London and Spain

Time for an addition to my little belated travelogue.

After a great time in Sweden, Nomes and I headed to Spain via London. We were only in London for one night, but we managed to spend about $500 Aussie on crappy accommodation, tube tickets and a brilliant show on the West End. It was a first to a professional production for both of us and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. We saw 'The Producers' and it brought the house down. If I was a theatre critic, my review would be one of the ones quoted on the poster: "I laughed so hard I almost cried!", "A fast paced thrill ride from start to finish!", "The theatre was really cold!".

After the briefest of brief stays in London, we boarded a RyanAir flight to Barcelona. Or, I should say, Girona, about an hour out of Barcelona. I'm sure BrianAir and Sleazyjet are good if you have someone to drop you off and pick you up, but next time I think I'll just pay ten pounds extra and with a 'proper' airline. By the time you add up the cost of the ticket, plus extra transportation, I think we spent more time and money on a budget airline than if we'd flown British Airways. And then there was the terrorism crisis, which we were caught in the middle of. I won't go into that, but the highlight was that Ali saw me lining up at Heathrow Airport on Hong Kong TV. Nice! I'm famous!

It was then on to Spain, where we had the brilliant idea of hiring a car instead of catching trains. Unfortunately, we failed to take into account that when you have a car, you need to find a place to park it everywhere you go. You also need to pay for that parking on top of your hostel costs. We drove from Barcelona to San Sebastian, arrived late at night and couldn't find a place to stay, so we drove to the outskirts and spent an uncomfortable night in the car. Just when we thought we'd made a credit card busting, debt inducing, stupid mistake, we stumbled across a free parking area that hardly anyone new about right next to the beach and just a few minutes from the old town. Perfect positioning. We also bought a couple of little matresses/seat covers for the car, parked on an incline and we had beds for the rest of the trip. Two birds, one stone. Sure, sleeping in the car might not sound like the best way to spend a vacation, but it had three unexpected benefits:

1. No early checkouts
2. No accommodation costs
3. Roxette's hit, 'Sleeping In My Car' was in my head for the whole holiday. Great!

So, San Sebastian was great. I saw a lot of showered in public toilets, drank the best coffee ever and saw lots of nudie rudie sunbathers. Oh, and the town was pretty cool, too, and the tapas was second to none.

From San Sebanners, it was off to a little town called Castro Urdiales, which only gets a mention because it is the site of my most expensive coffee ever, at 5 Euros, I think it was. And it wasn't even hot! Bastards.

After recovering from the expensive coffee, we headed to Salamanca. It is a brilliant town, rich with history of war and education. It was an absolutely beautiful place, and we treated ourselves to hostels and spent a few days reading books and lazily ambling around the town.

Next it was back to Barcelona to meet up with the energetic, the engaged, Aaron and Leah. We spent a few fantastic days exploring the sights of Barcelona. It was great to see all of Gaudi's architecture around the city but the real highlight was having someone to talk movies with again! It was just after Mel the Smell's arrest so we had plenty to discuss. It was great to see the two of them again after so long and went a long way towards easing any feelings of homesickness.

In a touching moment, Azza asked me to be best man at his wedding in front of the Olympic Stadium and I said yes. He had me at hello.

I would go on longer but my fingers just won't let me. I'll save Naomi's 'getting mugged' story for another time and leave you with a preview...

One woman... Three gypsies... One handsome Spanish cop... One jealous boyfriend
This holiday season... get ready... to be taken for a ride.
'DONDE ESTA EL POLICE STATION?'
copyright 2006