flyingkiwi

Well, finally another chance to put up an entry in my “travel” blog, as I managed to break away from the hum drum of work to chalk up another country; Spain. Actually I’ll start with the latest London news which most (if not all) of you will know which is that Michelle made the trip over and as of the 21st of Jan has joined me here. The last couple of weeks knowing that her arrival was only just around the corner was really tough and the days dragged out for an age, but finally the hour arrived. Michelle had booked a hotel for the first couple of nights and I devised a little plan to make her arrival all the more special. I used my natural charm to sweet talk my way into her room ... read more

Well it's been a while since I updated, mostly due to laziness and not really having fun news to write about. So I'll try to fill in what I've been doing without being too boring. Right, so my last entry was when I had just got to London, so I'll go from there. I rang up a mate from my old flat and managed to get a room in a place called Stratford, which is in East London and pretty much reknowned for being a shithole where you have to watch yourself walking around at night. I haven't really had any problems, although I've been offered stolen goods a few times, "wana buy a sony viao mate?" haha, I don't know if you'd get anything more than mugged if you tried to actually buy one though... ... read more

I know now how easy it was for the Germans to get stuck going "shit, it's fucking freezing all of a sudden and we forgot our jackets." A week ago I was going out with a T-Shirt on (although this did get some funny looks and Marina's Dad thinking I was insane) because at 12C it really wasn't all that cold, especially without wind. A week or so later and it's -1 at 11am this morning. Not only that but there is something really cold about the air here, I suppose it must be to do with the humidity or something, but even when it was 8C my face felt like it was about to fall off after 30mins outside. Anyway, apart from that I guess I should make an effort of update. Well I ended ... read more

Yep, I made it. Actually I'm kind of glad I ended up having to fork out the dough for the flights. Everything I read about the train trip to Belarus talked of problems people had. I just flew in, got my passport stamped and got out! Easy peasy. No difficult visa questions, no nothing. Marina came with a friend of hers to pick me up, it was really great to see her again. As if I wasn't attracting enough attention already for being the obvious westener, Marina then went and screamed loud enough to shatter glass when she saw me. Still, it was nice. :) We then drove sans seatbelts (apparently not required in Belarus) and made our way to Marina's home at some speed. I guess traffic police arn't big here. Yikes, screw the corrupt ... read more

I'm cheating a bit here, because really, I was on the ground in Latvia all of 50 minutes whilst I swapped planes, but it will be a cool one to have on my travelblog map! Ahh, that's about all, I didn't take any photos, I figured you've all seen airports before. But first impressions were good, it was clean, tidy and efficient, and the staff very helpful when I had a query. Probably wont go back though.... read more

Venice. Wow. We're staying in a campsite about 20 minutes out of Venice, it's a pretty sweet place. We are staying in a mobile home type room, it's a small room with 3 beds and has it's own bathroom which is actually really nice. The shower is huge and really powerful. The main problem is the bugs! I must have about 30 mossie bites and they're driving me crazy. There's a great pool area too which has been excellent for just lying around on the deskchairs reading, working on the tan and maybe going for a lazy dip in the pool. Not to mention the talent. ;) We've been drinking it up solidly every night since we got here, it's party party party. There's a nice mix of girls to guys and mostly very friendly people. ... read more