Contiki!!

- Sorry about not many pictures, there is a vast shortage of cheap or free internet around, so I can't be spending long waiting for pictures to upload. -

Evenin' chumps!

Today we’ve started our journey on our Contiki tour through continental Europe after spending just over a month in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. I’ll go into the finer details of the tour a little later, but for now I’ll just stick to our time in London.

You’ll notice in the last post that I mentioned we were visiting Manchester, after our time in Liverpool. No-one seemed to be able to tell us what exactly there is to see in Manchester, apart from having a fantastic night life. We managed to find quite a few things during the day, despite what everyone didn’t tell us. What we found to be especially cool was this big park in the city centre. The council, or someone, had some ingenious idea to get a whole heap of deck chairs, and just stick them in this park. I love seeing stuff like this, and when it isn’t abused or broken. It wasn’t until about halfway through our little rest when I realised that this park was in the most ideal position to have full exposure to the sun (On the odd occasion that there is a sun). It’s refreshing to see business people take off their jackets and shoes and sit there in the sun on these public deck chairs. Of a night time, I do believe they have public screenings of various films, the football and other cool stuff on a super huge projection screen. Free stuff brings the community together, and there isn’t enough of it. To see so many people using these deck chairs made me insanely happy.
Compared to other destinations we’ve visited, Manchester isn’t quite a tourist city. There’s definitely nothing to go out of your way to see, but if you’re a fan of the football (We get in a lot of trouble if we call it soccer), you’re in luck. Unfortunantely, Ben absolutely loathes football, and I’m not all that fussed on it. Eventually I’ll go and see a game, get into it all, but there’s no point dragging that old chap along. Only things such as museums and town halls can be found, which are in every city around the world and there aren’t even that many tours that are usually force fed to a traveller. That being said, 100 pub crawls were available. As we soon discovered though, these pubs crawls actually involve no crawling in pubs as there are no pubs at all. I don’t mean to sound like an old man, but every stop was a night club, with terrible music which was far too loud and girls who are just breaking their ankles trying to wear heels with little success and make-up you could carve off like cheese.
Anyway, shortly after arriving in Manchester, we left again. Somehow we managed to do so without coming across this gay community that we heard so much about. Big Boy Ben felt as if he missed out on part of the city, but I’m sure he’ll survive.

And so we arrived in London, thankfully together. You see, when we left Manchester, I bought my ticket, but Ben had no cash, so he tried to use his card with the ticket machine. For a reason unknown to us, the card wasn’t accepted, so Benjamin went and tried to get some money out of the nearest ATM. After numerous attempts and replies of “This transaction has been cancelled”, he resorted to buying his ticket from the ticket desk with his card. It finally worked, but all the tickets for the bus I had bought the ticket for had been sold. At this point, Ben was going to be arriving in London 2-3 hours after me, but managed to be put on stand-by for my bus. Luckily, a few unlucky bastards didn’t make it to the bus, so Ben took one of those seats. Thank Christ.

Our accommodation was a hostel above a pub, which is always a good idea unless it’s the day before Australia Day in Geelong – As a certain German can vouch for. The chap who checked us in accidently put us in the wrong room, so instead of being in a 12 bed dorm, we scored two single beds in a room with an ensuite – Hell yeah baby! He told us that if no-one else booked the room, we could just keep it, due to the mess we’d already made.

Simply looking at the map of London (Home to a population of 7.1 million) is quite daunting on it’s own. It’s a big place with many big things including Benjamin’s alternate form, Big Ben. There is way too much stuff to see in this city, but we gave it our best shot. Our accommodation was in the scummy sort of area (Which we were soon informed of is next to the dangerous part of town) and the nearest underground stop was the high class area, where the cheapest item on the menu (Side of chips) will set a chump back like $8. I KNOW!! Quite obviously we did not eat here. Needless to say, London itself is still bloody expensive as a whole. At 25 pounds a night, our accommodation was the cheapest in London for a Saturday night. Go for it, have a look at the conversion rate…I can’t imagine how much our room would have cost if we paid the actual price for it.

Although seeing the popular things like London Bridge (Turns out is a piece of shit), Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye and other cool stuff, there is still plenty on our list to do for our return to London, including a night out, Abbey Road and seeing a concert. Unfortunantely Ben won’t be here for it, but I do intend to go and see Kings of Leon with The Black Keys (And a few other bands) as a support act. I missed out on all the tickets, so I have to hope that Ebay can be my saviour.
Half the fun of being in London is finding your way, in the tubes especially.

Last night we had to go to a meeting concerning the Contiki tour in which we were informed of a predicament. With all the volcano ash in the air and lack or airline services, many of the travellers who had expected to come on the tour could not make it. About half of the expected people cancelled, and so with very small numbers, but in the case of three different tours, we have been joined. Our tour, of 46 days, will run as normal, but with us are the tourers of a 22 day tour and a 32 day tour. I’m not sure what will become of them, where we will leave them, but the whole situation kind of sucks for them I think, as I believe some of their tour will be cut short, and some of the places they were expecting to go may be cut out entirely. I’m sure it won’t dampen their spirits though.
Yes, about 80% of the tour is made up of Australian’s, with three Canadians, four Kiwi’s, a Springbrok and a Londonite. They all seem like cool people for the time being, I’m sure after 46 days I’ll be a better judge on that and will be able to elaborate a little further.

We’re now pretty much in Paris and with nothing more to report on, I’ll leave it there.

Au Revoir!

Oh yeah, we had lunch at some bus stop place and the lady behind the counter had like an entire conversation with me in French. Basically I threw the money at her and said merci and got out of there.

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Bonjour!

And so the Contiki tour truly does start. Everyone jumped on the bus in the morning, not knowing each other from a bar of soap. Already though everyone was insanely friendly and it didn't take long to start making friendships. After a long and early morning of meeting tour guides, tour cooks, bus drivers and weighing bags, we were well on our way towards France. About an hour and a half out of London, we made our way to Dover, and would you believe, the cliffs really are white? Here we jumped on the biggest ferry I've ever seen (It had multiple levels, heaps of coffee shops, a couple restaurants and a massive duty-free shop) and after another two hours we were back on the bus and in now in France. It hit as quite a shock seeing so much writing - None in English. This has been the first time on the trip when I have genuinely felt like a tourist, or rather an outsider. I didn't choose very wisely in my ignorance, having expected everyone to be able to speak fluent English and be more than happy to meet an Australian. For now, I cannot judge the whole of France based on my experience in the city of Paris. Let's consider that every advertisement we saw could not be understood by us. Hearing people talk amongst themselves and having no idea what they're saying was a very new experience. Obviously I'd heard backpackers in Australia talk amongst themselves and such, but not on a scale as large as this.

Anyway, after arriving at our campsite, everyone was assigned a job to help out in our little camping community. I, for example, am a water gatherer. Water taps are usually found outside our campsite, so my job is to take a jerry can, fill it and take it back. A pretty cruisy job compared to some others. Ben managed to become a part of "Team Erection" - Setting up a marquee for the kitchen. Our tents are strange and awkward, but are quite spacious. Looks like I'm stuck with Ben for the next 40+ days. To start the actual 'touring', our guides took us for a night tour of Paris - The city of Love. It was fantastic...Such a beautiful and majestic city.

To kick off the city-tour, we found ourselves in a little restaurant eating cheese and real champagne. You see, similar to Bourbon (Must be made in Kentucky to have the name Bourbon), to be called champagne, the wine needs to have been made in the little town of Champigny. Any other wine with bubbles found is probably just 'Sparkling Wine'. Shortly after, we were face to face with some escargot - Snails baby! This stuff was actually quite champion, it was chocka's full of garlic, olive oil and some other stuff (Pesto or something?). Our bus, or coach as it's supposed to be called (Bigger than a bus) was our transport around the city. Just as everyone was mellowing out in the beauty of the city, we were informed that we were about to go through one of the biggest round-a-bouts in Europe. To be more precise, it kind of sounded like "Ok guys, now we're about to go through one of the biggest round-a-bouts in Europe, woo! But, I have to mention that we're not entirely sure what the rules are or how it works, so those in the front seat may want to buckle up". Despite sounding like just a little joke or something to keep us interested...The experience suggested otherwise. When approaching this monstrous creation, the bus (not gradually) got faster and faster and screamed into the middle of this thing, killing almost 4-5 people dispersed in several auto-mobiles. This thing had no lanes, it seemed no rules and was an absolute disaster. After our rather large day, the group all went for a brew and smashed up the sacks (Almost quite literally being sleeping bags) relatively early. How cold is it in France you ask? Too cold to sleep in underwear only as everyone in the group found out. It sucks though, because you get in the sleeping and everything is warm and fine, until about 1-2-3am when you wake up shivering. You know that you need to get some more clothes on, but to do that you know you're going to have to get out of the sleeping bag, which is even colder, therefore you just try to go back to sleep, but find yourself just shivering the next couple hours away.

Our next morning consisted of waking up to bacon and eggs, cereal, juice, fruit, tea and coffee and for some (Oh yeah!) an insanely hot shower. After this, we were taken to a small town (Little towns are called Chateau's I'm pretty sure) and this small town was home to a massive castle looking thing full of art. This art stretched all the way up the walls onto the roof, and then had paintings (Usually huge one's that took up a good portion of the wall) hung on the wall as well. If this wasn't enough, an old-ass clock and some vases seemed to find their way into the already packed room. I love how safe and comfortable it feels around the group that we hardly know. For an organised tour, we're granted a lot of freedom during our days. After visiting this small town, the bus took us into town for some free time. Here Benjamin and myself found ourselves in the Louvre - Home to the Mona Lisa. Again, the place was massive spanning over kilometres, over a series of floors. Needless to say, we lost each other in the first room and therefore spent the next few hours staring wildly at the ancient art on the walls and the fantastic artefacts found upstairs in the Egyptian section. It turns out they have ibis birds in Egypt. Such a bird is seen as god-like almost. Among the people who were mummified and put in tombs were cats, hawks, ibis and fish. How a fish is important enough to be made into a mummy I'll never know. After numerous hours by ourselves, somehow Benjamin and I managed to find each other and made our way out to find the group.

We'd signed ourselves up for the optional (and expensive!) French dinner that nearly everyone was attending. It included an entree, main, desert, cheese and bread, some wine and a tea or coffee. The choices for entree were Escargot, quiche or fish. I was quite surprised with the group as there was only myself and one other out of the 20 attendants who had the Escargot. One of the snails got stuck in it's shell, so I had to crack the bastard open. While munching, I realised I hadn't managed to get all broken shell bits off. It's just like an egg. For dinner, the option of beef, duck or fish was available. I think almost everyone went for duck, it's not the sort of thing one can just buy back in Australia. For desert we got some kind of cheese-cake with custard. A chap at the table informed us that it was the French who in fact invented custard. Who-da-guessed? We were only supposed to have half a bottle of wine each, but managed to convince the waiter to score some more for us. He told us to drink it very quickly and give the empty bottle back before his manager returned. Legend! With everyone now pissed, it only made sense to climb the Eiffel Tower. Not literally climb it of course, there was a lift to take us up. Of a night time - as I mentioned earlier - Paris is gorgeous. There were heaps of couples 300 metres in the air making out. Good on them I say! One of the chaps from our group managed to get himself drunk enough to decide that relieving himself off the side of the tower was a good idea. We scored ourselves some happy snaps, and returned to the campsite to further drink ourselves into oblivion with our group. I don't know how people can drink themselves to the point of passing out standing up, or spewing in their tent - but it happens! One of the Canadian chaps on tour was talking with us and wanted to prove that the Canadian way is circumcision. He then convinced his Canadian friend to further prove this. Quite obviously, both chaps ended up walking around with no pants - one of them didn't end up finding their pants again.

And so the entire next day was free-time again. After seeing countless museums and cathedrals (Including Notre Dame) Big ol' Ben and I found each other in a seven story shopping complex. We lost each other on the first floor. After giving up the search, I made my way to the top floor which has a stunning view of pretty much the entire of Paris. It wasn't until here that I realised how high the Eiffel really is (See picture). About an hour and a half later I decided I'd make my way to the Moulin Rouge part of town and whilst on a train at the central station, who did I find standing outside my train? Yes, out of all the people I could have stumbled across, it happened to be Benjamin. Imagine, in the whole of Paris. We eventually made our way back to the campsite by about 10pm where we found everyone drunk from playing Kings. With that, I smashed up some sleep, not knowing what became of Ben.

This morning sucked. Packing up the tent and such wasn't fun, but that's camping. We're now on our way to Lyon, stopping halfway for some wine-tasting. Woooooo!

Catch you booyyyzzz on the flippers!

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Heyo!

We’ve been travelling for about 9 hours today so far, and not being able to sleep has provided me with another opportunity to hit up some bloggin’ action. I did manage to get to sleep about an hour ago, but was woken up by my tour manager, Tara, due to the fact that my toe was turning blue from lack of blood. My toe was squished against the arm rest for quite some time, and apparently didn’t enjoy it. It also happens to be my birthday, fark yeah! Just in case I forget, the inhabitants of the tour sings Happy Birthday every couple hours, usually in the most public place we find ourselves in. Enough about that though, I do believe I’m supposed to be writing about Lyon and Barcelona.

Basically, everyone jumped on the bus in the morning and after a few hours, we ended up at the Contiki Chateau for some champion wine tasting. On arrival, it was rather stunning to see the how far the vineyards stretched. The vines here look a lot different to those in the Barossa Valley. One of the reasons is because of the strong hold of tradition they keep when making their wine. No machines are used in the process, and instead the entire community climbs up the hill to the vineyard, and despite being paid very little, work the long and tiresome art of grape picking. Payment for the work seems to not matter to the locals, because they know the rewards will be far sweeter. Apart from simply working because of their passion and tradition, the locals will always have a huge party to celebrate a successful harvest. It’s awesome!

As I mentioned in the previous blog, the plan was to stop here for a wine tasting session. Based on my last experience of wine tasting in the Barossa, I was pretty damn excited about this. Unfortunately, this visit to a winery only involved one glass of wine, but they did have cheese and crackers. It was a thoroughly enjoyable drop, and the organisers even taught us how to properly critique a wine. With an hour to spare after the tasting, it seemed fitting that Benjamin (Now converted wino) and myself hook into a whole bottle. Everyone on the tour was a bit pissy on the drive to the camp, it was great!

We didn’t actually get to spend any time in the city of Lyon which was most unfortunate, but it gave the group some more bonding time together. I assume you all know what I mean by bonding. The campsite was on a huge hill that overlooked the city and was quite dazzling of the night time when the lights came on.

Next morning was a lovely 6:45 wake up and a quick departure on our way to BARCELONA BABY!! Since starting the tour, it’s all anyone has been talking about. Thongs and shorts all the way. The trip was only 11 hours, and due to the early wake up, pretty much everyone slept on the bus. Like most nights, everyone participated in some Kings and some 2am rugby training.

Our day in Barcelona was amazing to sum it up. First thing for the day was a big bus tour, including a drive up the biggest hill in Barcelona. From here, we got an awesome view, and saw a huge amount of beautiful coast-line. Our tour manager is like a huge history buff and knows everything about everything and took us for a big walk around the Gothic chunk of the city and it was beautiful. Throughout the city were all of these busking champions ranging from Spanish guitars, accordions to drums. The musicians behind these instruments were gorgeously talented, and deserved to be much bigger than a busker, but it made me to happy to listen to on the walk past. About one minute after the mini-tour finished, I’d lost Ben to the Spaniards.

For the rest of the day, everyone had free time, in which we spent most of on the main street of the city. Hundreds of street performers seemed to have flocked to Barcelona, and a good majority of those were on this street. All the acts varied, each it seems trying to out-do the last. A couple of us decided to have a munch on the local plate - Paella. It’s pretty much rice with a few vegies and a heap of seafood. It was good stuff. Sangria is the drink to have also, which I didn’t actually buy any of, but managed to get pretty smashed on by sipping others. Although there is no traditional or correct recipe, it’s always red wine, usually combined with sparkling wine or juice of some kind with chopped up fruit and sometimes other stuff. You never know whatcha gonna get. In the traditional Spanish style, we found a patch of grass and joined a heap of other Spaniards in a siesta under the shade of a palm tree.

Being ANZAC Day, we all smashed up the Aussie Bar and found heaps of fellow diggers celebrating the nation. Shortly after the Aussie bar, some people had booked a “Flamenco Night” as an optional extra. Benny Boy and myself decided against it and joined the other scungy bastards in a park where we proceeded to drink cheap Rose out of the bottle and Sangria out of the box. Once the Flamenco finished, everyone made their way to a Barcelonian night club and bar street.

After then spending two nights in the French Riviera and checking out the Monte Carlo, we made our way to Venice, where we're currently in a pub. We go for a Gondela ride tomorrow, woooo!!

I'll try and keep it updated a bit more frequently.

Later dudes.

Aaaaaaaalright!

This is going to be like a double-feature sort of blog. My reasoning is that whilst in Liverpool, we had very limited access to the internet, and therefore could not post my York blog.

Everyday while travelling is a precious one. It's crucial that you make the most of each moment, just in case you never get to go back. I think more than anyone, this is the case for Ben, as he's only in Europe for four months. By all means, we don’t wake up in the morning, walk outside and come back only to sleep. It’s not a case of every second of the day, we’re ‘doing something’. I do enjoy myself a sit down with a tea and scone – It’s somewhat forced on you in England. Why do I say all this? Read on.

The trip from Edinburgh to York can be described as no less than a predicament. It had been a loooooooong time since I'd seen our young Benjamin that angry.

Our rough plan every time we leave a place is to check out from the hostel, walk to the bus station, buy a ticket and get on the next bus. It seemed to be working all fine and well. No organisation needed. I realise that by doing this, we're probably always paying top dollar, but as I mentioned earlier, every minute in a foreign zone is worth being made use of. I could sit on the laptop all day, every day, and maybe manage to find a discounted bus ride, that had 50 change-overs, or, I could go for a stroll around the near-by lake. I find the latter to be rather appealing.

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, our little plan for getting out of the city usually worked, but leaving Edinburgh was a little different. Being a rather large city - the capital in fact - I was under the very misleading impression that the transport in and out of the city was going to be painless and convenient. If a chump was willing and obtuse enough to pay top dollar to use the rail, then yes, everything would be fine, and getting out of Edinburgh would be like eating a banana - an infant could do it. Rather than just complaining, I suppose I should tell you what it is, in fact, I’m complaining about.

When we arrived at the bus-station, we knew we wanted to go to York, we had that much planned. From there it was a guessing game as to what time the bus would leave, how much it would cost, how long the bus trip will take etc…The time at the time, was I think 12:58 or something. Basically, there was an 11:30am bus, or the 12:50pm bus…I know! The one after that was the 10:30pm bus. Now, I know you’re all thinking “Ohhhhh that sucks man! Are you ok? I feel so sorry for you! What more could go wrong?” Well my dear friends, at least one other thing could go wrong. The closest the bus could take us was Newcastle – In which we would arrive at 1:00am. We walked what seemed an eternity to the train station, only to discover that the train cost quadruple the amount of the bus.

Soooo, we had to wait around Edinburgh for another 8-9 hours and it’s hard to do stuff with a big bastard bag on your back, so we were limited. We ate up about 2 hours by seeing “Kick Ass”, an ok watch, but no “Dead Man” by any means.

Somehow, we managed to wait around until 10:30pm and got on the bloody bus. I managed to read a little of my new book “Confessions of an Opium Eater”. It was written in the 1800’s. Anyway, the bus dropped us off in Newcastle at some random bus-stop in the city, and we had to walk a few minutes to the bus station. Now, if anyone knows Newcastle pretty well, you’ll probably understand why sitting at the bus station in Newcastle at 1:30 in the morning and then getting bored and deciding to go into a pub as a young fresh looking Australian backpacker is a bad idea…Because you’ll probably know that the Newcastle bus station is smack-friggan-bang in the middle of the Newcastle gay community.

Every bar was chocka-block full of these lads making out, and girlies with insanely short hair and as stocky as a prop. It did seem a little odd when we soooo many chaps in the same room, but let’s be realistic – What bar isn’t over-populated by the boys? I have nothing against the homo-sexuals, all stunning people, but the experiences Benjamin and myself went through that night were somewhat uncomfortable. We made a pact to never reveal what went on in that bar…

Nah, it wasn’t that bad, but uncomfortable? Definitely. I desperately needed to use the facilities, and so I left Ben standing in a dark corner of the pub with our bags. I ran into some lad with a fringe running down to his chin, but there seemed to be very little hair on the rest of his head. In the most stereo-typically gay voice I’ve ever heard, he said “Whoops! Sorry babe” and gave my arm a quick squeeze…It was at this moment when I’d realised every couple we saw…Were male couples. When I found Ben, he’d somehow retreated even further into the dark corner of the pub, and seemed to almost somehow blend into the wall. Never have I seen such terror in a man’s eyes. Slowly, I turned around to see what Benny was so terrified about…and saw Him. Sitting at the bar, legs spread, moose knuckle beyond anything imaginable and about 58 years old complete with balding grey hair…Passionately and eagerly staring at us. I don’t think a discussion even took place, Ben and I just got the hell out of there. As if that wasn’t creepy enough, when we stood outside to discuss the next point of action, we noticed that he was still staring at us, from the same spot. There are a few forms of stares as I’m sure many women know, and this wasn’t a comfortable one. Oh, and Ben had his hair stroked a couple times by a couple of chaps.

Blergh, don’t want to talk about it anymore.

The first bus going to York left at 8:30am, so we had a 7 hour wait. I won’t go into the finer details of our doing nothing for that time, but I can tell you that it was the coldest 7 hours of my life. Quite obviously at that hour in the morning, not much is open.

I’ve written this much already, and we haven’t even got to the York bit of the tale.

Basically, everyone has been telling us to go to York, because it’s beautiful, old, and full of history, beautiful women, heaps of touristy stuff and has a slight country-side feeling to it. I’m happy to report that it fulfilled all those expectations.

On arrival – as we do – we went for a large walk, and enjoyed observing the proles in action, going about their daily lives. It was a beautiful sight. Ben fell asleep by 4pm, and so I decided to have a little mini tour of the city by myself. I sat on the city wall overlooking the city and watched the sunset. Whilst walking, I also found two people begging for “Just a spare 10 pence sir”…While sipping a beer.

During this mini tour, it occurred to me how different my life really is now. 6 months ago, I would wake up at 3pm, go to work at 4pm in which I would spend an entire shift by myself, talking to myself, making super-size paper-wasps, writing album reviews that I would just end up throwing away anyway…Whatever, the point is that I would spend the entire shift by myself, talking to no-one. I would then go home at 10, and find everyone to be asleep, so I’d have a feed by myself, and go on sit in my room by myself and continue my boring-ass cycle of facebook stalking. Yesterday was the first time in over a month that I was by myself. I actually had a chance to think. It was magic.

York is said to be the most haunted city in England. There were about 10,000 Ghost Tours and Haunted Trail Tours that were available, but all looked pretty crappy. Unlike our Ghost Tour in Edinburgh which involved actual myths, and a frigg load of true stuff, these York one’s involved people dressing up in zombie suits and yelling at you. In a brochure I read about a 700 year old haunted house, and thought it might genuinely be kind of scary – But they had a children’s price. Then it occurred to me that they didn’t even have a warning on there like the usual “Young children may be frightened” or “Not recommended for children under x age“. Sooooo, we gave up on the whole haunted thing and went to the pub.

This was an exciting pub. They had beer from Thailand, Japan, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, and Mexico – everywhere, and neither of us had heard of any of these beers. We managed to find one at 10.5% and both bought it. It was insanely sweet, and proved to be a huge challenge to get through, but we did it. Old mate behind the bar was from Rockhampton and convinced Ben to try an 11.3% beer. I had a dig of his, and it was much better than the first one. Being a bit of a girl, I just went for the rather tame 8.6% Mexican beer. The toilet had an entire sex shop, in a box on the wall where you usually find condoms, breath fresheners or cologne and the tap used a dial on the wall rather than…a tap.

We met an insanely rich guy who kept buying us drinks, one of which was this shot of a kind of Moonshine-like alcohol, as described by the Rockhampton man. 80%. Our insanely rich guy was having a standing fit, my lips almost burnt off and Ben probably done something hilarious. I would never touch that stuff again. There was another shot which was 89.9%, but our rich man ran out of money, and I’m quite sure it couldn’t be too healthy to be eating these down.

Surrounding the entire city is a huge brick wall. I don’t even know why it was there, because I’m lazy and didn’t read any of the little story plaques, but it was pretty cool to walk around. It took us like 3 hours to walk it, combined with stopping at all the cool gardens and churches. I could try and go into much more detail concerning what we saw in York, but I have no way of making it exciting enough to read about. I’d recommend for people to come here, but I wouldn’t stay any more than 2 nights. Despite there being plenty to see and do, it can be done in a day. Oh, it’s an expensive little bastard too. We met a guy who had just moved there from London, and he says it’s about the same price – Phwoah!

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And with that my friends, we moved forth to Liverpool – home of The Beatles.

I’ve never seen such love and passion for a band. I do believe the folk of Liverpool are quite proud that one of the greatest (The greatest, depending on who you talk to) bands of time were spawned from where they live. All we knew of Liverpool before going there was that it had a lot to do with The Beatles, but the city itself is much more.

Our arrival to Liverpool was relatively late and we didn’t get a lot done. We managed to find the most expensive hostel in the world which apparently has been awarded for being the best hostel in the UK…Bullshit. That place sucked and had no atmosphere, no kitchen and the internet – like most expensive and bigger hostels – you had to pay for. I could bitch about it all day, but it only makes me angrier that we were stupid enough to continue staying there. It was the YHA by the way, and I already have had bad experiences with the Australian versions, so I don’t know why I thought this one would be any better.

For those of you who aren’t all that familiar with The Beatles, they were a group of four English chaps who inspired a generation and took over half the world. If you haven’t heard of them…There is no hope for you.

I warn you, the next part I’m not that sure about. You see there is a chain of little streets in the heart of Liverpool known best as “The Cavern Quarter”. On one of these streets you have a place called “Lennon’s Bar” and two places with very similar names, one being “The Cavern Club” and the other “The Cavern Bar”. Now I’m not entirely sure which is which, but I know one of them is the most famous bar in the world, and is quite an honour to score a spot on the stage. That sort of stuff looks good on a resume. It also happens to be where The Beatles used to play and correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it’s where they first played and were introduced into the world of music.

The original Cavern Club has since been torn down, but it’s said that when they rebuilt it, some of the original bricks were used to give it some of its original feeling back. For some stupid reason, it was closed when we went there, but across the road was The Cavern Bar, which has live bands every night of the week, so we went and had a look.

I managed to grab myself a dance with a lady of about 60 not knowingly hooking into the Jive (Someone later in the night informed me), and had a right old time. Halfway through an AC/DC song, the band stopped playing, and when I turned around to see why, I saw Ben being smacked in the head with a chair. Apparently, Ben was sitting down enjoying the band, and noticed some bloke enjoying the music. To show his fellow appreciation for the great music, Ben gave the bloke a rock salute. Somehow, the bloke believed that Ben was trying to seduce him, and yelled “Are you gay!? You trying to get with me!? You f@%king homo!” followed by a right old head-butt to the lip, sending Ben stumbling onto a table (Which may I mention was host to my near full pint of John Smith’s). Before Big Ben could establish what actually happened, he was hit with a flying chair, then followed by a bottle being smashed on his head, and then followed again by a chair. Just as the bloke was picking up the table, his friends managed to take him outside. Unfortunately, for the amount of abuse our boy Ben went through, all he got was a slightly puffy lip. He did have to clean out some broken glass from his head though. It was all rather exciting.



After awaking somewhat earlier than usual the next morning, we decided to book a Yellow Duck Marine tour. Yes, it sounds a little bit like Yellow Submarine hey? Pretty clever. Anyhow, it really wasn’t that exciting. Our tour guide had a very awkard sense of humour and throughout most of the tour, he was only making himself laugh. Basically, you sit in this old WW2 vehicle that can drive on road and through water. It takes you on a tour around the city – seeing all the typical touristy things and then finishes off with a little tour through the harbour. The process of getting into the water was a wet and exciting one, but still not really worth what we paid. You have to learn these things I suppose.



For the rest of the day, we decided to take matters into our own hands, and went to see Penny Lane, Strawberry Hills and St. Peters, where Lennon and McCartney first met. By going ourselves, we were able to see a lot more of Liverpool which we probably wouldn’t have been able to see. It’s not the place I would like to go of a night time by myself.



Aaaanyway, Liverpool seems like the sort of city in which is would a great place to live, like if you knew people and stuff, because the city itself was pretty cool. Heaps of cool bars are around, and despite being so modernized, is still quite a lovely place. In saying that, as a tourist to the place, it’s bloody expensive. They charge an arm and a leg for the tours and just everything in general is expensive.

I’ll leave you with that for now. We’re on our way to Manchester, which to Ben’s liking has a very vibrant and extravagant gay community. A whole village is dedicated to the homo-sexual people. :)

Byyyyyyyyyyyye!

Hello all!

Firstly, this blog is dedicated to one Lucy Kennedy, who has especially asked me to go into as much detail as I can concerning The Tree People of Bilston.

I’m writing the first half of this blog, in a very small shack, suspended in foliage that is sitting over a running river in four layers of clothes and a sleeping bag. In other words, I'm in a tree house, and I'm extremely cold.

I'll speak of our time in Edinburgh first.

After receiving a tip-off from a very friendly Australian girl in Stirling about a very cool and cheap hostel in Edinburgh, Benjamin and myself found ourselves smack bang in the middle of the country’s capital. We settled in nicely to the hostel, and like many of our first days into a city, we didn't really do that much. After walking aimlessly for roughly two hours, we went back to the hostel and spent the remainder of our night there. This was the cheapest hostel of the trip so far, costing 9 Pound a night, which includes breakfast, free internet, a Wii, a "Bean Bag Cinema", a bar and various other cool things we managed to stumble across. Certain things about this hostel made it even more exciting. For example, the shower screens do not have curtains, or doors, but just glass panels. At first, I was very reluctant to use these showers. In Australia, it's not common, or even accepted to be somewhere naked, unless it's in the confinements of your own home where not a soul can see. Obviously elsewhere in the world, it's that big of an issue, and why should it be? After debating with myself for almost a whole two minutes as to whether I would be comfortable enough to have a shower, where anyone could walk in and see me, I didn't come to a conclusion, so I just said "What the hell". During the course of my stay, I had a couple people walk in on me and unlike what I had envisioned, none of them stood there and laughed or gawked, but simply washed their hands and left without even looking.

Another exciting moment in the hostel was one afternoon when I was watching a lovely Spanish film in the "Bean Bag Cinema”. About an hour after watching, and thoroughly enjoying, a god awful noise started screeching like a banshee, and seconds later a man burst into the cinema yelling at me to “GET THE F#$K OUT OF THE BUILDING”. Apparently it was a fire alarm! I recall leaving Benjamin in the bar with my laptop, and enjoyed thinking of his reaction as to what to do with the laptop. Would he freak out and leave it there, or would he freak out and bring it with him, or would he freak out and not be able to decide and run around in circles? Once downstairs and outside, I’d realised I was not wearing any shoes. Remember, Scotland is a cold place. Moments after this realisation, I spotted some long-haired git with a mini-laptop freezing his Australian ass off. He was pretty easy to spot as he was the only one on the street without a jacket. There must have been almost 200 backpackers waiting in the street to find out what was going on. We saw two chaps that didn’t even get to finish their pasta, and therefore were standing in the street with their plates and food, but no cutlery, so they just had to eat with their hands. The fire brigade came, and ran into the building with all the gear, only to come back five minutes later saying it was a false alarm. Some bastard probably just lit a cigarette or something inside the building. When I returned to the cinema, the film had about two minutes to go, what a bummer.

We hadn’t seen that much of Edinburgh from our aimless walking of the streets, but we did find a poster informing us of a “Ghost Tour” of Edinburgh. This tour featured a man who looked like he should have been a grave digger so he set the mood very well before we even started. Basically, Edinburgh is thought to be the most haunted city in Europe. I'm not entirely sure how one measures this, but I'll accept it. This tour took us through a cemetery (The second most popular place for public sex would you believe!), a big creepy hill, a suicide bridge and other ghoulishly nasty places, all well after the safety of the sun had set. Alan, the tour guide, spoke of a fairy realm that is connected to the big creepy hill. Scottish fairies, unlike our friendly little Hollywood Tinkerbelle’s, are terrifying beasts that are very keen to see the human race destroyed. Coming in various forms that range from a one-legged, one-armed and basically half-bodied man, to the more dangerous one metre tall old bearded man who can run faster than any human, and tears out your organs using his insanely sharp hands (Think Edward Scissorhands). This makes me want to read more into the fairyland in Edinburgh.

Since Dublin, we’ve wanted to hire ourselves some pushbikes and ride the cities as opposed to the lengthy and sometimes loathsome sidewalk stomping. After noticing a hire-a-bike sign in our hostel, we took this as the perfect opportunity to hook into some super-speed cycling. It was a reasonable price, and the chap who hired the bike to us was pretty friendly, and even provided us with directions to one of his preferred cycling zones. Let’s remember that half of Edinburgh, and probably even half of Europe for that matter, has its roads covered in cobblestone. For you Australian folk that have never had the chance of seeing or rather feeling cobblestone…It’s pretty darn bumpy. It shakes the shit out of the bicycles, and causes some bits to become a bit loose apparently. The first 5 minutes of the trip were pretty cool, as it was all downhill. The next 5 minutes were tiresome, due to the upward slope and lack of fitness, but still enjoyable. In the next 5 minutes, my pedal snapped off and we both almost died (The bus drivers speed up when they see a tourist, 50 points for Australians) so we just decided to ditch the whole idea, and went to get a refund.

I’ve been debating with myself as to whether I should have just made two separate blogs, one for our stay in Edinburgh, and another for our stay with the ‘Tree People’, because there is so much to talk about with them both. I’ve decided that instead I’ll just write both, and I’ll give you good readers the chance to have a break.

Intermission.


I do hope you enjoyed that; I’d like to think that you’ve settled in nicely with a cup of tea, with perhaps a scone or some piklets. Whatever. Most of you bogan-bastards probably just got up to get another beer. I know how you Queensland folk operate.

Bilston is a little iddy-biddy village about 30 minutes bus ride from Edinburgh. Getting there was a bit of a bitch. We asked many locals, every employee at the bus station and even looked at a map, but it was apparent that the place didn’t even exist. No-one had heard of it, and it seemed that our search for the ‘Tree People’ was going to be a dismal one. After much searching, we found a bus number which one of the hippies kindly posted on the internet, got on that bus and made our way to Bilston. We arrived, and to call the place a village might be over-exaggerating. I don’t know what is smaller than a village, but I would call it that.

Our directions told us to go down this very eerie and dank path, which we found to be much like Russian Roulette. Everything looked soggy, but some bits were a bit soggier than others, and if you put your foot in one of those bits, your foot didn’t come back. After walking for a good couple of minutes we spotted a chap sporting dreadlocks almost reaching his ass, a lovely soiled beard and clothes that looked as though they hadn’t been washed since they were stolen from the charity bin all those years ago. This suggested that we were probably in the right place. Moments after walking into their campsite, I almost had to change my underwear. Although it was everything I imagined it to be, I had doubts and thought I was expecting too much of the place. Everything from the little rickety bridges across the river, to the insanely high tree houses themselves, everything was all so surreal.


From the very point the tree huggers noticed our presence in their village, they made us feel very welcome. Everyone is awesome, super-friendly and a good majority of them are genuinely crazy in the head. It’s hard to describe their set-up, but quite simply, there was a fire pit in which all the cooking, conversing, music playing, eating and warming up took place. Near the fire pit was a make-shift kind of kitchen that had a few fridges (There’s no electricity on the site, but the fridges hold the cold and it’s that bloody cold in Scotland anyway, the fridges probably stop the food from freezing) and little cupboards where they stashed their food. Around this centre point were many different kinds of tree-houses scattered throughout the forest and down the middle of the village is a constantly flowing river. That is probably a difficult description, but it’s the best I can do. In the case of an eviction, and the tree houses are destroyed, this net is used to sleep on, and the protest can continue. Whilst the tree-huggers are suspended off the ground, some protection is ensured and this makes the 'pigs' jobs are much more difficult and expensive in the removal.

The reason these tree-dwelling-hippies are here, and have been for the last seven years is to try and prevent a very large by-pass going through. The council’s plan is to demolish this forest and lay down a road in place of it. By living in the trees, the tree-huggers make it most difficult for the forest to be destroyed. To evict a protest site costs the council many thousands of pounds because of the way the tree-huggers set up their site. Not only are these people protesting the road works and deforestation, but are also promoting the alternative life-style. Of what I could gather, their aim is to encourage everyone to break free from stupid rules and other unnecessary government regulations such as taxes and ridiculous laws.

This is a wild garlic leaf. I swear, it tastes exactly like garlic, just not as potent as a clove. My breath smelt awful for the next couple hours.

In many ways do they achieve this, one such way is their source of food. Because none of these people have any source of income, they use a system they like to call ‘Skipping’. This involves walking to the back of a supermarket, and essentially going through the skip. I was amazed with the amount and quality of food they found in these bins. As soon as a packet of chips goes out of date, the store will skip it, where the tree-huggers will take it home to consume. It doesn’t stop at chips though. They found a 10kg bag of onions on our stay, bread is available every day, mince, cheese, milk, all forms of veggies, everything. What's more, when an alcoholic beverage goes off, or gets a dint, or looks trashy - skipped. Bottles of whisky are often discovered in the these skips in occassions. These people may have no money, but they eat a lot better than the paying folk. It seems that they never go hungry, and I’m astounded at the amount of food these big companies throw away. Their favorite skip is at this place that sells wholesale to all the five star hotels and restaurants. Buckets of olives, blue cheese, world sausages, quails eggs, loaves of bread as big as your arm that need to be cut with a handsaw…Dear god, the things they find.

It doesn’t stop at food. All the materials for their houses are sourced by the local industrial area. Anything from windows, planks of wood, rolls and rolls of rope, you’ll find it in the skips. Clothes are another item on the list. Charity shops can’t, or don’t accept some donated items for some insane reason, and when this happens, the tree huggers are there to make sure it doesn’t go to waste. On our stay they found a boomerang, a clock, a chest of drawers just to name a few. Apart from having no running water or electricity, these people are living it up.

I didn’t get any photos of the people themselves, because there was a rule board that said that we have to gain permission for any photo’s with anyone, and I didn’t want to seem like just another tourist coming through. For anyone who has ever called me a hippie…I think you are very mistaken as to what a hippie is. These people are hippies. Real hippies. Dreadlocks, yes, but they have real dreadlocks. The dirty bastards that have just matted themselves up, having one set of clothes, being a dog’s human rather than owning a dog and living off no money at all. I have a lot of admiration for their dedication and ability to live in those conditions for so long, but the whole idea still seems somewhat childish to me. I often found myself wondering when they would 'grow up', or realise that they're not really getting that far, or making that big of a difference.

We heard many stories of various demos and previous evictions of protest sites and it doesn’t seem pleasant. Between the years of constant drug abuse, maulings by dogs, tramplings by horses, shots by various forms of immobilizing guns and being forced to it in a trees for sometimes weeks, I'm really not all that surprised by how many crazy people were actually there.

I could go on about the tree-huggers, but I’m afraid that may just have to wait for another time, there is far too much to talk about concerning them.

We decided to return to Edinburgh to clean ourselves and see what we didn’t see before we left. This involved a free three hour tour of the city which was very informative and was hosted by an champion guide. To show your appreciation, the tour runs on a tip basis. Depending on how well the guide presented the tour determines how much they would get paid in a day. I think it's great! The bigger the group, the less guilty you feel if you give a crappy tip! :) I’m very glad we done it, because there was another 80% to the city we didn’t even know existed, and there’s probably still more out there.

The same company that runs the free tour, and the Ghost Tour hosts a pub crawl six nights a week. Because of the exceptional efforts we'd previously encountered with this company, we saw it only fitting that we had a go at the pub crawl. With three shots, a pint and a 'dram' (25mls) of whisky (Keep in mind Scotch whisky doesn't have an 'e') included with the already relatively low price, we were happy. As with all pub crawls I imagine, we met a lot of cool people, some ass-holes and a good time was had by most. I somehow managed to lose Ben, but he staggered home safely...I don't know how, that boy has the worst sense of direction known to man. Speaking of the boy, he loved the crawl so much that he's gone back again tonight for a second round. Good luck to ya son! I feel like arse, so I'm going to sit here and eat my 10 cent doughnut mmmm...

See ya round suckers!

Oh yeah, I should mention that we have no idea where we will be tomorrow, but it will be in England somewhere.

Good morning. I left you all with the news of our journey to Stirling. Well, I'm pleased to report that it's definitely been one of the highlights of the trip. Stirling joins Kilkenny in one of the cool spots of the far Western Europe area. Shortly after arriving in Stirling, it started to rain, as it does in the UK. It was a lovely novelty, much like the cold, at the start of the trip, but now I'm afraid I'm catching the pessimistic attitude towards these weather extremes that has affected so many of the countries inhabitants already. Young Benjamin is still loving it all though. Every time we go outside it's raining, but he still loves it, as if it were there warm rain one finds back home. After stumbling across a small information centre, we managed to find ourselves a map. This was no ordinary map though. Ordinary maps are for ordinary cities, so at first glimpse at this novelty looking map, we knew we were in for something special. Only half of the street names are featured on this map, nothing is to scale and I'm not sure of some of the streets put down even existed. Regardless, it was rather exciting trying to decipher this bad-boy of a bastard. Somehow, it led us to the correct general kind of direction to our hostel, but luckily since there were only two hostels in the entire town, plenty of signs shone a light for our path. A couple minutes into our hike through the town, we encountered what I can only assume to be Germans. These two legends featuring what looked like black disco suits. Both parts of this duo sported heavily flared, but tight at the crotch pants with sequins running down the sides and tight jackets with tassels and matching sequins throughout. One was wearing a top hat and the other a bowlers hat and both carried a chunk of wood, which we assume acted as a walking stick, as they were also carrying what I only know as a nap sack. It would appear to us Australian chaps that this is how these two chose to travel. Good luck to them. God damn we should have got a photo. The general public seemed to be overwhelmingly friendly; especially when they found out we were Australian - or rather just not from the country at all. No matter how many times I see the reaction, I still enjoy the odd chuckle. When they ask where we're from, and we tell them, the Scots always seem to look away in disgust and quickly return with "Why the bloody hell are you here? This place is a dump/hole/sewer! You musn't realise how lucky you have it over there. Beautiful country". I don't think they understand how lucky they have it here, with all the old cobblestone, greenery, castles, churches and historic culture in general. However, I do appreciate our warmth and sun much more now that I'm here, so I can understand where they're coming from.

I'm sure you're all more than familiar with William Wallace (others know him as Mel Gibson). Benny boy dressed up as him once at a "Bad-ass theme" birthday party. The folk of Scotland still talk about him, and more importantly, still love him. The national memorial of this bad-boy has been erected in Stirling, so we went and scoped it out. It takes maybe an hour to walk there, but at our pace, happy snap characteristics, and cartoon, hand-drawn, novelty map, it took us about two and a half. The walk itself is gorgeous. I am happy we chose to do it ourselves rather than a tour, as we were able to stop at everything we wanted to on the way. Our walk involved a large section of country side trekking along a road. It's so beautiful to see so much green. In the distance were huge mountain ranges that were covered in snow, and it looks far better in person than on a post card, so I won't dare send anyone a post card, but only recommend you to just come here. Anyway, we made it to the memorial, which is a large statue situated on a large castle situated on a very large hill. The long and laboursome trek up only served to heighten our appreciation for it. Some old chap dressed as a soldier from the time of the war gave us a huge story about how he fought in the battle, why the battle started and who was featured in the battle. This was far more informative than the film Braveheart, which now seems to me just as an excuse to make a cool old school war movie (that being said, it still was a great watch). There was much more to the story that I'd never known. Throughout his tale-telling, I couldn't wipe the grin off my face, because he has the most typical full-blooded Scottish accent you could imagine, and because of his age, and probably whisky drinking, his voice had the soldierish feel to it. Marvelous.

We saw many other cool things that day including The Beheading Stone, The Old Bridge, The Stirling Castle (which we unfortunately left too late to see the inside of), an Abbey in which I've forgotten the name of and just the entire city. Going the long way is always a good option it seems. One's knees and feet are shot by the end of the day, but so many forms of living and dark mossy alleyways are there to be found. One evening we decided to have a night walk around the city, looking for a place to watch the big fight. Haye vs. Ruiz in the heavyweight championship. A few Scottish locals (who were smoking tobacco from licorice flavoured papers would you believe!) told us to try the Outback Bar. This was a dodgy place. Every bar in Scotland and most in Ireland have Fosters on tap, and a lot of people actually drink the stuff too. On the tap line, it's usually situated in the very middle and features the biggest logo of the lot. This bar still had the Fosters and all the local taps beer, but also had their own brew, known as "Outback Lager" or something. It was pretty spot on though! It tasted very similar to the popular XXXX Gold that many Queenslanders drink. It was pretty ok stuff, and it even kind of felt like an Australian pub, until we went and sat next to the door. Every time the door was opened a big whoosh of cold air came in, and we came back to reality. The dodgy side of it was that they had boomerangs and didgeridoo's as door handles. Instead of crocodile heads in the walls, they had alligator heads, but it was a good effort. After discovering they weren't broadcasting the fight at all, we hit up Sportsters, the town sports bar, where everyone seemed to go for the big fight. Ruiz is a 38 year old boxer from some god-knows place in the world, and Haye - the local favorite being from the UK - is a 29 year old boxer who has won 32 out of 33 matches, 27 of which were knock-outs. Because we love the underdogs, we backed the old guy who survived a grueling 9 rounds before the trainer threw in the towel. It was a good effort by the old chap, but not good enough I'm afraid. What was astonishing to me was that it was Ruiz who challenged Haye...I hope now that he realises his age, and that boxing is a new sport than what he used to fight. On a bus again, we're heading to Edinburgh, where we hope to stay in a tree-house village. Of what we know of the place, it costs nothing, providing those who stay there give some benefit to the community. I don't know what they mean by this, but the site is a permanent protest ground, protesting what, we don't know yet, but I assume that providing something for their community will have something to do with the protest. I'm looking forward to it, but the last few days have been host to a substantial amount of rain, and Ben needs to find himself a sleeping bag if he's going to survive in the trees. I hope it works, and we find it.

Wish us luck. The boooyz.

The move to Scotland

Hello chumps!

And so the journey continues through Ireland - The land of Ire. This stop was Belfast. Unfortunately, this young city was made popular by what the locals call "The Troubles". U2 has made a couple songs concerning "The Troubles" such as Sunday Bloody Sunday and The Streets Have No Names. A few years ago, this was one of the four B's that were to never be visited, which also included Bosnia, Baghdad and Beirut. Now though, "The Troubles" have gone through much resolve and is rapidly making a steady recovery to peace between the city.

This could probably go for every popular touristy city in the world, but we know this is the case for at least Belfast. Turning up to Belfast on a Saturday afternoon with no booked accommodation at about 4pm is a very bad idea, especially when the Irish National trampoline competition is in town. Who would have thought trampoline competitions were so popular? Not us. We walked to the very ends of town to find a place to sleep, only to find a sign on each hostel saying "Sorry! Booked out, try 'such and such' down the road", only to find that 'such and such' recommended trying the hostel we were just at! We were extremely fortunate to stumble across a chap who owned a hostel who was coming back from the supermarket. He had one double bed left, but took us back to his hostel so we could ring all the other hostels in town to see if there was anything cheaper and not so gay. After discovering that this was the last available bed in the entire city, we paid our money.

The owners name was Will and was extremely hospitable. After introducing us to the local beer "Coors Light" (Which may I point out is 4.8%, some light beer), Will fed us some of his favorite whiskey and invited us on a pub crawl with some other hostellians. A great night was had by all. I managed to convince Ben to try Cognac, which we both thought was awful. At a great traditional Irish bar, we met an almost famous folk-music star by the name of Mark who introduced us to his awesome country side band "The Lost Brothers". You can see them here - http://www.myspace.com/thelostbrothersmusic

Please look at them, because we promised him that we would bring their music to Australia. They even have an lp for all you vinyl lovers. Whilst here, Mark asked us "Lads, you keen for some Sambucca?" and when he returned he said "I have no idea what this stuff is, but let's do it!". It had a similar odour, taste, appearance and viscosity as methylated spirits, and it probably had the same affect. The stuff was awful.

After doing most of the touristy sort of things in Belfast, it was decided that the country side was our next desire. No-one in Belfast knows anything about any country town, except that backpackers should not go there, and that there are only expensive B&B's.

We ended up changing hostels due to the fact that we were spending far too much for such a crappy room. We found our new hostel, which had the cool name of Vagabonds, much better and more importantly more, much cheaper. The place was run by backpackers and were really cruisy and played awesome music, and had incense going a lot of the time. The tv room had heaps of good classics such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", "The Godfather", and "Chopper". They even had a huge Conga and Didgeridoo that were free for anyone to use, which we made plenty of use of. The place was awesome.

Whilst in Belfast, Benjamin thought of seeing a movie rather than just get drunk again, so we went and saw "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" with a couple of Americans. The cinema is very similar price to Australia, which is far too much, but it was still a rather pleasant night out. No more than a day later, we discovered an underground cinema that screened the bizarre, strange and awesome film culture we all so passionately love. One such film was called "Blow Job", which was a black and white film in which the camera focuses soley on a man's face while receiving the ancient act of fellatio. Such a film featured nothing pornographic, but rather just the transformation of a man's face as he passes the various phases of pleasure. We didn't have a chance to see any cool or bizarre films, but again, we have a reason to return to Belfast. There were soooooo many films that looked as if they would fascinate.

On the second last day of our visit, we booked what's known as a "Black Cab" tour. This is basically a tour that is run by the Belfast taxi company that takes it's passengers through all the "troubled" areas in Belfast. What makes this tour special is that all the chaps that run these tours actually lived through this period and experienced it first hand. I do recall our driver telling us "We aren't tour guides, we're just cab drivers". What made the tour a bit more special was that the driver wasn't simply reading a sheet of paper they're supposed to tell everyone, but rather describes his experience through the 'troubled times'. It was very confronting hearing his story, hearing about the five times he'd been held at gun-point, and when his friend was shot down and killed right beside him. If anyone was to go to Belfast, even though quite expensive, I would recommend this tour. No two tours would ever be the same I imagine.

I should mention our snow experience. Benjamin and myself were just rocking out in our room listening to some of The Snowdroppers or something, when we had a glance outside and noticed that there was stuff falling from the sky. It was too slow to be rain, and not big enough for hail. Yeeeeah man, snow! We put on like 50 layers of clothes and ran outside and stood there for a while trying to catch it in our mouth, but achieved in simply getting it in our eye, which hurts. It didn't matter! The only thing that sucked was that as soon as it hit the ground, it melted...Ahh well.



After Belfast, we flew to Glasgow, Scotland for our next leg of the trip. Our first impression wasn't great. Like any large city, it's been modernised and no-one is really that friendly, regardless how Australian you may be. We found a pattern of the local folk, especially in the older generations. Somewhere through the conversation, they all seemed to get to a point where they would say "Why are you here? You shouldn't be here, maybe you should just go back home". Needless to say, there were a select few of the Scottish that seemed to be pretty excited to meet some Australian folk. I can't report that much on Glasgow to be perfectly honest, as there wasn't a great deal of history left in the place and there were only shops, clubs and pubs around. We did want to hire a bicycle and have a large ride around the city, but left it too late unfortunately.

Today we caught a bus to Stirling, a town almost an hour North of Glasgow. Our impression is much different here. The people seem to be friendlier, the place is much more beautiful, and there is cool stuff to see everywhere, including a huge William Wallace monument, the Stirling castle and god knows what else. We intend on a rather large day tomorrow.

I'll leave you with that for now.

Tar!