Tag: ‘travel’
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
We’re still in San Francisco eating breakfast in a civilized way, breakfast burrito à la Leigh.
Friday night was great, we drank wine an went out in search of jazz. When we were told it would be $5 cover, Erica didn’t lose heart an pleaded that we are poor back packers, and in we went yay. It turned out the guy must have been high because the girls tried thanking him later and he was far from this planet.
The night was great with random guys jamming out, quite chilled and cheap.
Yesterday was spent getting the penultimate pieces for our preparations for burning man, and I am officially sick of shopping, we’ve done more than enough for the year.
So now we are just enjoying our last hour or two of being indoors. Probably reluctant to leave since it is so cold here in San Fran. But it will be warm where we are going.
The car is so bloated that when mcdonalds were having cars towed from their car park on Haight St we couldn’t be towed, cool maybe, but poor car.
We have almost 150L of water, 20L of alcohol, many bin bags of fancy dress, a little food, a van with new brakes, but the front left wheel is on the edge of falling off. We do have a garage in Reno sourcing us a used part, so fingers crossed we make it to the burn and out again. The can is so low on the suspension that it bottoms out entering and leaving car parks.
So a mission is ahead of us and it looks like it’s going to be a time to never be forgotten, I’ve had enough preparation and am ready to go, let’s have fun.
Tags: adventure, burning man, buy, california, camper, club, jazz, music, musician, nevada, party, reno, rv, san francisco, shopping, tired, travel, use, van
Posted in Canada summer '10, la vie | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
i’ve just about finished my work as a ski/snowboard instructor. it’s been great, i’ve spent sooo much time on the mountain, had some great experiences, met some great people, learned a lot.
i’ve progressed to level 2 snowboard instructor and level 1 ski, and will take my snowboard freestyle course in a couple of weeks, so i’m working my way up nicely.
i’m pretty exhausted and so im resting up a bit this week, even though it has been snowing, i’d rather rest up than tire myself out more, there is still 2 months of riding left before the lifts close!
so i have to job hunt now, need money.
so photos i’ve been uploading from my travels in the past year:
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Tags: athens, budapest, canada, car, cow, czech, danube, dog, fight, grass, greece, hungary, ice, instructor, job, la vie, lady, light, mini, money, new, old, photo, photograph, photography, prague, river, silhouette, ski, skoda, snow, snowboard, stream, sun, sunset, tortoise, travel, turtle, water, woman, work
Posted in canada winter 09/10, la vie | No Comments »
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
I’ve spent a rough night in my car. At first I slept in a car park overlooking Dover. I woke at 1am to a police van parked behind me. The didn’t see me asleep on the folded down rear seat, half in the boot, and were worried something horrible had happened. But the were off after a short background check.
I woke later to two cars parked near me, 10 or so young guys with torches checking over my car. When one came up close I climbed to the front, switched on the engine, and drove off, blinding them.
I found a much more pleasant place to sleep up the coast, and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise over the sea.
Martin and I now qualify to dive 
We did some dives in an old quarry, flooded with sunken boats, cars, airplane ad newts. It’s pretty fun, and I can’t wait to do it in warmer waters.
I’ve spent a couple of lovely evenings with ammy, ron and louise. (Martin’s boat neighbours until he got floating). They are all awesome people and have surprised me, and given me some ideas and thinkings for my journeys. They also had a connection to Nam that I didn’t know of, and was great to converse with them.
So now I’m on the boat to France, swaying here and there, it’s fun to watch people wobbling down the boat. I’m going to take a long, but hopefully scenic route down to swissland.
Bon journée.
Oh and it’s colllllddd, welcome to autumn!
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Tags: air, autumn, car, centre, channel, cold, conscious, deep, dive, diving, dover, ferry, open, padi, police, scuba, season, sleep, smile, sun, sunrise, swell, travel, warm, water, wave
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Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Driving from Dover to here, dads place, I ran over something, I’m hoping a badger, rather than a dog. But still it was horrible to hit something, anything.
Well apart from that I had a nice day. Chatting French here and there. I had the best crepes I have ever had at a place called grand mere alice in st. Malo.
Then I took a leisurely drive through the country to mont saint michel. It is impressive, it is touristy, and I didn’t feel worth the parking charge.
I took a little tour of boulogne in my car, and my verdict is that it’s just as manky as Calais.
I hate the sound of my car, I need the exhaust fixed, so job 1 tomorrow is to go to the garage.
Tags: abbey, animal, boat, boulogne, brittany, cambridge, cathedral, dover, drive, ferry, fortress, france, history, horror, kill, mont saint michel, parking, road, sea, st. malo, tourist, travel
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Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Or 311kph, I’m on a train from Barcelona to Madrid right now. I think this is the fastest that I’ve ever travelled at on land.
My shoulders are peely from too much sun a week ago in lacauno.
Yesterday I met laia on the beach at premia se mar. We had some beers, dinner, wine, And she got quite drunk. She’s made a new song, it’s nice but needs much work. I’m impressed that she’s working things out to have time to make music, and live.
This morning I had an hour on the beach, so I feel a little rosy, but not burned, good!
Today will be the first time that I’ve ever been to Madrid, flying in on the way to Peru doesn’t count.
So I guess I’m staying with esti, maybe see victor, maybe a friend of laia, I have no idea about this place.
Tags: barcelona, beach, beer, cataluña, cheese, españa, fast, food, friends, high, hot, rail, sea, spain, speed, sun, sunny, swim, train, travel, wine
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Saturday, June 20th, 2009
So I’m still t the house of alex the kid. We’ve been chilling on the whole today, finished off with a bit of ‘the Mitchell and Webb situation’ which is funny. It’s by the guys from peep show, requires watching and listening intently as the jokes build up and finally make sense at the end.
This morning alex worked on his dads pool.
I took my car to get the boot lid lock fixed. I spent a while wandering eymet, cute little frence town, with a strong ex pat British presence, but spent most of the wait with podcasts and the guardian.
So now I have an iPod I seem to find use for podcasts, or is it that I now have the time to spare for such things as these?
So the boot was fixed, and for less than half of that I was quoted the other day. But they found out the cause of the horrible noise, which is quite obvious, the bearings are going.
I’ve been driving super carefully, and rightly so as I wouldn’t want to cause any serious damage to the car.
The biggest problem is that it’ll take fours hours for the repairation, and I can’t be fitted in until next Friday. So now I can’t drive to Spain tomorrow, via Toulouse, as planned. So I’ll leave the car here, alex will take it to the garage, and I’ll be off backpacking by train.
So all of my cuts and grazes from being drunk at le mans are all red and a bit nasty, so you better not touch them!
I updated my iPod and it doesn’t seem to work properly. Since upgrading to OS3.0 the wifi is being really sketchy. Also when watching videos or video podcasts I can’t get up the video controls, can’t change position or volume, the screen just won’t respond until I press the home key, leaving the video.
I plan on having fun tomorrow night in Toulouse, but my friends from there I have no number for, and I receive no answer on facebook. Strangely I can’t find much in the way of hostels, no way any party hostels. So I guess I’ll just turn up and see what happens.
Tags: audi, b5, backpack, barcelona, bearings, bergerac, bordeaux, broken, car, cut, eymet, france, garage, graze, hostel, ipod, le mans, noise, os3, party, problem, repair, s4, sound, spain, toulouse, travel, trouble, wheel
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Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
The trip of awesomeness is or about to end. It has left me with stories to tell for a long time, and memories that will last a life time.
We’ve learned that Dutch people are everywhere, a sign of quality when travelling.
I’m amazed at how cheap it is to travel, spending €20-30 per day.
That said alex managed to run out of money over a week ago, so ran up a debt. He’s young I think, and bought too many gifts and things.
We’ve managed to spend six weeks playing the same card game, asshole. Renamed shitface by me. We tried playing new games last night, with little success.
Ian and harry fart like nobody I know, it can be hell in a van for 8 hours after eating!
The van was. Good to us, surviving in the end, but was a nightmare also, a vw rollercoaster.
I lived the whole trip missing a tooth, I can barely imagine life after I get a new one, note to self, must book flight.
My iPod has been the most useful item all trip, translator, calculator, music player, Internet, dictionary, note taker, games, weather, blog writing, facebook, it goes everwhere with me. I’m surprised I haven’t lost it.
Mosquitos have been the bain of cortney’s legs.
Driving is the most comfortable position in the van. It’s been fun. It’s been sucky. It’s been beutiful. It’s been scary. It’s been cheap. But damn I’m happy to have my car again, to have a normal gearstick
We’ve taken photos, lots, even under water. It’ll take me weeks to go through my 1000′s, but it’ll bring back great memories.
So by the end the van stunk so bad I had to keep the window open even when it was pissing it down.
The broken radio of the van was nice, but not.
We barely had rain, the weather was great. We missed the summer season on our trip, missed the parties, but t least we know a hundred new places to go back and party.
This is the most fatty I’ve been since I was fifteen. I’ve looked forward to the end of re trip, end of drinking beer every day, exercising and losing weight.
We did a total of 12129km in the van, she survived, she’s now at over 320000km, and good luck to the rest of her life.
So I’m writing this still drunk from last night, so I expect it to read like crap on papyrus. We’re in lacanau, east of Bordeaux, right on the coast, a surfing Mecca. It’s beautiful here, but like everywhere we’ve been, we’re a week before the season begins. Even though, we had a great party, harry having to be carried home, christening my car, missing alex, cheap wine.
I can’t wait for 10 for the pool and slides to open.
This has been one of the best times of my life so far!!!
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Tags: bite, budget, caravelle, cramped, east, eat, europe, facebook, food, france, holiday, ipod, journey, money, mosquito, party, photo, photography, poor, road, sting, summer, touch, travel, trip, vacation, van, vw
Posted in la vie, road trip spring 09 e.europe | No Comments »
Saturday, May 16th, 2009
So we stayed split. This is a where there is a roman palace at the centre of town which is now converted to shops and restaurants. On the harbour front is a modern, yet well designed line of bars and cages. It was our first night in a hostel. So we splashed out for a bed in the silver gate hostel, a stone throw from the outer wall of the roman palace. So honestly it cost only a couple of euros than the campsites. It blew all of our expectations out of the water, the nicest cleanest hostel ever. A bonus, it even had free wifi. The beat part was probably that we got to meet other people, young, fellow travellers. That evening we went out for a few drinks. But ended in the hostel watching Washington and pittsburg play hockey with a bunch of guys that ian and courtney randomly bumped into, who they’d gone to school with. The match turned out boring and I didn’t stay for the last quarter.
The next day we had a beautiful drive down the coast to Zadar. Here on the boardwalk, they have built into the concrete a lot of holes, that when the wind of waves pass through them are like a symphony. Much to our amusment a dog couldn’t work the thing out and kept trying to poke his head down the holes.
The next day was the drive down to Dubrovnik. We spent a couple of days here. We had a nice dinner and enjoyed the sunset, followed by a tipsy run through town to find a bar, chasing stray cats. The next day we caught a boat to the small island of lokrum. Maybe 1km long, with Byzantine ruins, of was a paradise escape from the mainland. Peacocks were roaming everywhere. I was just asking if they can fly when one jumped out of a tree at me screaming, so question answered, yes! We found a spot at the end of the nudist beach to go cliff jumping. One try from 1.5m was immediatly upped to 8m. I still don’t seem to have the knack of landing without some soreness. The swell got quite large making it difficult to get out of the sea so that fun ended. For 10minutes later we found a small lagoon. There was a swing rope, and we jumped from trees into the lagoon. All in all one of the best days that we’ve had so far.
We’ve come to the decision that our eating habits are all so off. I guess that we all have hugely different metabolisms. Courtney is trying to quit smoking. Alex just eats and eats. I barely eat, but stay chubby. And ian can’t get his head around it all. But it makes it difficult to eat as a group, and eat how each of us would like. So we just have to eat our own ways.
Ciao for now.
Tags: adriatic sea, beach, byzantine, civilisation, cliff, croatia, dalmation coast, dining, dubrovnik, eating, food, island, jump, lukrum, peacock, photo, roadtrip, roman, ruins, sea otgan, split, swim, travel, zadar
Posted in la vie, road trip spring 09 e.europe | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
It’s been a while, I should have upated after I got back from turkey, but work was consuming me.
My boss was being a real idiot as he had before I left for turkey. He thought/thinks that I was out to steal his girlfriend which is so far from the truth. So he was being rude, agressive and, once in the club, violent. Well Monday was my last shift, and I feel great for it! I just have to chase work up for payment for the work I did at new year, before I was working under contract. But he and I seem to had ended it on good terms?!?!
Turkey was great;
A break from the verbier bubble,
A break from work,
A break from partying,
A feeling of freedom,
The time to get creative,
Time to think, time to read,
Some sun and sea(somewhat cold!),
I got an implant fitted, and two days later a bridge fitted. It will take three months before the bone has healed onto the implant, so I’ll have to go back in June.
I had timeto visit Istanbul. The city took
My breath away. I just spent my time walking and photgraphing, the views and architecture and so much more is just so awesome! All must see this wonder of the world.
I saw an ancient city back in the south near Antalya, which involved renting a crazy car, seeing wild tortoises, awesome beach, and wondering a city over two thousand years old.
So the company drntacaremed turned out to be great. They had set me up in a great hotel room overlooking the beach in alanya. The rep in turkey is a lovely friendly man, with much experience of the area and tourism, who collected me up for the two hour ride from the airport. The dental surgery which they use is nicer than any I have seen in the uk. The dental surgeons seemed to be competant and experienced. It was great that aksel the rep arranged a trip for me to Istanbul, upon my request. All in all it was great value for money, and a great cost saving over having the work done in western Europe, not to mention the great travelling experience. I look forwRd to returning to have re crown fitted in three months!
Back to verbier ad there is less than two weeks left in the season and bars and clubs are having their last parties and even closing parties. So alan is here tomorrow, and everybody has tomorrow off work so it’s going to be a crazyyyy day. Bring on the end of the season madness!!!!!
Tags: alanya, antalya, beach, dentacaremed, dentist, istanbul, party, photography, season, travel, trip, turkey, verbier, work
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Monday, October 27th, 2008
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!
Tags: apple, bordeaux, broken, car, computer, driving, england, eurostar, lille, london, nantes, paris, travel
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