg and i imagine that a lot of there decisions are all profit based, its definately a downfall of privatizing public transport.
i think i may have been ripped off on the train ride, i read that you could catch the train to Bath for under £20, turns out it cost me double and it wasnt worth me catching the tube to the bus station, it probably wouldn't have been much of a saving with all the muddling around. anyway, i tried to see the positive, i got there earlier and i was there in about an hour. someone asked me the other day 'whats it like travelling?' and i replied 'traveling is great except for all the traveling' i enjoy when i get to place, but moving is such a pain in the arse.
Bath is a really old and really beautiful place, but one of the first things i noticed was the accent had changed again and this time they sounded a little bit like pirates, lots of ahhhh's and eyyyy's i expected someone to say 'shiver me timbers!' at any moment. i did a walking tour with an old english gentleman as the tour guide. he was saying that the majority of bath's buildings are built out of limestone from the surrounding hills, its a really nice honey colour too, he pointed out a couple of significant buildings, like where Jane Austen lived and he pointed out a couple areas around the place that apparently appear in her books. i can't say i've ever read a Jane Austen they sound a little bit lovey dovey to me, so i think i'll give them a miss. he also showed me the Royal Cresent which is a really amazing building made up of 30 or so house, one of them is where the Grand Old Duke of York lived, you know they one, who had 10,000 men, he marched them to the top of the hill and marched them back down again... and so on and so on. my guide was impressed i knew the song, even though i have no idea how the hell i knew it. i think the most impressive buildings are The Circus which is, as the name may suggest, a group of building that go around a circle or round about. a Prime Minster lived in two of them for a bit, and supposedly actor Johnny Depp bought one recently, its a very nice end of town.
i think i may have been ripped off on the train ride, i read that you could catch the train to Bath for under £20, turns out it cost me double and it wasnt worth me catching the tube to the bus station, it probably wouldn't have been much of a saving with all the muddling around. anyway, i tried to see the positive, i got there earlier and i was there in about an hour. someone asked me the other day 'whats it like travelling?' and i replied 'traveling is great except for all the traveling' i enjoy when i get to place, but moving is such a pain in the arse.
Bath is a really old and really beautiful place, but one of the first things i noticed was the accent had changed again and this time they sounded a little bit like pirates, lots of ahhhh's and eyyyy's i expected someone to say 'shiver me timbers!' at any moment. i did a walking tour with an old english gentleman as the tour guide. he was saying that the majority of bath's buildings are built out of limestone from the surrounding hills, its a really nice honey colour too, he pointed out a couple of significant buildings, like where Jane Austen lived and he pointed out a couple areas around the place that apparently appear in her books. i can't say i've ever read a Jane Austen they sound a little bit lovey dovey to me, so i think i'll give them a miss. he also showed me the Royal Cresent which is a really amazing building made up of 30 or so house, one of them is where the Grand Old Duke of York lived, you know they one, who had 10,000 men, he marched them to the top of the hill and marched them back down again... and so on and so on. my guide was impressed i knew the song, even though i have no idea how the hell i knew it. i think the most impressive buildings are The Circus which is, as the name may suggest, a group of building that go around a circle or round about. a Prime Minster lived in two of them for a bit, and supposedly actor Johnny Depp bought one recently, its a very nice end of town.
Bath isn't very big but i noticed that there was a number of parks around the place which was enjoyable for a change. Of course i checked out the roman baths, they were really quite amazing, they were built when the Romans moved in and used the natural springs to create these spas, going through them i was amazed at how ahead of the game the Romans were. they were really into cleanliness and would bath at least once a day, but also use the spa as a way to heal the wounded or sick. at the end they give you a drink of the water, to try out its healing qualities, it tasted a bit funny but at the moment i need all the help i can get.
but my hostel didn't really help when i came to relaxing. it was pretty average when it came to getting sleep. there is a pub underneath it so i heard the throbbing sounds of Justin Timberlake until the wee hours of the morning, though i imagine so girls would love to hear the throbbing sounds of Justin Timberlake as they drift off to sleep, i can't say i really did. and another night some guys got home drunk and woke everyone up trying to get into there beds. actually it was kind of funny in a way because i know that when i'm intoxicated that i think i'm quiet as a mouse when i get home, but i'm sure i'm not. i suppose a positive from staying there was that i got breakfast included.
i did a day trip to Stonehenge while i was here, from Bath its only a stone throw away (see what i did there). the trip there was quite nice, pretty of open country side and occationally you would pass through a little village with cottages that had thatched roofs etc. in the distance i saw the Westbury White Horse which is an area of ground that had been carved out into a shape of a horse, underneath the ground is chalk which made the area white. we went through an area called Cley Hill which is known for is UFO and crop circle sightings which is quite funny, incase your wonering i didnt see any little green men.after about an hour drive we arrived at Stonehenge. my first impression was it was smaller than i expected. don't get me wrong it was still big, i certianly wouldn't have wanted to lug those massive rocks around, but it was just smaller than i imagined. its quite an amazing sight, and the more info you get of it the more amazing it gets. its still quite a mystery as to why it was built out of those stones because they taken from miles away, but also, why did they build it at all? theres a few ideas that run around but i think the likely answer is it was used as a calander. because of the way the stones are situated, when sun rises you can tell what time of year it is and what season we are in. quite clever really. but i like a bit of mystery and i think sometimes were not meant to know some things. things like when you put socks in the wash how come one generally goes missing? or why is the lint in your belly button always blue? i'll leave you those to ponder for a while. the only dampener is there is a huge bloodly highway that runs about 50 metres away from Stonehenge, which kind of ruins the experience a little bit. i heard that they are thinking of putting the road underground, hopefully they do.
London for a second time
ah, the joys of not catching a bus or a train. i caught a plane from Amsterdam to London Gatwick and the flight took a little under an hour and was pretty much hassle free, except i had to get to the airport quite early.
having done most of the touristy things around London last time i was here (click here if you want to read about what i got up to) pretty much, this time i just enjoyed walking around checking out shops and stuff. the only real touristy things i did were go to the British Museum which has an amazing collection, from Eygptian stuff to Native American, a bit of everything really, they even had a section on clocks! the Natural History Museum which had a whole section on dinosaurs, i remembered back to when i was a kid and the movie 'Jurassic Park' came out and was really into them. both were interesting buildings just to walk through. while i was walking around town i did a fair bit of people watching and now i totally understand why the Kinks sang songs about eccentric people and where the guys from the TV show 'Little Britain' got the inspiration for there characters. there are a lot of strange looking people around, well, there are strange people everywhere i guess, but there seems to be a lot more weird types breeding here.
My friend Sarah's whose been living and working here in London for a little under a year has decided to head back home to Melbourne so she had her going away drinks and dinner in Brick Lane with a few friends from work and a couple other people thats she met traveling, people like Marc and Jack who are simply hilarious, when they get together theyre like a comedy duo. we got on really well, mainly because we would poke a bit of fun at Sarah. also we had a brilliant tube ride home with Marc and I breaking into an amazing rendition of the Elton John classic 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me', the people on the train loved it, so much so we got an applause at the end. the guy who was sitting next to me said to us as he got off, 'whatever you guys are doing now is wasted, you need to pursue a career in show business'.
While i was here i once again got Sarah's house to myself. Sarah and her housemate Deanna went to Poland for the weekend with Jack and Marc, but i still had plenty of catching up to do. Flick and Jess, who i used to work with, had moved to London since i had been here last so i had a lovely boozy afternoon with them at a number of bars and pubs in Soho, so it was nice to catch up with them to see what they'd been up too, and talk about old times.
Something i wanted to do while i was here was checked out a West End play. so i got a ticket for one called 'Avenue Q' that i had heard about it a few months back from a couple of other travellers that i'd met so i decided i should go and see it because they raved about it so much. i guess you could say the show is loosly based on the kids TV show 'Sesame Street' with the majority of the characters in the show being puppets, who couldnt afford to live on Sesame Street so they live on Avenue Q. but its not as innocent as you might think, they sings songs like 'Everybodys a little bit racist sometimes' and 'The Internet Is for Porn' (click here to here it for yourself) there was even a puppet sex scene! i love cheeky humour so really enjoyed it, but i wasnt the only one the audience was roaring with laughter. its was really well put together, come to think of it i dont know why i dont see more live theater, i remember when my Mum took me to see 'Cats' when i was a little kid i thought it was amazing, so much so when we got a cat i named him 'Magic' after 'Mr. Mistoffelees'.
the weather here has been quite good really but one of the days i was here was glorious so i decided to do a trip up to Cambridge. Cambridge is a really pretty town and it was a lot smaller than i thought it was going to be. a couple of the sights are the little river that runs through it which is quite nice to walk along, they even have gondala-like things you can float down it on and they have a really old round church, supposidly theres only meant to be 4 or 5 of them. but of course, Cambridge is probably best known for its University. is really old, infact its the second oldest in the english speaking world, being founded somewhere in the 1200's but i never realised that Cambrige University was actually started by Oxford to escape the hostile townspeople of Oxford. something i noticed while i was there is that one stretch of road would change names a number of times. the reason being that the road is named after the college thats in front of it.
there are a number of Colleges that make up Cambridge University but probably the most famous is Trinity which originally was made up of a couple of colleges but the King combined them. a statue of the King holding a sword sits above the gate as you walk into it. as as you can imagine, students being students, they get up to a bit of mischief, one day some one noticed that the sword in the Kings hand had been replaced with a chair leg! supposidly the University has replaced the sword a couple of times but he always ends up with a wooden chair leg, which i thought was quite funny.
there are lots of amazing buildings in the University some of them hundreds and hundreds of years old in many different styles of Architecture. but probably the most epic of all the buildings is King's College Chapel, as the name suggests it was built because of the King, but it was built in a few different stages due to Kings dying and the next in line to the throne changing his mind about how the chapel should look. the leadlighting in the chapel is incredible and during WWII to make sure it wouldnt be destroyed it was numbered and removed then reassembled after the war had finished. its also meant to have a pretty kick-arse choir, even though the acoutics in the church are brillant, i think i would rather punch myself in the bollocks then listen to them.
something strange is in the colleges there are grassy areas in the squares, or courts as they call them, but only the 'fellows' (which i think are the teachers that work there) can walk on the grass. i've noticed that you can't walk on grass in a lot of places while i've been traveling, i find that so strange coming for Australia. i love laying on grass its probably one of the best things in life, since when has it been for the elite few? and another thing was women weren't allowed to study at Cambridge until 1869 with the openning of the girls college, they were allowed to sit exam etc but the University didnt give out degrees to women until 1947! how ridiculous is that!
the university has had a number of notable alumni over the years; Princes, Poets, Nobel Prize winners (something like 83 of them have come from here) and Prime Ministers but probably the most famous is Mr Isaac Newton, who was also a fellow here. Of course he was the clever fella that figured out gravity by seeing an apple drop from a tree, something i liked was, out side of the window of the room he lived in while he was here was an apple tree which was grown from the roots of the original apple tree.
Cambridge is such an amazing spot, it oozes with history and tradition, i had a really enjoyable day there.
something i thought it was quite funny that i heard when i was here last time but didnt mention. The mayor of London is a guy called Boris Johnson, to most British hes rather embarrassing, he always sort of looks disheveled and he bumbles around, quite funny. anyway he found this old law saying that you were allowed to drink on the tube and he wanted to ban it. English laws are generally quite funny, there so old and strange at times, mainly becuase something probably happened once so they thought they'd better put something in place so it wouldnt happen again. anyway, hardly anyone knew that you could legally get drunk there. so on the night before the new law was put into place, everyone threw a huge party on the tube!
something i noticed that i thought was pretty nifty was you can use certain ATM's here to top up your phone credit, when you think about it, its a brilliant idea, i'm pretty sure they don't have that back home, why not? the phone companies are pretty much all the same.
Newspapers here are generally pretty horrible, theres this girl in the news at the moment called Jade Goody, she became a minor celebrity over here for being on Big Brother a few years back, i believe she said something racist to another constestant on the show and all hell broke loose. anyway, unfortuately Jade is dying of cervical cancer and doctors have only given her days to live. the thing that makes me sick is the ways its been played out in the media. as far as i'm meant to believe she has been doing interviews and she got married to her boyfriend (who sounds like a real tool by the way) and sold the pictures to the papers for X amount money so that she can save up a nest egg for her 2 children. to some extent i can understand that, i dont think its something that i would do but i suppose if i had kids i would do what i could to protect them finacially. anyway, theres a huge media storm about it all, my friend Sarah was working at a doctors where Jade was getting treatment, she was telling me that the media would call up pretending to be doctors from other hospitals to find out her progress. which made me think, are people really that sick and twisted that they will do ANYTHING for personal gain? this poor woman is DYING, give her and her family some respect. it really made me sick to see how dog eat dog the world is. but who do you blame? the journo's for pestering or the readers for buying the newspapers? though i shouldn't get on my high horse, Australian papers are just as bad.
once again i had a really good time in London, its always handy when you have friends in a place. its so nice of Sarah and Deanna to let me stay with them, i really apprieciated it, its so nice to have the creature comforts of a home for a bit, living in a hostel for a while gets a little bit tiring after a while.
Sarah gave me a couple of books for the rest of my journey. the first being George Orwells 'Nineteen Eighty Four' which was on my 'to do' list so i was really greatful at that, but then she gave a book titled 'Marley & Me' i looked on the back cover and it read 'Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog' i'm sure i would've had a really perplexed look on my face when she gave it to me. somehow i dont think i'm going to get around to reading that one.
i think now that Sarah's not going to be here next time i'm back in London i think its going to be a different experience, but i'll have new friends in the form of Deanna, Marc and Jack. next stop is Bath, to re-educate myself the importance of cleaning behind my ears, or so i imagine. more when i get there.
having done most of the touristy things around London last time i was here (click here if you want to read about what i got up to) pretty much, this time i just enjoyed walking around checking out shops and stuff. the only real touristy things i did were go to the British Museum which has an amazing collection, from Eygptian stuff to Native American, a bit of everything really, they even had a section on clocks! the Natural History Museum which had a whole section on dinosaurs, i remembered back to when i was a kid and the movie 'Jurassic Park' came out and was really into them. both were interesting buildings just to walk through. while i was walking around town i did a fair bit of people watching and now i totally understand why the Kinks sang songs about eccentric people and where the guys from the TV show 'Little Britain' got the inspiration for there characters. there are a lot of strange looking people around, well, there are strange people everywhere i guess, but there seems to be a lot more weird types breeding here.
My friend Sarah's whose been living and working here in London for a little under a year has decided to head back home to Melbourne so she had her going away drinks and dinner in Brick Lane with a few friends from work and a couple other people thats she met traveling, people like Marc and Jack who are simply hilarious, when they get together theyre like a comedy duo. we got on really well, mainly because we would poke a bit of fun at Sarah. also we had a brilliant tube ride home with Marc and I breaking into an amazing rendition of the Elton John classic 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me', the people on the train loved it, so much so we got an applause at the end. the guy who was sitting next to me said to us as he got off, 'whatever you guys are doing now is wasted, you need to pursue a career in show business'.
While i was here i once again got Sarah's house to myself. Sarah and her housemate Deanna went to Poland for the weekend with Jack and Marc, but i still had plenty of catching up to do. Flick and Jess, who i used to work with, had moved to London since i had been here last so i had a lovely boozy afternoon with them at a number of bars and pubs in Soho, so it was nice to catch up with them to see what they'd been up too, and talk about old times.
Something i wanted to do while i was here was checked out a West End play. so i got a ticket for one called 'Avenue Q' that i had heard about it a few months back from a couple of other travellers that i'd met so i decided i should go and see it because they raved about it so much. i guess you could say the show is loosly based on the kids TV show 'Sesame Street' with the majority of the characters in the show being puppets, who couldnt afford to live on Sesame Street so they live on Avenue Q. but its not as innocent as you might think, they sings songs like 'Everybodys a little bit racist sometimes' and 'The Internet Is for Porn' (click here to here it for yourself) there was even a puppet sex scene! i love cheeky humour so really enjoyed it, but i wasnt the only one the audience was roaring with laughter. its was really well put together, come to think of it i dont know why i dont see more live theater, i remember when my Mum took me to see 'Cats' when i was a little kid i thought it was amazing, so much so when we got a cat i named him 'Magic' after 'Mr. Mistoffelees'.
the weather here has been quite good really but one of the days i was here was glorious so i decided to do a trip up to Cambridge. Cambridge is a really pretty town and it was a lot smaller than i thought it was going to be. a couple of the sights are the little river that runs through it which is quite nice to walk along, they even have gondala-like things you can float down it on and they have a really old round church, supposidly theres only meant to be 4 or 5 of them. but of course, Cambridge is probably best known for its University. is really old, infact its the second oldest in the english speaking world, being founded somewhere in the 1200's but i never realised that Cambrige University was actually started by Oxford to escape the hostile townspeople of Oxford. something i noticed while i was there is that one stretch of road would change names a number of times. the reason being that the road is named after the college thats in front of it.
there are a number of Colleges that make up Cambridge University but probably the most famous is Trinity which originally was made up of a couple of colleges but the King combined them. a statue of the King holding a sword sits above the gate as you walk into it. as as you can imagine, students being students, they get up to a bit of mischief, one day some one noticed that the sword in the Kings hand had been replaced with a chair leg! supposidly the University has replaced the sword a couple of times but he always ends up with a wooden chair leg, which i thought was quite funny.
there are lots of amazing buildings in the University some of them hundreds and hundreds of years old in many different styles of Architecture. but probably the most epic of all the buildings is King's College Chapel, as the name suggests it was built because of the King, but it was built in a few different stages due to Kings dying and the next in line to the throne changing his mind about how the chapel should look. the leadlighting in the chapel is incredible and during WWII to make sure it wouldnt be destroyed it was numbered and removed then reassembled after the war had finished. its also meant to have a pretty kick-arse choir, even though the acoutics in the church are brillant, i think i would rather punch myself in the bollocks then listen to them.
something strange is in the colleges there are grassy areas in the squares, or courts as they call them, but only the 'fellows' (which i think are the teachers that work there) can walk on the grass. i've noticed that you can't walk on grass in a lot of places while i've been traveling, i find that so strange coming for Australia. i love laying on grass its probably one of the best things in life, since when has it been for the elite few? and another thing was women weren't allowed to study at Cambridge until 1869 with the openning of the girls college, they were allowed to sit exam etc but the University didnt give out degrees to women until 1947! how ridiculous is that!
the university has had a number of notable alumni over the years; Princes, Poets, Nobel Prize winners (something like 83 of them have come from here) and Prime Ministers but probably the most famous is Mr Isaac Newton, who was also a fellow here. Of course he was the clever fella that figured out gravity by seeing an apple drop from a tree, something i liked was, out side of the window of the room he lived in while he was here was an apple tree which was grown from the roots of the original apple tree.
Cambridge is such an amazing spot, it oozes with history and tradition, i had a really enjoyable day there.
something i thought it was quite funny that i heard when i was here last time but didnt mention. The mayor of London is a guy called Boris Johnson, to most British hes rather embarrassing, he always sort of looks disheveled and he bumbles around, quite funny. anyway he found this old law saying that you were allowed to drink on the tube and he wanted to ban it. English laws are generally quite funny, there so old and strange at times, mainly becuase something probably happened once so they thought they'd better put something in place so it wouldnt happen again. anyway, hardly anyone knew that you could legally get drunk there. so on the night before the new law was put into place, everyone threw a huge party on the tube!
something i noticed that i thought was pretty nifty was you can use certain ATM's here to top up your phone credit, when you think about it, its a brilliant idea, i'm pretty sure they don't have that back home, why not? the phone companies are pretty much all the same.
Newspapers here are generally pretty horrible, theres this girl in the news at the moment called Jade Goody, she became a minor celebrity over here for being on Big Brother a few years back, i believe she said something racist to another constestant on the show and all hell broke loose. anyway, unfortuately Jade is dying of cervical cancer and doctors have only given her days to live. the thing that makes me sick is the ways its been played out in the media. as far as i'm meant to believe she has been doing interviews and she got married to her boyfriend (who sounds like a real tool by the way) and sold the pictures to the papers for X amount money so that she can save up a nest egg for her 2 children. to some extent i can understand that, i dont think its something that i would do but i suppose if i had kids i would do what i could to protect them finacially. anyway, theres a huge media storm about it all, my friend Sarah was working at a doctors where Jade was getting treatment, she was telling me that the media would call up pretending to be doctors from other hospitals to find out her progress. which made me think, are people really that sick and twisted that they will do ANYTHING for personal gain? this poor woman is DYING, give her and her family some respect. it really made me sick to see how dog eat dog the world is. but who do you blame? the journo's for pestering or the readers for buying the newspapers? though i shouldn't get on my high horse, Australian papers are just as bad.
once again i had a really good time in London, its always handy when you have friends in a place. its so nice of Sarah and Deanna to let me stay with them, i really apprieciated it, its so nice to have the creature comforts of a home for a bit, living in a hostel for a while gets a little bit tiring after a while.
Sarah gave me a couple of books for the rest of my journey. the first being George Orwells 'Nineteen Eighty Four' which was on my 'to do' list so i was really greatful at that, but then she gave a book titled 'Marley & Me' i looked on the back cover and it read 'Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog' i'm sure i would've had a really perplexed look on my face when she gave it to me. somehow i dont think i'm going to get around to reading that one.
i think now that Sarah's not going to be here next time i'm back in London i think its going to be a different experience, but i'll have new friends in the form of Deanna, Marc and Jack. next stop is Bath, to re-educate myself the importance of cleaning behind my ears, or so i imagine. more when i get there.
Amsterdam for a second time
nothing really much to report really, if the title of this blog isnt a give away enough, i'd been to Amsterdam before (click here to see the post from last time) i enjoyed it so much, that when Sarah was thinking of places we could go for a few days before she headed back home, i instantly decided that we should come back for round two.
the train ride was reasonably painless, but i didnt really have much distance to travel. but i was still feeling the effects of doing too much and had a splitting headache when i got off train so i headed straight for my hostel. as soon as i openned the door, i was hit in the face with smoke, as if to remind me where i was. Sarah wasnt getting into Amsterdam until about 7pm that evening so i took the opportunity and went to my room and i slept. it was probably the best idea i've ever had, it did me the world of good and amazingly i woke up just as Sarah was walking in the front door of the hostel.
pretty much for the next couple of days we had coffee, ate, one place we went to had this massive cat, who acted like he pretty much owned the place. its actually not that uncommon to see a furry friend mainly to keep the other little furry ones away. Amsterdam has a bit of a problem with mice, mainly due to the water. i brought a few things in a couple of the vintage stores here. i'm so sick of sticking to a budget so it thought bugger it and brought a jacket, a vest, a flannelette shirt and a few other little bits and pieces, it didnt really cost me that much either. i really hate having limited things to wear, i always feel i'm wearing the same clothes all the time, so i think a few new additions to the wardrobe should do the trick.
i saw and found out a couple of other things while i was here. one of them was, back in the day, how much you were taxed depended upon how wide your house was. so, needless to say, there are some pretty skinny little homes around the place, the smallest being just 1.8m wide, how does someone live like that? oh and have you ever wondered why all the sporting teams from the Netherlands dress in Orange even though orange doesnt appear on there flag? i know that i have. it turns out its because they were governed by the House of Orange. also even though it is legal here in Amsterdam, New Zealand is the number 1 user of Cannabis on the planet. i tell you, when i get back i think i might do the Trivia night circuit, i think i would make a killing with the amount of worthless knowledge i've picked up along the way.
when i travel i really like to involve myself into things that are typical of that particular area, whether it be a national dish or perhaps a drink, so of course i wouldnt be doing myself justice if i didnt try what Amsterdam is known for. (just like the last blog Nanna, this is where you have to stop reading for a while) across the road from our hostel, Sarah and I (mainly Sarah) got wind that there was a cafe that sold hash muffins, so Sarah twisted my arm and made me go over. let me just say that Sarah is a really bad influence, i was like 'Please Sarah, don't force me to put this devils cake into my mouth, what would my Nanna think?' but she wouldn't take no for an answer and shoved it down my throat. at first nothing really happened except my arms and legs were a little bit heavier than usual but that was about it. i thought that maybe we had a dud batch, so a said to Sarah that we should go to this resturant that i went to last time i was here that was just across the river. so we made it to the dock and waited for our ferry. i couldnt remember which ferry it was so i asked a guy if he knew which one i needed to get, once he found out we were both Australian he was very talkative. but in the middle of him chatting, the hash muffin kicked it. it was like a switch, one second i was fine the next i was somewhere else and was trying my best to talk to this guy without breaking into fits of laughter. anyway we boarded the ferry and set off to the other side, but when we got there i couldnt remember how to get to the resturant, from memory it was a bit of a distance and i wasnt really in the state of mind to find it, so we had a bit of a giggle about it and got back on the ferry and headed back. we wound up in a Kabab shop (as you do) then Sarah said to me 'can we not eat here?' i was thinking, whats wrong with his place, i'm going to have you speak about kababs that way, esspecially since they have been a stable part of my diet since been traveling, i've become defensive about them. but it wasnt the food she was freaking out about, she asked me if her mouth was moving and told her 'nup' she was convinced it was chattering and began to flip out a little bit, i couldnt help but laugh. so i got the kababs we ordered and sat out side on the steps of our hostel. Sarah thought it might be a good idea if she went inside and had a lay down for a while, before we knew it she had fallen asleep by 8:30pm, what a party animal! we both had a good laugh about it the next day and both realised how extremely uncool we are. (OK Nanna you can continue reading).
actually come to think of it, Nanna you might not want to read this next story either its a little bit beyond the PG rating i've tried to keep to for the rest of the blog. i call this story 'the calamity of sleeping in hostels'. let me set the scene for you, it was our first night we stayed at the hostel and we were in a 18 bed mixed dorm room (may i remind you i said 18 beds, which means 18 people in this one room) it was probably about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning when i got woken up to the sound of squeaking. which in some circumstances isnt to out of the usual, you know, people rolling over in the night and whatnot. but when the squeaking almost had a rhythm to it i felt something was up, and it certainly was for one gentleman in the room. seems that him and his girlfriend were, well, lets just just say they were 'in the throws' and didnt seem to mind that there were quite a number of people in the room with them. i had to put the pillow over my head to get some sleep. the next day i found it really hard to look at them without having a giggle under my breath. i told Sar about it and she said that she didnt hear a thing, lucky for her she didnt miss out on the encore the next night when they kept both of us up. in the whole time i've been travelling i havent come across that yet, and i find it hard to see how you could in that situation. and to do it twice, thats just plain cocky.
the past couple of days have been really relaxing and enjoyable, in comparison to when i arrived, i feel a hell of a lot better. Next i fly to London to stay with Sar for a couple more days. more when i get there.
the train ride was reasonably painless, but i didnt really have much distance to travel. but i was still feeling the effects of doing too much and had a splitting headache when i got off train so i headed straight for my hostel. as soon as i openned the door, i was hit in the face with smoke, as if to remind me where i was. Sarah wasnt getting into Amsterdam until about 7pm that evening so i took the opportunity and went to my room and i slept. it was probably the best idea i've ever had, it did me the world of good and amazingly i woke up just as Sarah was walking in the front door of the hostel.
pretty much for the next couple of days we had coffee, ate, one place we went to had this massive cat, who acted like he pretty much owned the place. its actually not that uncommon to see a furry friend mainly to keep the other little furry ones away. Amsterdam has a bit of a problem with mice, mainly due to the water. i brought a few things in a couple of the vintage stores here. i'm so sick of sticking to a budget so it thought bugger it and brought a jacket, a vest, a flannelette shirt and a few other little bits and pieces, it didnt really cost me that much either. i really hate having limited things to wear, i always feel i'm wearing the same clothes all the time, so i think a few new additions to the wardrobe should do the trick.
i saw and found out a couple of other things while i was here. one of them was, back in the day, how much you were taxed depended upon how wide your house was. so, needless to say, there are some pretty skinny little homes around the place, the smallest being just 1.8m wide, how does someone live like that? oh and have you ever wondered why all the sporting teams from the Netherlands dress in Orange even though orange doesnt appear on there flag? i know that i have. it turns out its because they were governed by the House of Orange. also even though it is legal here in Amsterdam, New Zealand is the number 1 user of Cannabis on the planet. i tell you, when i get back i think i might do the Trivia night circuit, i think i would make a killing with the amount of worthless knowledge i've picked up along the way.
when i travel i really like to involve myself into things that are typical of that particular area, whether it be a national dish or perhaps a drink, so of course i wouldnt be doing myself justice if i didnt try what Amsterdam is known for. (just like the last blog Nanna, this is where you have to stop reading for a while) across the road from our hostel, Sarah and I (mainly Sarah) got wind that there was a cafe that sold hash muffins, so Sarah twisted my arm and made me go over. let me just say that Sarah is a really bad influence, i was like 'Please Sarah, don't force me to put this devils cake into my mouth, what would my Nanna think?' but she wouldn't take no for an answer and shoved it down my throat. at first nothing really happened except my arms and legs were a little bit heavier than usual but that was about it. i thought that maybe we had a dud batch, so a said to Sarah that we should go to this resturant that i went to last time i was here that was just across the river. so we made it to the dock and waited for our ferry. i couldnt remember which ferry it was so i asked a guy if he knew which one i needed to get, once he found out we were both Australian he was very talkative. but in the middle of him chatting, the hash muffin kicked it. it was like a switch, one second i was fine the next i was somewhere else and was trying my best to talk to this guy without breaking into fits of laughter. anyway we boarded the ferry and set off to the other side, but when we got there i couldnt remember how to get to the resturant, from memory it was a bit of a distance and i wasnt really in the state of mind to find it, so we had a bit of a giggle about it and got back on the ferry and headed back. we wound up in a Kabab shop (as you do) then Sarah said to me 'can we not eat here?' i was thinking, whats wrong with his place, i'm going to have you speak about kababs that way, esspecially since they have been a stable part of my diet since been traveling, i've become defensive about them. but it wasnt the food she was freaking out about, she asked me if her mouth was moving and told her 'nup' she was convinced it was chattering and began to flip out a little bit, i couldnt help but laugh. so i got the kababs we ordered and sat out side on the steps of our hostel. Sarah thought it might be a good idea if she went inside and had a lay down for a while, before we knew it she had fallen asleep by 8:30pm, what a party animal! we both had a good laugh about it the next day and both realised how extremely uncool we are. (OK Nanna you can continue reading).
actually come to think of it, Nanna you might not want to read this next story either its a little bit beyond the PG rating i've tried to keep to for the rest of the blog. i call this story 'the calamity of sleeping in hostels'. let me set the scene for you, it was our first night we stayed at the hostel and we were in a 18 bed mixed dorm room (may i remind you i said 18 beds, which means 18 people in this one room) it was probably about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning when i got woken up to the sound of squeaking. which in some circumstances isnt to out of the usual, you know, people rolling over in the night and whatnot. but when the squeaking almost had a rhythm to it i felt something was up, and it certainly was for one gentleman in the room. seems that him and his girlfriend were, well, lets just just say they were 'in the throws' and didnt seem to mind that there were quite a number of people in the room with them. i had to put the pillow over my head to get some sleep. the next day i found it really hard to look at them without having a giggle under my breath. i told Sar about it and she said that she didnt hear a thing, lucky for her she didnt miss out on the encore the next night when they kept both of us up. in the whole time i've been travelling i havent come across that yet, and i find it hard to see how you could in that situation. and to do it twice, thats just plain cocky.
the past couple of days have been really relaxing and enjoyable, in comparison to when i arrived, i feel a hell of a lot better. Next i fly to London to stay with Sar for a couple more days. more when i get there.
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