i’ve driven from verbier to barcelona to verbier. harriet wanted to kill the sniffer dog entering france. then i visited labenne-ocean to see the sea, and a mate, and sleep in a caravan freezing my nuts off.

i drove to nantes for a reunion of many of the guys we worked with picking strawberries in denmark. it was great to see them all.

my gps is being mental sometimes thinking we’re lost while driving along the highway.

the speedo in my car has given up. i think that its just a loose connection, and not the dash board. so now i must use my gps as a speedometer.

my car is nice and comfortable, and i’m not sick of having driven 3000km this week.

last night was anne’s birthday party, so i’m in london, tireddddddd. having drunk too much last night, and then being woken up by charlie who didn’t know the clocks changed last night.

we’ve been to the metro ski show in kensington. i got a few web addresses for job hunting. and a ski jacket.

and i took my mac to the apple shop. this is because it has ceased to function.
i’m told it may be the logic board, which in normal pc language is the motherboard. so i’m super glad that i payed for the extended warranty. but i will have to wait and take it to the apple stores in geneve next week.

take first class on the eurostar, it’s so worth it, and not too costly!!

so i’m off to lille for a couple of days tomorrow to stay with a guy on couchsurfing.com and be there for the diwali celebration.
then i’m off to paris to meet nic and toto wednesday.

an interesting article by a pro photographer trying out the new canon G10 (i got the G9 recently) comparing it with his £20000 camera.

so bye!

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a company have used one of my photos:

on their website travel guide, yeh! check it yo:

Schmap

so today i sunbathed, was fun, am very tired now. busy day tomorrow.

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today has involved many explosions, some pleasant,a nd some not.

at lunch time i hurt myself a lot! i made soup and the bowl i poured it into exploded, couldn’t handle the tastey mushroomy godness soup! or the heat.my heeart is racing, argh! got cuts on my feet and burned thumbs and shins. eeeeeeeeep owch!

so as a result i didn’t feel much like going out. there isn’t much to do on sunday, just lazing on the beach.

so i’ve started watching batman. i’ve been beaten up by marta’s rabbit. and i let it out of teh cage twice, evil evil girl! i’ve uploaded some more photos:

damn alignment!!!!!

and lastly i watched the fireworks. so ow the Mataro party is almost over for the year.

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ok, so it’s been way too long since i updated this, i think i was in Sweden last time and that was a month ago, so here’s a big one, greatly shortened.

paris first visit

i managed to find a parking space in a train station to park at €25!! but lucked out when i took my car to the garage to get new tires, i left it there for my duration safe and locked away, go me.

paris was lovely and hot and sunny, and i walked everywhere. Agota didn’t have to work much so i didn’t spend much time alone. though when i did, it was nice, just walking around the city trying to get lost, zig zagging all around.

i saw much of the centre of the city, its sights and parks.

Agota took me out to see her friends, a nice night sat on pont des arts. we saw many parks, and the city made me feel that the young are open and full of vivality. we went to versailles, the longest route ever, a 20 minute train journey, we accidently took teh route around the whole south of the city taking almost 2 hours! but it´s a way to see new places.

berlin

so my drive towards berlin was supposed to take 7-8hours according to Viamichelin, which means in reality 6-7hours. but as soon as i hit germany it was gridlock. i tried detours, and saw the countryside and had fun driving, but it took me almost 13 hours!!! was the hardest driving ever, due to the random halts we the autobahn would produce out of nowhere meaning hard braking, and some unlucky people i saw who didn’t manage to stop in time.

so i checked into the lettem sleep hostel just after midnight. the guy running it from the south of germany was cool, and chatted about travelling. after i got chatting to a norweigan girl in the common type room, who was on her way around europe by eurail.

i met a walking tour in the morning, brewers walking tour, which was great, they guy was cool, no script, and took us places that no guide book/site would mention. berlin is lovely, so full of character, and friendly. i could happily live here a while which is saying a lot!

i set of that evening for my hostel up near rostock to get there 15minutes past 10, and the owners had gone home! after calling them they switched off their phone. lucky for me the front door was unlocked so i slept on a sofa! i had paid my €11 after all.

sweden

the ferry was full of lorry drivers, but it was pleasant and sunny, and i think i slept for the most part, it was 5 hours maybe?!?!

so driving across sweden started slow as i was wary of the speeds, but it got going. there is one motorway across the country, which is one lane at times! and stockholm is a long way north! after a few hours i realised that alice didn’t live so close to stockholm either.

passing stockholm is when the lovely sunny weather ended as the rain began.

alive lives in her halls of residence in uppsala, 60km north of stockholm, a nice quiet little university/cathedral town.

alice studied most of the time, so one day i visited the seaside, and fell in the baltic sea. i toured uppsala, quaint. then we headed to stockholm, where it rained allllll day. we had fika. the swedes go for fika a lot, it involves going to have tea and cake, and is nice, their cakes are delicious!

next day izzi n deb arrived from england and i collected them form the airport. we hung out, thought about a skinny dip, before we realised it was freezing.

copenhagen

i left uppsala, rain pissing down, and met anne at skavsta airport 100km south of stockholm and we (I) drove down to denmark.

it was cool that we only had one evening here as there isn’t the hugest amount to do. we went to tivoli,and anne got scared of the swings. we went to see the mermaid and that was it.

amsterdam

the drive to amsterdam didn’t take too long. the coolest thing is we were staying in the world trade centre. in a hotel owned by qubic, very modern and plasticy. lacking a window, the wifi was broken, but we used ethernet, and some light switches a bit broken, i still liked it, a futuristic coupley hotel.

we hit the town, well pizza and drinks until we were very drunk. english bars full of well english and aussies, great cheap booze.

the next day after rising not knowing the time, which is odd sleeping in a place wiht no natural light! we headed to amsterdam, did lots of walking and met one of anne’s best friends, i can’t remember his name, it’s indonesian, so complicated. was nice, and we took a private “donation” tour boat, nice just 12 people, some drink kiwi, fun finished with drinks, and bed.

paris second visit

the drive down to paris didn’t take too long either. we stayed at anne’s parents, along with anne’s sister manoo. we went to a park and had a family dinner. anne and i went out to see nic and toto and bowling, as nic and toto headed to south america the next day.

next day we went to disney, and it was ace! we got funny ears and went on lots of rides, and scared little children, and had out photos taken on rides, even bought one!!! anne’s mum and sister met us and we had dinner and cocktails in teh rainforest cafe outside the park.

anne and i went round paris the next day, i got my lens back, got a Nintendo DS (on a card with no money, purely for learning spanish) and we went to the pompidou centre for some modern art with manoo.

we walked to the seine and isle de cite and met agota. we all had a nice pic nic by the river and then ice cream. that evening we took anne to gare de nord and i stayed with anne’s parents.

so the drive to spin was nice, the scenery on my route was cool, and i passed some major cheese producing regions. it finally got warm when i reached the Mediterranean but that’s when i realised i was out of money. i managed to fill the tank up one last time and got to meet marta in mataro, where she lives.

enough driving, i no longer want to do driving tours without anotehr driver!!! so everybody get a driving license already!!

spain

so i think i’ve been in spain for 3 weeks now. it has rained more days than not, but it’s been nice and cool. marta has taken me to see the sights and places around barcelona, girona(nice little town), figueres (large part of gaudi’s history), cadaques (lovely town almost not even in spain, or france), sitges (brighton of spain).

i’ve met many of her friends, mainly hair dressers.

i’ve tried to get a job as a bicycle taxi driver.

we’ve spent some time on the beach, so i’m getting tanned, but mainly we’ve been eating!

so that’s the short and it!

future

so tomorrow i’m off to denmark to do some strawberry picking. mainly for the pay being much higher than spain, but it will be nice, and will hopefully meet some nice people. we’ll be staying in a tent on a island!

marta hasn’t bought her flight yet, so she isn’t 100% going and natalia may come in a week or 2.

i think i’ll stay there for 4-6 weeks, the length of the picking season, and then fly back.

who knows what the future will hold after that eh!

oh and i’ve been researching travelling in asia a lot!

i´m attempting to upload a load of photos to flickr, but the computer i was on died and corrupted my memory card, so i´m going to have to go home and re-copy them, but they will be on flickr when i manage. GRRRRRRRRRR

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