Jakey Jake

We headed off to Lagos and after battling some horrendous traffic and driving along a beautiful coastline dotted with vacation looking houses. We arrived in the small town of lagos with its cobblestoned roads, its a very picturesque place and we managed to secure ourself a nice room with a balcony overlooking the town. after going down to the beach for a swim in the bitterly cold atlantic ocean we headed back to get ready for a night on the town. San Sebastian was a good party town, but it has nothing on this place, every second place is a bar that is CHOCK full of people that are going off.. somehow we managed to get home but i found a ticket in my pocket for a booze cruise the next morning, luckily i had 15 minutes to make it…. why i was going on a booze cruise being so hungover i had no idea. but what the heck. I was pleasntly surprised though, i didnt get very boozed at all (although quite a few did) but we went for an awesome speed boat ride through these incredible grottoes. Ill have to see if i can get some photos of soo many people. It was hard not having my laptop as i couldnt take more photos because i had nowhere to copy them too Anyway later that night we ended up going out (Jeremy didnt use his booze cruise ticket as he was wayyyyyyyyy too hungover :p ) So we went out for a quiet drink, and after a while i just gave up and went home as i had had enough. I was woken up by my roommate coming into the room with a girl (our beds were about 20cm apart) anyway they started making noises and stuff, a horrible thing to endure right next to you, but then it came….. “nooooo jeremy, nooooo” again and again, you have to think of a greek/australian high pitched girls voice, but it was very funny in the morning when i told him about it, and it ended up becoming a catch cry of lots of people i have met The next night we went out to a bar where they were giving girls free booze all night (which meant we had to ask the girls to get us drinks ) anyway that got crazy and we eneded up at a huge beach party. I ended up caving and walking home and the same thing happened as my roommie brought home a stripper from london (this time there was no “noooo jeremy”) The next morning we decided to leave as we had been drinking FAAARRRRRR to much and we needed to take a break so we decided to head to lisbon. Lisbon is beautiful and has a mysterious old mystique to it. Jeremy called maria (the “nooooo jeremy” girl) so we all hung out and explored the city together which was pretty kewl.

I left my car around the corner and the next day i had a ticket on my car the first of 3 i wasnt ever going to pay Anyway jeremy and i wanted to go to seville and Jimmy wanted to go to granada so jimmy went right and we went left, our main destination was Lagos in portugal. We made it to Seville and managed to find a nice hostel where we eneded up staying for 2 nights. It was only marred by one incident. There was a roundabout which was intersected by about 5 roads and the lines and signs werent clearly marked out, somehow i managed to drive on the wrong side of the road directly into a police car… (not crashing of course) but i did manage to land myself a 60 euro on the spot cash fine (dodgy police). Afer we settled we went to the tour of the bull fighting stadium and saw in pictures how disgusting a practice it is. We walked around and saw all the touristy sites and we went out for a good feed at the irish pub next to the huge church. we met this nice girl from sydney who we went looking for a flamenco bar with. We managed to find this secluded little bar tucked away in the twisty roads, but let me tell you it was well worth teh hunt. We arrived to a spontaneous show from some of the locals and it utterly blew us away… we had such a good night.

So i headed down to madrid and i was pretty much having a break down on teh way there, i felt pretty alone, felt like i was burning money (did i mention the price of fuel and the cost of tollways???) and basically just feeling shit about everything (which lasted for a month or so) I figured out that if i hadve gone on busabout i couldve bought 4 years of season passes instead of buying the car… DOH! but there was a good reason i didnt want to go on it, namely camille, i didnt want to stuff her holiday up as im sure i wouldve run into her at some stage, and basically she hates me, and with good reason really, just a word of advice to you, dont do anything that you will later regret!!!! Anyway….. madrid was pretty awesome, i made quite a few friends here and we all went out to dinner, it was great having to spanish speakers, they managed to order everything for us and we all sat around eating superb food and getting drunk on wine I met this guy Jimmy who came for the ride with me down to malaga where i was meeting jeremey. So the next day we headed down through toledo (just wanted to say “Holy toledo batman!!”) This place was pretty spectacular with one of the biggest churches i have ever seen in my life. It was an interesting mix there with the christians and the muslims. then we headed down to cordoba, which i wanted to see as it was in the cartoon cities of gold which i used to love. The main monument there was closed which was disappointing but we still managed to get a peak in at it. eventually we made it to malaga and stayed in a total dump.

This is where i should point out the main problems with having a car…. imagine driving 10 hours, trying to navigate a foreign country while you are driving, having only foreign language sings to point you in the right direction. You finally see your destination on the freeway so you get off, unfortunately its a BIG city and you have NO idea where you are or where you are going. Once you figure it out (usually a stop at the tourist info) then you have to find a place to park your car (which either costs you $$$ of makes you stress about having it broken into) so anyway i pulled into San Sebastian at about 10pm. I walked around the old town looking for a place to stay, i talked to a girl who was handing out flyers and she managed to hook me up with accomodation and she said i could park my car around the other side of the hill (whcih was basically a pretty dangerous place to leave it) anyway i ended up going out for drinks with her and her friends after we finished work and her friends managed to convince me to come to the pub crawl the next night. I rode around SS for most of the day and its a beautiful place, with a decent beach (not like the mediterranian beaches, more like melbournes bay beaches). San Sebastian has the BEST tappas bars ever in the world (although i havent been to granada) so if you want awesome spanish food go here. Spain has a LOT of very old gothic churches and they are predominantly the center of all the towns. After the pub crawl (which was very very crazy) i left the next day for madrid, i was trying to get down to Jeremey that i had met in africa, he said he wanted to cruise with me, and by this stage i was pretty much hanging for some company that was more than just a day friend.

So theres been quite some time since i updated the site and theres so much i have to say. Anyway i stayed in london until the 13th of July having found a nice little honda accord ‘94 with leather interior, sunroof, air con, cruise control etc. Pretty nice ride and it only cost 1400 pounds. The main problem was insurance was 730 punds for 6 months for fire and theft. YES thats right, half the price of the car. Not to mention i had to pay road tax for a year 165 pounds and i had to get a new stereo and an immobilizer fitted another 250 pounds, so all up it cost me 2545 pounds. Yep a lot of money…. and because the post office wasnt open on sundays i couldnt get the tax sorted until late monday which meant i would miss san fermin (AKA running of the bulls). Needless to say i wasnt happy and it was looking fairly ominous as to how the car idea was going to fare. Anyway as soon as i paid the tax i was outta there and headed down to dover to catch the ferry to calais. The ferry to Bilbao (near san sebastian) was about 800 pounds one way with a car which pretty much ended that idea. So as i zoomed down to san sebastian trying desperately to make it to the bulls i went through the north and west of france, passing through rouen which has a beautilful cathedral where joan of arc was burnt at the stake, i ended up at Mont St Michel, a beautiful monestry set on a small island on a tidal river. It was absolutely awesome. i didnt get there until 12pm so i just crashed in the car (never did it after that) and in the morning i decided to check it out…. after walking through the little island i was off again. Driving through bordeaux and eventually making it to san sebastian

Thursday 8th July
Woke up late as per usual, ate some brekky and got organised to get my car. What a nightmare… banks wouldnt give me cash, eventually i managed to get enough, but barely, then i caught the train out to plaistow, and yarmi picked me up from the station. For some reason it took him 3 whole hours to get organised and finally give me the car, a nice little 94 accord. It was about 6pm before i managed to exacpe from his place, finally i had wheels. Let me tell you wheels is not a good thing to have when in london. This week has been a nightmare, going from place to place looking for cars, organising and then disorganising people, having a base and yet knowing i have many miles to cover so i shouldnt get used to it. my head is spinning and im all over the place. ahh well. Anyway i got it back home and i was supposed to be having dinner with shelly and tania but it fell through again, surprise surprise…. these things are impossible to organise for some reason. so i just sat at home working on the database.

Wednesday 7th July
Woke up at 2pm and realised id left ted high and dry, for which i feel terrible and i also felt absolutely shocking from the night before. This place is a party town but it eats away your money so damn fast. didnt do anything much today until about 6 when i caught the train to jermeys place, from which we went to corrados at about 8. He made us a beautiful pasta, followed by titianas salad and followed up by corrados delicious fruit salad, i felt like a ball after i was done. It was a great night, just relaxing and talking. on the way home i missed the last train to my place and ended up getting lost after catching a bus from picadilly. i didnt get home until 2am grrrrrrrrrr.

Tuesday 6th July
Went into town and finally got to look around westminster abbey, fascinating place, full of dead people (interesting and famous dead people) and incredible architecture. Then i walked into town and called jeremey to see what he was up to and he was going to have a look at the F1 cars that were to do a lap around london town. There were something like 500,000 people in town to watch, people were climbing all sorts of things to try and get a better view, even i couldnt see anything and i was at least a head taller than most people. I decided to call it quits as id seen F1s before. SO i called jeremy again as he didnt show, he was having beers at the tattershalls ship on the thames, so i went to join them. It was a brilliant evening, perfect spot to watch the sunset. Jeremy was going to meet some swiss girls at the sports bar, and when we arrived there we found it was 1 pound pints and 1 pound tequilla shots. The place was abuzz and it was quite fun, although we wernt allowed in, after making a 5 pound donation to the bouncers fund we were happily obliged needless to say, booze that cheap ended in quite a messy evening. somehow i made it home. although we managed to lose jeremy on the way.

Sunday 4th July
Today i spent the day looking for cars, I looked at a black 3 series bimmer out at chelmsford (an hour and a half away), then a 95 prelude which was nice and sporty about 2 hours from the first place in reading, then finally a convertible bimmer which was in a horrible condition down in croydon. At this stage i think ill probably get the prelude… has some kick in it and it should be able to fit all my gear in it.

Saturday 3rd July
Woke up early to say goodbye to everyone and went straight back to sleep once they left. I still cant believe they are letting me stay here while they are in spain. Here i am backpacking and staying in a 4 bedroom house in chelsea by myself…. i want all my backpacking from here on in to be like this woke up very late and called a few places about cars before meeting up with Jeremy from africa and some of his mates at the “slug and lettus” on fulham rd. I had a gigantic burger before we headed into covent sqaure to a bar. Had a few beers and there was a guy on his stag night getting whipped on his bare butt by anyone that walked past, so i avoided tha. the bar closed at 11pm (god knows why… stupid liquor licenses) Then we went to meet corrado AKA the stallion at a swanky bar around the corner… surprise surprise i wasnt able to get in with jeans and sneakers… what do you expect being a backpacker. Then we wandered around town looking for other bars, but the queues were ridiculous as was the entry fee (some were 50 bucks) I went out with al and his broher to 151 bar on kings road. The girls were cute but all the ones i was interested in were taken not to mention the music was atrocious… so i left.