So it begins

Another castle

Published Date : October 25, 2003

I couldn’t afford to do anything this week except eat – and I could barely afford to do that.  I sent too much money home to pay off my credit card.  Ah well, I can survive off pot noodle for one week.

Warwick Castle

I’ve started planning some longer trips.  I’m thinking of taking a couple of months after my work contract is up and travelling overland to Egypt via Eastern Europe, Turkey, Syria and Jordan.  I was talking to my brother today and he seemed interested in coming with me, but I’m fully planning on going solo.

I had a chat with Warwick (NZ) earlier this week, and he’s pretty interested in tagging along on my trip to Rome.  I’m not sure how I feel about that.  He’s a nice enough guy, but he’s really intense.  It’ll be nice to have some company though.  Sam is still saying that he wants to come along too, but I’m not sure I believe him because he’s always drunk when he says it!

Warwick Castle gardens

Today I left London.  Woohoo!  I went up to Warwick Castle and Stratford-Upon-Avon for the day.  I was up far too early to hop on the train to Warwick, which took about an hour and a half.  I fell asleep and nearly missed the stop, but luckily woke up just in time.  Close call!

Stratford-upon-Avon

I spent about 2 or 3 hours at the castle and it cost £13 for admission.  The gardens were really beautiful with the autumn colours and I actually wouldn’t mind coming back to see them in the spring. The castle was very well restored, and there were several re-enactment groups on site demonstrating different elements of medieval life in Britain.  It was definitely an interesting visit, but I think I’ve actually reached saturation point on castles.  They’re all starting to feel very “ho hum!”

Since I spent so little time at the castle I decided to catch the train over to Stratford-Upon-Avon. For £3 return there was no reason not to go.  I only spent about an hour and a half in town wandering the streets and taking a couple of photos.  I contemplated going in to a few of the Shakespeare related exhibits, but in the end decided against it.  Many people had told me they weren’t worth it, and seeing the prices being asked, I decided to trust the advice I had been given.  Even without visiting the Shakespeare exhibits, the town was well worth seeing though.

Hallowe'en in the hostel

Published Date : October 31, 2003

My cousin and his girlfriend are in town for a bit.  My cousin’s art is being shown in a local gallery for a week or so.  I ran into them tonight in the hostel – they’ve been here for two days already and this is the first I’ve seen of them.  I invited them to join the gang in the lounge, but they didn’t seem too interested in socializing.  Oh well, I tried.

So when you’re living in a hostel what exactly do you do for Halloween?  Throw a party of course!

Sian and Gail carved up some pumpkins, Gray and Nigel brought in Fosters (for £12 for 24 beer nobody was complaining too much that it was Fosters!), we turned off the TV, turned on some tunes, and had ourselves a nice little soiree in the lounge.  There was of course the minor detail of the midnight curfew in the lounge.  But we solved that by invading one of the rooms and watching DVDs on Martial’s playstation.

Actually let me rephrase – there were DVD’s playing but nobody was really paying attention.  Most people were drunk and talking crap.  Especially Layla, Kelly and Gray.  Putting it simply, Gray found out which buttons to push to set the other two off and he enjoys doing it.  I ended up turning in early just to get away from them.

Family reunion

Published Date : November 8, 2003

Another week gone by.  I got a call from my brother last weekend, saying that he and his girlfriend were coming down to London for a couple of days.  With my cousin still kicking around it turned into a right old family reunion.

My brother and his girlfriend arrived on Monday evening.  I called in sick on Tuesday (yeah, I’m terrible, I know!) to spend some time with the family.  My brother and cousin and their girlfriends, and Gray and I all went for breakfast in one of the local cafes.

My cousin and his girlfriend went their own way afterwards, so the remaining 4 of us went into town and played tourist for the day.  Later, I went with my brother and his girlfriend to see my cousin’s art exhibit only to discover his art wasn’t on display tonight.  What was on display I would hesitate to call “art.”  I’m the first to admit that I don’t really understand modern art, but one of the exhibits was just a recreation of a disgustingly messy dorm room.  Seriously?  Not only was my cousin’t art not on display, but my cousin was MIA as well. We found out later that he was at the police station because his wallet was stolen.  Welcome to London!  Anyway, after abandoning the art show, the three of us hopped on a bus and took a wander around Canary Wharf just for the heck of it.

In other news, Jess and Deb are back from their trek to Austria.  They had planned on going to work there, but they never made it past Switzerland.  I can understand why.  Switzerland is a beautiful country.

More farewells

Published Date : November 15, 2003

This week was Kelly’s goodbye week.  Kelly has been in London for most of her two-year work visa, and it was time for her to go home to Australia. She’s built up a lot of friends in those two years so there were some good parties.

Monday night we went to the Richmond for drinks. Where else?  It was absolutely incredible.  The place just had such a great vibe, I’ve never seen it like that before.  Everyone was in a great mood, the music was good, there were people dancing on the tables. It was just a really fantastic night.  Not wanting it to end when the bar closed at 11pm, we headed over to My Place for some dancing.  There were so many of us from Olave House and Ayer’s Rock Hostel that we basically took over the place and made it fun.  There was much dancing and laughing and joyous fun to be had by all.

We followed that up the next night with a Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet in St James.  The food was fantastic and only £7!  They had karaoke too, but I didn’t stick around long enough to have my ear drums shattered.

We had another thief pass through the hostel this week. Sean, a South African guy who just moved in last week, went home with £800 of Graeme’s money.  He also took off with about £50 from various other people in the hostel.  Nobody is too happy about that.

And speaking of money, I was overpaid this week.  Nice one!  I should be a normal twenty-something and go spend it all on frivolous things, but I think I’m going to save it for my trip to Rome instead.  The extra money should pretty much pay for the whole trip.