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Valencia v Real Madrid.

First leg of the Spanish super cup.

The day after we arrive in the region.

That. is. sexy.

The Spanish season doesn’t kick off until the 30th/31st August.

The weekend after we visit.

Me and Amy have just booked our first holiday of the year. And I’m pretty happy because it’s the only thing I’ve got to look forward to now that I’ve finished with uni! That’s where you go “awwww”.

We’re joining my dad, his mrs and their kids in a villa in the Alicante/Valencia region of Spain for a week.

Nothing but sun, beaches, bbqs and beer I hope (with a bit of luck I’ll catch a Valencia game).

But most of all I’m looking forward to spending some uninterrupted, stress-free time with my dad and step-mum, as well as laying around doing nothing for a week with Amy. She’ll be the first one to tell you that I need a serious tan.

On a sour note, I can’t believe that £29.99 flights with Jet2 shoot up to £200 each after adding baggage, fuel supplements, taxes and every mundane, little charge that they can think of which they don’t tell you about until you’re about a second away from pressing confirm. Tut.

Oh well, who cares, a month today I’ll be in Valencia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just recounted my Prague trip.

Click here to read.

Yesterday I was supposed to have an interview in London for a graduate job in recruitment. A job that would earn me a minimum of 22 grand in my first year - but probably closer to 30k or 40k depending on success and commission.

However, on Tuesday I decided that I wasn’t ready to leave the north east and that by pursuing this job I would be kind of abandoning my radio/media degree before it had even been printed. In fact, I still don’t know what marks I’ve got from that course! So it all seemed a little too sudden for me. And with that I decided to cancel the interview as I’m sure that particular company, and general graduate jobs, will still be prepared to take me on in a year’s time when I’m ready to relocate.

One problem. The train tickets I had already booked were non-refundable.

Shit.

Well, my good friend Daniel was heading down for an interview himself and I have never really done the tourist bit round London - so I decided that I would make a day of it, accompany Daniel down to the nation’s capital and get my 75 quids worth.

We set off at 9am in order to be there for 12, and while Daniel was being grilled about a career in recruitment, I set about visiting the London Bridge - which isn’t as big as it looks, but is still rather picturesque. I also caught a brief glimpse of the Tower of London, but when you’re from York (which is a city inside massive castle walls) this medieval building looks like a lego house to be honest.

After this I realised I was hungry. Very hungry. And I had to queue for some 20 minutes in Subway, only to find out that the average Subway in London costs 6 quid!!!! Shit the bed that’s a lot of money. I didn’t even get a drink or anything - just a sandwich! However, this experience was made better by the American tourists in the queue behind me who were all “OH MY GOD! have you seen that fanta bottle?”, “Oh my god, that’s like, totally weird”, “Yeah, like, that bottle is like, totally better than the fanta bottles back home”, “Oh yeah, that’s one thing about England, their bottles are like, totally better than ours”, “Like, totally”.

You hear that America? Our fanta bottles are better than yours. A Subway sandwich might cost the equivalent of $12 in London, but fuck you, we’ve got better bottles.

Anyway, back to the story.

In the distance I saw this building…

I’ve seen it on TV a few times. I believe it’s called the Gurkin (sp?) but I’m not entirely sure. So I made it my mission to find it.

Nearly there…

Found it. Fuck me its big.

Not entirely sure what happens there, but on one side there was shops and cafés and stuff, and on the other side there was like a business entrance. Whatever. It’s a big building. I like big buildings. Which then led me to this crazy looking thing.

I don’t even wanna know what happens here.

Then I met up with my good friend Daniel, and we went to Westminster to see Big Ben… Downing Street… Westminster Abbey… and then we found a load of statues in a park. So I recreated the poses of people like Churchill and Mandela, because I can.

Not really sure what to think of Big Ben, Downing Street and all that. It gets to a point where you see them and you’re like “you know what, this looks exactly like it does on the tele, and I can’t be arsed to go in, I’ll take a photo as proof I’ve been here and then I’ll move on”. This was compounded by Downing Street. Dan took me down there, I saw the entrance and I was like “right, can we go now?”… there were loads of old people stood at the gates peering in but why? It’s just a street. You can’t even get on the street because there are fences and guards galore. You’ve just got to kind of stand at the gate and look down a big tarmac road. Sounds like fun!!!

After this, Dan wanted to check out the Abercrombie store which he says is the only one in the UK. He’d been before but wasn’t entirely sure where it was. And by wasn’t entirely sure, I mean he didn’t know, but he recalls being there. We headed to Green Park tube station I think, and walked around for half an hour, before asking for directions. Then we walked all the way to Piccadilly Circus, and as we were heading towards Oxford Circus we found the store. I’m not gay for Abercrombie clothes like some, I find it to be an American-style college fad, which isn’t really my bag. But the store was interesting. It was like a huge house off a main street with no shop window or signs - you wouldn’t know what was in there without looking. Inside, there was little to no lighting, the music was as loud as a night club and they had somewhere between 30-40 staff just knocking around the floor saying hello, being generally polite and chatting with people. The store was rammed and being such an unusual shopping experience I’m not surprised its so popular.

After walking from Green Park to Piccadilly Circus, we then walked all the way to Oxford Street and after a trip round Niketown, then all the way to Bond Street and back. So we walked a good five tube stations. Not sure how many miles that will be but we needed to sit down for a pint and recharge.

We let rush hour pass whilst supping a £3 pint, and then we headed to Leicester Square where Danny would meet up with a friend from back home.

Coming out of Leicester Square we heard a lot of loud music - so we decided to follow it. Then we saw a large gathering of people, and the loud music was accompanied by the voice of 1Xtra DJ and MTV Base favourite Trevor Nelson. Interesting… what’s going on here then. The closer we got, weaving our way past all these people, we saw a red carpet and it became fairly obvious that it was a movie premiere. What movie though?

Oh yes, Will Smith was in the house. And we’d got there just in time. We stood about for a while and watched some proper Z-list celebrities stroll up. Day time TV presenters galore… the new gladiators… the odd model or two… nothing special. Charlize Theron then turned up, and some other actor who was vaguely familiar, before Big Willie hit the stage. After chatting for a while with Mr Nelson, he milked all his attention from the crowd, and then strutted his stuff on the red carpet. Forgive the shitty pictures, but the crowd was pretty exciteable.

After food, it was time to head home. Not a bad day I feel - touristy stuff, browsing the high street shops and a film premiere. It beats staying at home.

One thing I noticed about the city thought that I never had before is that everybody, and I mean everybody, wears suits. If they’re not in a suit then they’re either a cabbie or a tourist.

And everyone is in a rush too. I used to think that London was the place to be, but upon closer inspection its so, so busy and everybody who works there is like a robot. They don’t speak, and they don’t want to be spoken too. Maybe these are the pressures of working and commuting in the nation’s capital but I can’t imagine that pushing your way through the packed streets and tubes (and they are pretty fucking packed) every day in expensive suits is much fun.

I could work there, sure. And there’s a lot to the city that I’d enjoy - having a pint everyday after work with colleagues looks like the norm, which is quality, not to mention the shops and the events (all rappers stop by london once a year, premieries, nfl games, nba games, etc). But my god, I’m glad I decided not to go for that interview. As good as the money is my hairline is far too receeding at 21 and I don’t need it heading back any further. Maybe next year, but at the moment life is far too chilled and relaxed for this young man.

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Pics:

This is how people beg in Prague.

They stay completely still without making a sound.

And they can’t see you.

I guess it’s supposed to be impressive that they hold this position for hours on end, but instead it just makes it REALLY easy to ignore them.

The End of Uni Euro Trip had been in the works since long before Christmas. Amsterdam? Tallinn? Barcelona? Krakow? All possible destinations, but we finally settled on Prague after tales of it being a ‘lads city’ with beer as cheap as £1. Exactly what we were looking for!

8 brave young souls from Sunderland signed up, including myself, and we set out for a long weekend in the Czech capital.

The laughs strarted as soon as we were in the airport. In fact, before we were in the airport, with Mark opting to sit with two old ladies for his journey there instead of his mates.

The flight really set the tone for the holiday. We had a first time flyer amongst us, who must have been dreading it with seven ‘lad’s lads’ surrounding him, but he was fine. Lee went about ordering an apple juice on the flight out there, where everyone else had opted for alcohol to set the tone, so for the rest of the holiday he would hear the childish taunt of “can I have an apple juice please?”. Funny stuff I assure you.

We attempted to bus and metro it into the centre of Prague to find our hostel - which took a bloody long time - and we stumbled across the hostel because a friend of ours, who had flown out a day early, noticed Danny’s hair from a good 200m in almost pitch black whilst he was sat at the hostel bar. Danny, for those that don’t know, is a white guy with an afro. In his own words “not many people look like me”.

We dumped our stuff and headed straight out. We found the city’s very popular “Wencelas Square” which is supposed to be where the main night life is. However, all we could find were strip clubs. I’m serious - every single bar or club had strippers. Inside, outside, on the bar, on podiums, inside window displays. They were everywhere… and the guys on the street trying to talk us round seemed to think that all we cared about were strippers. I’m not being funny, but once you’ve seen one, you don’t need to see many more! We spent most of the night in an Irish bar (the only place we could find without strippers) drinking big pints that cost just over £1 (NICE!) .

Waking up Friday offered us the chance to look around and explore. We found ourselves a little bar on the river that runs through the city (I still don’t know what it’s called) which is adjacent to the main bridges and it overlooked the city’s Castle (one of the biggest in the world, apparently). This, I thought, was the life. Sat back, chilled, just watching the world go by with plenty of sun, cheap beers and mates.

Afterwards, we set about walking over the Princes’ Bridge (I think it’s called that) which is one of the main attractions in the city. It’s full of entertainers, artists, etc. which is kind of reminiscent of La Rambla in Barcelona for anybody that’s been. On the other side of the Bridge is Prague’s “old town” which, to be honest, had the feel of an English sea-side town like Scarborough, or Whitby, or Blackpool. Narrow streets filled with either bars or tourist shops selling nothing of interest. It became pretty clear to me at this point that Prague had been severely bitten by the tourist bug (hence so many strip clubs), and that maybe this place would have been absolute heaven four or five years ago before flights out there were so cheap, and before everyone was so wise to it.

After walking around much of the city, we set about our first REAL night out. What I haven’t mentioned thus far is that our hostel not only had a restaurant and 80p pints… but it had a bowling alley. Oh yes. Drinking and bowling? Very much so.

I came last in the bowling. So we won’t dwell on that. But after this we went back to Wencelas Square in the hope that we might be able to carve out some kind of route. But oh no, back to the Irish bar we went, then bothered aplenty by street touts trying to get us to see more strippers. By the end of the night we had to tell the touts that we were gay so that they wouldn’t show us to any more strip clubs. That’s how bad it got. We found a pretty decent ‘Sports Bar’ in which we dabbled with a bit of Karaoke (me and Danny took on “Easy Lover”, Ackers and Sleeps attempted “Beat It”). We spent a good while in this bar and I remember someone distinctly saying “wow, this is like the only bar without strippers in it” and then some guys disappeared upstairs with the doors locked behind them. I guess it wasn’t!

Me and Lee (of apple juice fame) were up early on the Saturday while everyone recovered. I forgot to mention that our hostel was situated on a main street and a tram line, so sleeping in simply wasn’t an option. Me and Lee set about finding the real bars and clubs in the city, because, quite frankly, we were sick of being shown to strip clubs. Using my phone, our wits and our feet we spent HOURS walking around Prague - both sides of the water, surpassing dozens of metro stations - and we found what was described on PragueExperience.com as “Prague’s all round favourite club/bar which offers a bit of everything” and also a 5-storey club which prides itself on being “The largest club in Central Europe”. And that was our night mapped out! I have to say it made such a difference planning in advance where we were going. I think everyone was a bit ratty about there being nothing but strip clubs, so me and Lee were pretty chuffed to have sorted this.

After this we met the rest of the boys for lunch, and then we headed to the main city square to watch the opening game of Euro 2008 (our Czech Republic against hosts Switzerland). I’ve always wanted to be at Canary Wharf when England play a game to watch it on the big screens, so I guess this is the Czech equivalent. It was full of football fans and the beer was only 65 or 70p and it was bloody lovely! The best pint in the city no doubt. Danny, pictured below, set about collecting empty cups. This sounded (and looked) a bit queer at first. But once the collection started to build everyone in the square was loving it and slam dunking their cups onto the top of the mountain. It is hard to describe why it was so popular, or why it was funny, perhaps because the game was awful! But Danny made a lot of people’s day with his cup collecting antics. See below.

The clubs and bars that we would go on to visit were brilliant. For those that are going to Prague, they are on the water front round the corner from the START of the Princes’ Bridge. In fact, you can see the back of the Super Club as you cross over. And the other bar is a stones throw away. Me, Lee, Andy and Ackers ventured into the 5 storey club - which was definitely an experience - with beer less than a quid although I was under the distinct impression that everyone in there was a tourist. This kind of detracted from the experience, coz it seemed less authentic by being full of British hen parties. We wanted some Czech clubbing! But we all got our Justin Timberlake game on, and me and Brennan weren’t back to the hostel until half 6 that morning. Then some Asian lass offered us the chance to come with her to an “after party” which was essentially a drug bar. We politely declined.

Sunday was a chillout day. More wandering around, followed by afternoon naps all round. More football in the main square, then more beer for the lovely sum of 60p or whatever it was. So good was the beer that we sat at vacant tables in the square until the early hours of the morning when the Staropraamen tents stopped serving. Then we stumbled home and sat in an ‘Ozzi’ bar until 4am. They had Hoegaarden \o/ so I was happy.

Everyone was a little ratty and bored on the Monday morning. I think everyone just wanted to be back home. We’d stumbled round the city centre for the umpteenth time doing nothing new. We were just killing time until we went home.

We bought a little football and found a little fake football pitch in the town square - obviously a promotional tool for Euro 2008. We spent a good hour having a kick about on here, and our antics attracted plenty of tourists and locals to watch. We had a cross bar challenge and a skills school ala soccer am. I was gutted because I was the only one to hit the cross bar challenge in practice (with my first go) and then Lee was the only one to do it in the actual thing (what a hero).

One thing we did have planned for the last day was go karting. An absolutely MASSIVE track that boasted near 20 corners and 5 straights (that’s atleast 2 or 3 times bigger than any track I’ve been on before).

Unfortunately, I ended up coming in at #2 out of 8. Andy was simply too fast, and nobody could match his 49 second laps (my fastest was 50.05) but Andy was consistently 49-51 seconds which was just unstoppable to be frank. Ackers earnt himself the nickname of Granny Ackers for laps that were over the minute mark haha. A great way to finish the holiday.

The holiday would end with a slightly souring experience for me, Andy and Lee who were caught on the metro system without a ticket. None of us had any Czech money left so we ALL decided to chance it but it was only me, Andy and Lee who were caught. The fine was a whopping 700k (about 30 quid) and while we tried to argue language barrier problems (the dude could barely speak English, he merely showed us his badge) he went to ring the police and then we knew it was time to pay up. The other boys quickly bought themselves tickets and made their way to the airport for 24k (about 80p) which had me, Andy and Lee a little angry for a while.

And that was that. Looking back, Prague really is a sleazy, stag’s kind of city. So sleazy in fact, that they have Erotic Supermarkets (called Erotic City) which are littered throughout the city - (there was one in the airport, one at go karting, one outside our hostel - everywhere!). Andy summed the city up very well by asking “where is the shame?” because there simply is none. I saw a mother hand in hand with a girl no older than 4 or 5 walking through a strip club - that’s not a good look in any city.

My advice to anybody planning or preparing a trip out there would be to plan your nights out in advance. And don’t expect there to be much to do during the day, so you might wanna plan an activity or two too. It’s a lovely city, a bit too touristy now me thinks, but I would recommend it as a good drinking city. In some places the beer can be as much as £3 (just as it is over here) but it is the less tasteful and grotty places that it will be less than £1. It worked for me anyway!

Can’t wait to do something similar next year.

This time tomorrow I’ll be in Prague.

OK, maybe I won’t. But I’ll almost be in Prague. Which is just as good.

Before all the lads from uni head away to pastures new (and old) leaving me and a select few stranded in Sunderland, we’re going on a kind of celebratory adventure to a foreign destination. Prague was the choice, because some have done Amsterdam before and because there isn’t really anywhere else that screams out the kind of holiday (booze+culture) as well as the Czech capital does. Mark wanted us to hit up Tallinn in Estonia, but somehow I don’t think that would have be quite as good.

Everyone I’ve spoke to about Prague has shuddered with the thoughts of the film ‘Hostel’ or accounts they’ve heard elsewhere of Brits in trouble over there. Indeed, Lee’s mum told me yesterday that her friend’s son was robbed at gun point during a stag weekend… hmmmm… well, atleast it’ll be eventful…

Prague is, and its a fact, the foreign capital of British death and injury. Nowhere else in the world (outside of the UK) do British people suffer misfortune like they do in Prague. Be it drunken tomfoolery, death or accidents - Prague is the major ingredient. But the way I see it, as long as we’re aware of this fact and we stick to the main streets in well lit areas and we don’t get pissed out of our minds then we should be fine.

Every city has its ugly parts (hell, I live in Sunderland!), and every city in the world will have seen robbings at gunpoint and whatnot, but with Prague being a stag-do vacation it becomes so much easier to rob a pissed up group of Brits who are wandering down side alleys.

There’s eight of us going and we’ve already had the chat of “we’re not going out there to be lager louts”, which is true.

We are however going out there to get a little drunk outside of what the North East has to offer, we’re gonna take in some culture (Prague Castle is the biggest in the world, dontcha know?) and we’re gonna do some Czech activities too (shooting ranges and go karting seem to be on the cards). So it looks like its going to be a good break away from the not-so-sunny Sunderland.

And with a bit of luck this could become an annual thing for the lads to catch up and take in a random European city (hopefully).

Right-o. I’m off out to get my Czech Korunas, pack my clothes and just generally wait until its time to leave! Expect photos gallore when I get back.

Sorry, if I get back.

I’ve returned from Barcelona now, and seeing as holidaying there is probably the most interesting thing I’ve done all year it seems only right that I recap some of what happened out there in BCN on here.

It was plain sailing until we got to Barcelona. Everything was going fine until me and my girlfriend, Amy, realised that we couldn’t speak any Spanish at all. Trying to save money getting the train from the airport to our hotel seemed to backfire straight away as we struggled to buy two tickets from the Catalan ticket man (that rhymed). After cluelessly dragging our cases up and down copious flights of stairs at a couple of metro stations, we were finally on the right line to our hotel. Problem #2 strikes – our hotel’s closest metro station is closed. What’s worse is that so are the four or five neighbouring ones while maintenance is performed on the line. No probs we figure, we’ll just get out here and get a taxi. That took an age. Taxis don’t tend to hang around random metro stations y’know. So we’re stranded in the middle of Barcelona, heavy traffic, no taxis and muchos baggage. Eventually we were saved by a young eastern European looking taxi driver who stumbled to our hotel.

The hotel was lush. Almost embarrassing that a guy came out of the hotel to take our bags and whisk us up to our room. He laughed when I gave him a 5 EUR tip too. It might have been because I was as subtle as a punch in the face, basically outstretching a note for the better part of 30 seconds before he took it off me. Me and Amy got out of the hotel in the evening and strolled up the beaches to find somewhere to eat. We came to the Port, which obviously specialised in fish food, and no matter where we looked that’s what we had to eat. I mistakenly ordered Octopus (not Squid, very very different in fact, and that was my mistake!) which had tentacles ‘n’ shit, whilst Amy sat there ready to throw up at any second. It was actually quite nice once you got past the errrr suckers of an octopus’ skin. (more…)

As of this weekend, me and my girlfriend have been together exactly two years.

I can hear your collective “awww”s. Thank you, thank you.

She (Amy) decided to take the bull by the horns and organise our anniversary activity this year. Her final decision? Camping. Camping near Scarborough/Bridlington (two coastal towns in North Yorkshire, not too far from where we live). Sounds like a laugh - and I was relieved that we got to do something cheap anyway. £3.50 a night, you can’t really go wrong? Well. You can. But a £40/50 meal followed by more activities could also go wrong. And I know which idea my wallet is fonder of.

Allow me to take you on a photo tour of our weekend:

Guess who got stuck with putting the tent up? No instructions, just a bag full of random sheets and pegs…

Amy decided to sit this out, what with her not wanting to get mud behind her nails and all…

Not. going. well.

Got there in the end though \o/…

The tent is an absolute palace inside. When did tents get this big? There’s two rooms and a hallway inside this beast. What happened to the days when tents were shaped like pyramids and you struggled to fit two people inside them? We had a bedroom, a kitchen and a landing in this tent! You could sleep five people comfortably in this, why does it need to be so big?

The camping site itself was just a farmer’s field. You parked up at the farm, paid your £3.50 and camped whereever you wanted. That kind of took the gloss off the experience for me. I was always under the impression that camping was a solitary experience where you’d head out into the wilderness and erect a tent in the middle of nowhere. This place was an empty field full of caravans and other camp-goers. Felt like a holidae inn for tents. I didn’t like that. Another thing that creeped me out was that this place was full of empty caravans. It was like a caravan graveyard…


Dirty, empty caravans everywhere.

And the rest of the place wasn’t that well kept either. There was just abandoned tractors and machinery left out in the open. Had a bit of a chernobyl feel to it… well… if chernobyl was a camping site… and instead of radiation it was polluted with empty caravans… :/…

Then Amy decided to put on some stupid wellies and cook me some food…

Amy later fucked up this plastic fork. For some reason I find looking at this fork absolutely hilarious. At the risk of being un-P.C. and upsetting a lot of people… it looks like a retard’s hand… (imagines a hoard of people leaving this site and never coming back)

With nothing to do we decided to go for a walk… (very uncharacteristic of us I might add)

I was amazed at the holiday home villages. There were thousands of mobile/trailer/’i dont know what to call them’ homes. Thousands. It was like walking into a new world. No houses in sight. Just these random boxes dotted around creating this huge community. I referred to them for the rest of the trip as pod people. It took me and amy atleast 20 minutes to walk through this village. It was HUGE. Can’t believe this many people holiday near Scarborough/Brid. I mean what the hell is there to do? There’s a beach and thats about it…

We spent the next day in sunny Scarborough… (don’t laugh, all jokes aside it’s a nice pleasant town)

There was a random pirate ship floating about? … arrrrrrrrrrrr…

Then onto the beach for a sandcastle competition…

Let’s meet our contestants. Amy here is sporting a spade, which she bought minutes before the start of the sandcastle competition…

I decided to take an unorthodox approach to sandcastle building and opted to use only my hands as tools…

Here are our grids. I’ll be building on the left, Amy will be building on the right…

20 minutes later…

Lets take a closer look at Amy’s. Looks like a hill with a penis on top? And that can hardly stand for a moat? but then again i’m slightly biased…

Mine on the other hand was a fortress. Forget the castle, the moat and castle walls make this look a lot better than it is. So much so that random Asian tourists took photos and one man came over applauding my efforts (he didnt even notice amy had made a castle which she wasn’t happy about) and he wanted to take our photo. Amy declined. She was clearly upset at the media frenzy surrounding my collosal structure. It even has a drawbridge over the moat, and a road from there to the castle. It’s a work of art…

Great weekend. Hayfever killed me and there was a lack of things to do at some points, but you know what, it was better than sitting in and watching TV… or just having a 3 hour long meal… we got to spend the weekend together and have a lot of fun.

Still baffled that we’ve been together two years. Love you Amy…

(Maybe I should smile if I want her to believe that)