Hola (14 Sep '07)

Hello again!

Let's see if I can still write... I spent a lot of last night in a whiskey bar and I'm not fully recovered yet!

Now I think the last email left off just after Holland. So, London!

I did a lot of sightseeing in London for the first couple of days. I went into the Tower Bridge and Westminster Abbey, took lots of photos of Big Ben and the houses of parliament, Buckingham Palace and Picadilly Circus, went to the Dali exhibition in County Hall, ate a steak and ale pie in a pub in the West End, got offered drugs in Camden and just generally wandered and tubed all over the place.

London is a busy city. It's a lot more businesslike than the other cities I've been to. I got the sense that important things were going on all the time.

On the weekend I Jus, Meri and I went to the Isle of Wight for Bestival, which was quite an experience. We saw the Chemical Brothers on Friday night and the Beastie Boys on Saturday and they were both awesome. Chem Bros had an awesome light show and Beasties just got up and jammed like hell. You were supposed to dress up for the festival and English blokes, apparently, really really like to dress up as girls. There were a few themes suggested for costumes, pirates being the major one. English girls, apparently, make very attractive pirates. Unfortunately I comprehensively failed to... um... pillage their booty. I think I can do a pretty convincing salsa now, though.

So, all in all, the London experience was a good one. I offloaded a whole lot of stuff at Justin's so I'm a bit more fuel-efficient now. I've got an English bank account, a bunch of recruiters hunting down jobs for me and an appointment to get my National Insurance number.

I wasn't sure where to go from England. I was half tempted to go back to Amsterdam, but I decided it was a better idea to expand my horizons a bit and San Sebastian, Spain, eventually won the day. It was definitely the right decision, even if I do need a new liver.

I've met some great people, mostly Australians. I had my first surfing experience yesterday. I managed to get up a couple of times. I went about 10 metres and had no control whatsoever but it was totally cool. As soon and the sun comes out again, and my internal organs have stopped being angry with me, I'm definitely having another go.

The hostel is great. It's a 2 minute walk from the beach, there's a huge balcony where everyone hangs out in the afternoons and it's full of cool people. It's called Olga's Place and I highly recommend it.

Last night I met Annie from Oregon and after some beer and tapas we ended up in an awesome whiskey bar and drank too much whiskey. It's a quarter past 2 now and I think she's still out cold.

Right! That's about it. I'm off to find somewhere warm and cosy to die.

Hope you're all happy and well.

T