digitalbugsy

I have put some photos up of our trip to Chamonix… I will post something about it soon… probably…

Mine and Vincent’s, a French guy in our backcountry group…

Where is Bugsy?

A bunch of us went to Sicily for the weekend, one of those “lets go somewhere - Where shall we go? - Sicily’s cheap lets go there” type deals. We had to get up at 3:30 in the AM, which was tough, force ourselves onto a National Express bus, and then join the scrum at the Ryan Air gate before we could start the holiday…

Well I must say the cathedrals and museums in Sicily are absolutely fantastic! [...]

I know it’s cliche, but what are you going to do?

Cast:
Mark, Dave, Jay, Bugsy

Location:
Amsterdam

When most people think of Amsterdam, it’s normally one of two distinct paths - Grass and Sex or Canals and Bikes.

Grass and Sex
I won’t dwell on this because everyone knows you can go into a coffeeshop, buy grass over the counter and smoke it without worry. One thing that struck me though, you can take your own grass along and smoke it, and all you have to do is buy a drink. It makes me wonder how these places actually make money. The thing about most people when they smoke grass is, they will sit around for a long time without doing much, let alone buying loads and loads of drinks, and if they have their own stash… well I’m just saying there probably won’t be a huge turnover of clientele…

The red light district is quite surreal, the girls on display like in a shop window, well I guess it is a shop window. There was a lot of stag nights milling around trying to bargain with the girls for a bulk-discount. It was a bit of a strange sight to see two or three guys queued up outside a curtained window waiting for their mates to come out.

Canals and Bikes
I would say one of my favourite things was riding around. We all hired bikes and circled around the streets just taking it all in. They have these fantastic bike lanes where you are totally cut off from the road, so you don’t have to worry about cars too much, and if a pedestrian strays across, just ring your bell and plow on through… We rode down to Vondel Park and sat in the sun for a little bit, had a spliff and then rode around some more.

Photos here.

Only in England would you find a beach with a games arcade and amusement park on a pier by the beach. You need something to do when its not sunny and/or windy as hell which, funnily enough, describes pretty much every time you go to the seaside.

Brighton is a prime example. Stony beach, fish-and-chips, and the almighty Brighton Pier.

The pier was fantastic. We threw money into those claw machines that you never win at - though we almost won I might add, if only we had another £50 to throw in it we would have that £5 stuffed monkey; a little bit of Daytona car racing - which I turned out to not be as good at as I remember, I got beaten by a girl!; and the dreaded Crazy Mouse Roller Coaster - I must say that that was the most unsafe feeling experience I have ever had… The whole time I was waiting for the ‘Mouse’ to fall off the side and into the depths below - it didn’t but there was no way I was going near it again!

We sat on the beach for a bit… I wasn’t expecting the rocks to be so damned comfortable! I could’ve lain there all day, apart from the wind and cold of course… maybe I need to just harden up. I got a typical picture or two of some empty deck chairs and we went along our way to find some traditional beach side fish and chips…

All I can say about fish and chips is imagine the very worst you have had in New Zealand, and that is the best you are going to get here. It was an insanely big fillet of cod, the mankiest fish in the sea, and chips that tasted like they had been fried in old engine oil. Moral of the story - just because a country invents something, it doesn’t mean it does it best…

Photos here.

Nothing like a little bit of sunshine to clear the blues away…

Anna and I decided to take my parents away to Portugal after their holiday in and around the British Isles to get one last ditch attempt at some sun, seeing as they were headed back to wintry New Zealand and had just been travelling around in the great British ’summer’.

3 things about Portugal: -

• There seemed to be an infinite amount of sunshine… every single day it was ‘Hmm what shall we do today? I know lets go to the beach’
• The beer was cheap… really cheap… really really cheap…
• They love their sardines… and they are big, not like you get in a can…

We stayed in a place called Tavira, a fishing town in the eastern Alvarge. It was a fantastic place. The majority of the tourists were Portuguese, so it felt like we were experiencing a little bit of the culture, if not at least some of the Portuguese holiday culture.

Photos here.