I hear sirens, so off goes the music. Maybe it’s the firemen can’t be arses to talk room to room so use loud speakers.
We’re 100m from fort myers beach playing a cardgame: shithead and we’re almost out of wine, all of the cider having been drunk down on the beach.
Fill in; today was a boring 400mile drive down Florida.
We arrived here in time to have a swim in the sea while the sun was setting.
Alan is afraid of the sea, even if it is 2ft deep! Creepy crawlies nibble away your extremities?
It is wonderfully warm here, in the sea and out.
We tried having a pic nic dinner on the beach, but due to the serious amount of mosquitos attacking us, we retreated from the water to drink and play cards.
Alan picked the game, won initially, but that didn’t last long.
So i’m sat here with wine, cards, bread and humous while he’s off buying liquor.
I could cheat and change his cards, but is it worth it?
We’re going to sleep in the tent tonight. There are no camp sites, we’re not allowed to sleep on the beach, so upon the recommendation of a local, we will stay in an RV park, and see what happens in the morning, maybe the owner will wake us us and give us trouble, if not, then Bingo! Free night
Oh and it’s beautiful here by the sea, damn these demon insects.

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Up to you.
It’s late and I’m trying to wait as late as possible before going to sleep. I have a Super thin sleeping bag, no pillow and no roll-mat/matress so it could be as uncomfortable as when we slept in yosemite. A few beers and thirty odd rounds of rummy and I don’t quite feel ready for this.
Today has been cool, so cool that it didn’t sink in until it was over.
So to start off we sent sone post and bought breakfast, uneventful, buuut then we went to drive and again the car wouldn’t turn over. Luckily enough the only garage in town was 2 doors down so we mosied on over to get a jump, and change of battery, lovely mechanic, red neck but friendly. He was even doing up an English taxi from 1960, pretty cool. So now we shouldn’t, hopefully, have and more car worries.
After that drama was over we drove up to Grand Canyon national park, and did the touristy stuff, photographs, rock hopping n yeh, got sick of it, and we drove south.
We enjoyed the sunset over Sedona, magical.
So now to camping and getting to sleep.

So I came so close to winning poker, second however is not winning. I think I needed more booze to keep it straight and level headed. Well €2 in no loss.
Yesterday I had a margerita, soo strong, only a swim in big waves to reduce it before dinner, geez looking after children is tiring. The drive back was late, long, fast, bumpy and fun.
I found a dead bat in the car. I drove 600km smoothly, found beaches, realised my phone won’t work, and spent time running around time trying to get a phone card.
I’m in a tent in st malo, beautiful, rightfully touristy town. It’s kind of like Dubrovnik in Croatia, just islands of castles. There’s even a diving board into a pool, that is hidden when the tide is up.
It’s super brittanic, I like, I’ll try and have a crepe tomorrow, I’ve never actually had one in britanny!
I saw alex earlier, recovering from the weekend. Then I spent the evening in the countriside playing poker, a nice frenchy evening, where I was branded as not English.
Maybe tomorrow I could be daring enough to dive off the high board into the pool by the sea?!?!

I’m laying in the tent paranoid as f. There are millions of Mosquitos tonight. Maybe there is one in the tent here. Maybe there isn’t. But a bit of red wine and every itch, every movement of fabric and I can’t help but swat.
Sleep dammit!

Sonsy, of large bosom and pleasant curves.
I’m laying on the zebra in France.
We saw the worlds largest cuckoo clocks, and visited house of 1000 clocks, and refused to pay €3 to see some little waterfalls.
We passed through Strasbourg and saw the ‘bridge’ of the EU.
So now I lay in a campsite in France.
We’ve almost come full circle, and have visited over 15 countries in a month.
I’m sick of the van and how uncomfortable it is with six of us on a six hour drive, though she has been good to us.
I’m looking forward to 24 du me mans!!

We’re now in Prague and we’re now six.
Christian is with us, and it’s going to be a week and a half of solid drinking.
The previous night, we camped in the woods by a lake Blair witch style. Then we headed for kutna hora. Still an awesome town. Quiet, historic, beautiful and eerie.
Last night we had some local cuisine then went to the beer factory. Stupid and drunk we walked out on the bill, so we won’t be going back there, good.
Am still in bed, ready to roll.
Oh and our seven euro hostal, yes €7, has a sauna and pool!!!

We’re still in krakow, but not for too much longer.
We picked up a new hostel, drank a bottle of vodka, and ventured out into town to meet up with some guys doing an organized bar crawl. We saw a local bar, a rock bar, and ended up in a big club. The night was great, but after ian bought a bottle of vodka in the club, all is a bit hazy for all. Vodka is crazy cheap here. Nights out are crazy cheap. Krakow is an awesome place to party!
Yesterday we took our hangovers to the aquapark. We spent 4 hours riding slides and playing tag. No more hangover, and tired out, wet through, we found this campsite nearby.
The night consisted of wine, vodka and cards.
And I did my first load of washing, for free! Four weeks on the road and I was just about out of clean enough underwear.
Things are going great, and the vam’s about to get even tighter with the arrival of ian’s brother Friday in Prague.

Now it seems that I don’t find the time or energy to write. But sat here in southern Greece, sat by the sea, I am in good spirits.
So from our campsite in dubrovnik we met a couple of guys from Dorset hicthing around Europe. Sonja and Gabriel, a couple of friends who live simple, slightly eccentric lives in the south of England were nice to hang with for a day. It’s good to have new blood and different ideas, for different conversations. So being that they were headed to Montenegro, like us, alex offered them a ride. We all stopped off in budva to have lunch. It was strange to be sat by large expensive yachts, eating Chinese, in a strange little country in south east Europe. The food was great, and after we said goodbyes to our new friends. I hope to see the again at some point.
So next up we had a shitty drive to Podogorica. First up, our ‘go europe’ book doesn’t cover a great chunk of this part of Europe, so we are left with no idea of language, culture, currency, accomodation or sights. So we let our visions from the film casino royale guide us to podogorica, Montenegro’s capital. We expected lush streets lined with expensive cars, and casinos, well at least one. It couldn’t have been further from that. It was run down, with nothing worth staying for. No sign of an old town, just crumbling industry and rusting vehicles. So we decided, although already late in the day, to head south towards Albania, also unknown in our guide book.
Having reached the outskirts of podogorica we saw a hitched, who sounded like he asked us in French if we head to Albania, so we did a quick u-turn. It turned out he was American, and we had a new companion for a while, Justin. I think he was in his early thirties and has been travelling, mainly hitching, around Europe for 10 and a half years. He spend around three years in each country working, and manages to master the language if staying longer. I think he must be returning to the US every now and then. He seemed very timid for one who is so well travelled, buy very amiable and knowledgable.
So we got to the Albanian boarder, and did I mention that alex’s father hadn’t left the van to us with insurance papers? So we have to pay for local insurance, as well as road tax in each country that we go to now. The road in Albania started off so poorly that we could barely make 40kmh. We made it to the first city, and lost, de to the lack of road signs, justin and I hopped out to ask for directions. We bumbled into what we thought was an info centre, which turned out to the the office of a political party, the Serbian minority party of Albania. The president was a very genial guy, and sent us off with another guy to show us which way to go, and meet a random man on a street corner to exchange some money. So now armed with some leke, and the direction to travel in we headed back to the bus. Justin asked us if we’d mind him joining us for the night, so we all stuck together for the night. I think he wanted some companionship, being a little homesick.
So we managed to grab some food, super low cost, great! And we continued south. The idea was to rough it for the night, to camp out in the open, being that there is no tourist industry, there are no campsites. This proved rather troublesome for re group, as we all had different ideals. Justin was easy and comfortable, alex worried about leaving the van, ian anxious about sleeping on private land, courtney worried about all, not havining a good gut feeling about it all, and I was happy with anywhere, as long as we diet have to sleep in the van. So with much trepidation, we finally set up camp on a grass track, glow flys all around us, 100m from a farm, but shielded by some trees. We had an early sleep, and an early rise due to concerns about being woken up by an angry farmer with a shot gun.
Soon after, we said our goodbyes to justin who wanted to make his was to the coast and do some writing. His plan is to spend some months in Iran, but he doubts he will get there before headin to the US first. I look forward to Reading of his travels.
Albania, a place I beleive to be one of the poorest countries in Europe, is by far the bizarrest. The people are amazingly friendly. Everywhere they are building, and everybody has a mercedes Benz. Some are old, but many are not. I would guess at 75% of all vehicles being benz’s. Where do they come from? Which then brings me onto the question of why there are so many cars, mainly Benz’s, with British of german registration plates? We never worked this out, but they were definately not driven by Brits. Maybe stolen?
So we went to Tirana for breakfast, a crazy little city, all colorful. Like Africa on the outskirts and America by the centre.
I drove us on through the Albanian country side. There are two highways through the country, one from Montenegro to tirana, crazy drivers in abundance, and the other from Tirana to macadonia. So we covered all of these. The whole way is single carriageway, sometimes running along cliffs, even making it’s way along a ridge, absolutly beautiful.
Next up into Macedonia, a country not in the eu, but trying. Strangely enough I still prefered Albania to Montenegro and Macedonia. We stopped by a great lake in a place called ohrid. Super touristy, but cheap enough for lunch and make facebook contact. We’ve been trying to get the contact details of a girl. That courtney kind of knows near Athens. I finished the 10hour drive at a campsite by the beach at the foot of mt. Olympus.
Yesterday alex driving and I think we were lost in re outskirts of Athens, the target destination for our trip, but we were trying to find a campsite out of town, so here we are near marathon. Oddly enough our campsite also has a restaurant open to locals. A beautiful view over looking the sea, atop a cliff, so last night we treated ourselves and had a drink and bite to eat. Yum!!
As a group we ate having some seriously deep and heated discussions. We are all intelligent, stubborn, opinionated people, so it makes for interesting evenings, inbetween the games of asshole.
So our target of Athens reached, we plan on staying around for maybe four days. We need some rest time, plus to see Athens.
So iPod battery is dying so I better head back to the camp.

I’m sat on some rocks by the adriatic in Croatia near a place called pula.
Yesterday we took a leisurely drive from Venice on a lovely sunny day. We stopped for a beer by a beach in Slovenia, I think the place was called ponderose. It was very pretty. It seems strange that they only have 30km of coastline. It’s also a shame that we only spent an hour in Slovenia, so I guess I will have to come back some day.
We then drove on to vrsar to try skydiving, but it doesn’t seem to be open yet.
We seem to be doing this roadtrip a few weeks early for the summer season. Which is good to avoid the crowds. But some interesting locations and attractions are not open. It would also be nice to have a party and meet some people along the way.
This campsite is the best so far, me being sat on the beach, the water so calm that I can’t see a wave, while our tent is 30m from the water.
Last night was interesting from a conversational point of view. We were all playing asshole(card game) but as it got too dark to play, we got to talking. Spirituality came up. But more of a passion for courtney and I, photography came up. I have always gone into this with it as a hobby, and not to make a living from it. She seems to have her life aimed at becoming remembered, maybe famous for some thing she does. The main point was, what do I want to come from this? Would I make a career from it if the opportunity arise? I don’t think so at present but maybe that would change over time. Right now I think that I have a lot to learn before I would put any of my photos up for sale. Plus for the moment my plans are to follow my lifelong dreams of travelling and snowboarding.
I know fill well that right now I don’t think much about the future, but I do believe that I will do more over the coming years.
So now it’s half eight in the morning and it’s so warm that I have to take my top off. I need to work off this beer belly!

It was great to see agota Saturday for her birthday. I really want to goto Ireland in the summer to see her for longer, and see Ireland before she leave for good.
Holland was great fun. First was queens night in utrect, it seemed like few other than us got dressed up. Utrect is like a cool, chilled, smaller version of Amsterdam.
The next day queens day started with the drama of a mad man driving his car through a crowd out to see their queen. But then we headed to Amsterdam for what was one of the best parties of my life. All of the streets were set up with stalls and parties, for what seemed like the entire city, we just walked for hours, going from party to party. Even in the canals, every boat was a party. We spent some time at a rave under a multistory car park by a large canal. Then the night was messy moving between clubs. It’s well worth going, but it might not be so good again, first experience being possibly unbeatable.
Ian l, courtney and I set course for Bordeaux, but not using any toll roads, without using the gps, to have a pleasant chilled scenic drive across France. Ian helped drive, as courtney can’t yet drive manual. At one point, ian got spooked by a fast driving bike who slowed down, dropped his speed, and good thing he did, with the gendarme waiting around the corner!
We only got lost once,
…So now it’s almost a week since I started writing this. We’ve;
Spent two days in the Bordeaux countryside.
Driven down and stayed on the coast near marseille.
Spent lunch in st. Tropez.
Stayed by a beach and swum near st. Tropez.
Driven through and had lunch in nice.
Driven through monte carlo.
Stayed a night on the Italian riviera.
Driven across to Venice.
Partied in venice last night.
This morning I woke at 6am, after 3 hours sleep, to go into Venice to take photos before the sun got too high, and avoid the tourists.
Now I am super tired, and by the almost silence from everybody else, I guess that they are too.
So tomorrow we’re driving towards Croatia, maybe staying the night in Slovenia. The idea is to sky dive over the Adriatic in Croatia.
But as we have quickly learned, nothing goes to plan. So onwards and southwards towards Athens.
I’ll end this now and maybe not have a chance to post of online until I next find wifi, which is rarely free, ciao.