San Sebastian - Day Seventy Two

I had just over a week of trip left.

I had the whole of Europe to choose from.

I came back to San Sebastian.

Obviously, there were lots of exciting new places I could have chosen to spend my last few days in, but at this stage, after nearly three months of travelling, I was starting to feel tired. Travelling around like this - spending a couple of nights in a place, cramming in the sights then hitting the road again - can really take it out of you after a while. The thought of a few days spent on the beach and nights spent sipping beers in the pintxos bars was too tempting to resist.

Unfortunately, my bank balance has taken a real pounding after all these weeks, so I took the cheaper option of taking a Eurolines overnight bus to get down here. It got me into town at 4.30am and then nearly drove off with my rucksack. I wasn't allowed to check into my hostel until 12pm, so I sat on a bench by the seafront and watched the sun rise, which was nice. I'm not taking another overnight bus though.

There's not actually that much to do in San Sebastian. I can't surf (yet), so that rules out the main attraction. I rented a mountain bike, but the town's not particularly big so that didn't last long. I visited the aquarium. I sat on the beach a lot and wondered why men with pot bellies and genitals that look like sad little sun dried shrimps enjoy taking their clothes off so much. The rest of the time I've eaten great food and sunk a few beers. It's been great! I've spent so much time looking around art galleries, monuments, cathedrals and famous landmarks recently that all this sitting around doing bugger all is just what the doctor ordered.

In fact, writing this blog post has been more than enough activity for now. I'm off to find a bar.

Paris - Day Sixty Seven

The night train from Rome to Paris treated me surprisingly well. I slept like a smacked up koala bear in my crowded cabin that night. I'm not sure if it was residual tiredness from the pub crawl or the couple of beers that were bought for me in the restaurant car by Miguel, a lovely Chilean guy travelling with his two teenage daughters, but I was out like a light as soon as I hit my tiny tiny pillow.

As you may have gathered from the last post, I hadn't planned to come back to Paris just yet, but ended up here as the result of drunkeness and a lack of job satisfaction from the harpy at the international ticket desk. I'm not complaining though; arriving in Paris at 9am on a sunny spring morning is the sort of wonderful experience that makes travelling worthwhile.

I sauntered to the metro station, skipped easily across town, and in no time I was checked in to a clean, spacious and comfortable room in my hostel (click to check out the photos) right next to Bassin de la Villette, a spangly stretch of canal. Paris was beautiful when I started my trip here back in March, but now that spring has really kicked in it's just stunning. The trees are all in blossom, people are laughing and relaxing in the streets, parks and along the waterside, and beautiful women are suddenly wearing far fewer clothes than they were before.

I did very little in the few days I stayed here. I soaked up the sun outside the Sacre Coeur, ate lunch in Montmartre, caught up with my journal writing in street cafes (looking like an arty ponce and loving every minute of it) and generally just basked in the general goodness that fills the streets of the city of lights at this time of year.

I also finally buckled - finish line in sight - and got a haircut for the first time in three months. I hadn't planned to go so long without a trim, but after a while it seemed like it might be a fun idea to try and do the whole trip with a steadily expanding barnet.

It turned out not to be a fun idea at all.

For the last month or so I've been getting plenty of laughs by telling everyone that my hair makes me look like a lego man. Over the last few weeks I couldn't help noticing that the laughter was getting louder every time, and that people had started to through in casual little ad libs like; "you're right, you look like a right tosser" and, "stay away from my kids."
The time, I realised, had finally come.

So I bit the bullet and shelled out for one of the pricier options in town (I justified it to myself by the fact that the girl who cut my hair could speak english, and this was worth the extra cash. The fact that she was also Swedish and extremely hot played no part in my decision whatsoever). Now my bizarre, apparently naturally occuring side parting has gone - hopefully forever. Instead I have a sort of shaggy mop which looks like I just woke up with a hangover. For a while I thought this was because I kept waking up with hangovers, but I experimented with sobriety for a couple of nights and it's definitely the haircut rather than the booze. The hot Swedish girl liked it though, and at the end of the day if that's not a good reason for liking your haircut I just don't know what is.

The other significant development from my time in Paris is that I've booked a ticket home. I need to go back for a friend's wedding, and realised that if I planned properly I could also make it back in time for the stag do and my mum's birthday. Not to mention the fact that I'm getting a bit sick of wearing the same three t shirts, my money's nearly gone, and every now and then I wake up in a cramped hostel bunkbed after a beautiful dream about my lovely king-sized bed back home. So I'll be catching the Eurostar back on the 20th of May. Not long left then.

I'm only going to be back for a few weeks though, then stage 2 of my masterplan swings into action. At the moment that's increasingly looking like a more full-time move abroad...

Rome - Day Sixty Four

I left Rome a tired and broken man.

The sky-high prices of everything in the capitol (I paid 50% more than usual for a particularly skanky hostel) and my ever-shrinking budget meant I'd limited myself to just three nights in the city. The problem is that you could easily spend a week there and barely scratch the surface of all there is to see and do.

With that in mind I spent every waking minute walking the streets, in weather that was scorchingly hot from the moment I arrived. On Saturday I stumbled on some kind of giant street protest/party, with crowds of crusty goths and punks rocking out around a big fountain as a huge number of police watched on. I carefully studied their tactics, and as far as I can make out crowd control in Italy mainly consists of chatting up any hot girls that walk past.

After wandering around for a bit, wishing I spoke Italian so I could find out what was going on, I ducked into a nearby church for a break from the heat and noise. It was an impressive place, and it turned out I'd stumbled in there just as a wedding was taking place. I got out of the way as quickly as possible, a few minutes before the bride came in - looking like an A-list movie star. I watched for a few minutes then went back out to the streets - straight back into the party. Italy truly is a country of contrasts.

Over the three days I was there I tried to cram in as many of the major sights as was humanly possible. I will now attempt to describe them as briefly as possible:

• Colosseum - crumbly, familiar, ever so slightly smaller than I imagined
• Trevi Fountain - beautiful, but only when you've fought through the crowds to catch a glimpse
• Pantheon - well lit
• Vatican Museum - Longest. Queue. EVER.
• Sistine Chapel - amazing (despite the angry security guards), surprisingly colourful, very quickly makes your neck ache
• Circus Maximus - the place where they had the chariot races, now just a big field. Probably a nice place to walk your dog
• Isola Tiberina - island in the river; lots of fishermen
• St Peter's Square - nuns galore. Don't go on a Sunday, it's nuts
• Piazza del Popolo - beware of careless chumps doing Segway tours
• Piazza Navona - the amazing fountain was closed when I went, so not so good really
• Quirinale - silly uniforms
• Piazza della Republica - full of crusty ravers, sleazy cops and public weddings (probably not always though)

On my last night in town the other guys in my hostel bribed, blackmailed and begged me into going out on a pub crawl. Looking into their pleading eyes it seemed cruel to deny them my awesome presence, so I gave in (reluctantly) and soon found myself playing drinking games outside the Colosseum, which was lit up impressively against the night sky.

I don't remember many of the events that followed, although I know that Fraser, an Aussie guy, bought a megaphone, and none of us could figure out why people don't take them out drinking more often. The many barmen of Rome certainly seemed delighted and amused to be bellowed at repeatedly by a group of chuckling pissheads who were making less and less sense as the night wore on.

I was up and out of the hostel early the next day, so the hangover only really kicked in as I was standing in the line to buy international train tickets. I had no clear plan about where I was heading, and logical thought was getting harder by the minute as my dehydration worsened in the Italian heat.

I have to be back home in a few weeks for a friend's wedding (I'll be travelling again afterwards though), so I changed my plan to go to Croatia from Italy and replaced it instead with the vague idea of drifting back through France and Spain over the next few weeks. There were three people working on the ticket desk; a friendly, smiling guy that people seemed to be thanking a lot and sharing jokes with, a grumpy but efficient looking guy, and a woman who looked as if she hated nothing in the world as much as train stations and the ticket-buying public. Guess which one I got.

Our conversation went a little bit like this:

Hungover Jim - "buon giorno, parla inglese?"

Angry Woman - *disgusted look... brief pause... tiny nod*

HJ - "I'd like to travel to Spain today please, do you have any trains going there?"

AW - *making no effort to check computer* "No."

HJ - "Umm, OK. How about the South of France?"

AW - *still not checking the computer* "No."

HJ - "Nothing?!"

AW - "No."

HJ - "What about Paris then?"

AW - "Why go to Paris if you want to go to Spain?"

HJ - "My plans are very flexible."

AW - *gives me a look as if I just leaned over and spat in her coffee, then makes no attempt to check the computer or answer my question*

HJ - "Do you have any trains to Paris?"

AW - *sighs deeply as if the whole world is against her and proceeds to sell me an extortionately expensive ticket to Paris*

That's how I ended up on a night train to Paris, back to the City where the trip began, with a pounding head and a much lighter wallet. I left Rome a tired and broken man.

Naples - Day Sixty

When people told me that Italian drivers can get a little feisty, I used to give them a knowing look and maybe nod sagely. 'I've been to Milan', I thought, 'I know exactly what you mean'. Nothing had prepared me for Naples.

The first warning sign is that at least 90% of parked cars (although parked is a strong term - abandoned might be better) bare the scars of multiple impacts. Wings are dented, doors are scratched, wing mirrors hang sadly from loose cables and generally at least one bumper is missing completely.

As I walked the streets on my first day I came across a traffic jam of monster proportions tailing back for miles through the streets in the baking sunshine; drivers leaning casually on their horns to create a symphony of stressfulness. Scooters and pedestrians weaved clumsily through the crush of cars, and people shouted and gesticulated angrily as only Italians in traffic jams can really manage properly.

What I didn't realise at the time is that, from the pedestrian's point of view, enormous city-halting traffic jams are the best-case scenario in Naples. Once things start flowing again all hell really breaks loose. I don't know if the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV has inspired everyone to drive like they're in a getaway chase, but I've seen people driving the wrong way around roundabouts, running red lights, bumping into buses, shouting at traffic policemen and generally trying to cause as much chaos as they can reasonably expect to get away with. Maybe the guys who make Grand Theft Auto come here on their holidays.

It took a couple of days, but Naples did win me over in the end. Having arrived there on the back of Florence and Venice, poor old Napoli - with it's death wish drivers and litter-strewn streets - was always going to look like the ugly sister. I went out for some drinks on Friday night though, accompanied by an unusual mix of drinking buddies (Italian, Chinese, Canadian, American and Turkish), and we spent the night wandering through crowded piazzas, drinking beers on the streets and trying to avoid the nighttime drivers who plough through the drunken crowds as if they're not really there, bumping into people as they go. There's a fantastic lively atmosphere on the streets that reminded me more of South America than Southern Europe.

This is also the city that introduced me to the cornetto bianco; a freshly baked croissant filled to bursting point with melted white chocolate that drips down your face no matter how carefully you try and eat it. As drunken delicacies go it's right up there with the warm cheesey goodness of Austrian kasekrainers, and that's high praise indeed.

High in the Tuscan Hills - Day Fifty Eight

As I said in the last post, the combination of busy days and internet connection speeds that make continental drift look nippy have allowed me to fall behind on the blogging, so I'm going to try and condense the last week or so into one post.

Venice, as I might have mentioned, was amazing. I really loved the place; I was spellbound by it, in spite of the vast wandering hordes of tourists that walk in front of you and then suddenly stop to admire the view. Over and over again.

The extortionate prices meant that I could only realistically stay there for a couple of nights though, and - all too quickly - it was time to leave. I wandered casually to the train station with Fabienne, a girl I'd met at my hostel who was taking the same train as me, only to hear a garbled PA announcement saying that our train had been cancelled.

We had about ten minutes before it was due to depart, and although there was no mention of it at all on the departure board we decided to split up and try and find someone who could explain what was going on. In an Italian train station, this is easier said than done...

I was standing in a ticket queue, wondering what it was exactly that everybody buying a ticket had to discuss with the guys behind the counter that made each transaction last half an hour. The weather? Rising fuel prices? Silvio Berlusconi's haircut? Surely buying a ticket can't take that long...
With about a minute and a half to go before the scheduled departure time, Fabienne came running over and mimed that we had to start running.

We started running.

We made it onto the replacement train that was covering for our cancelled one (which hadn't appeared on any of the departure boards, as if passengers would have some sort of telepathic, zen-like understanding that they had to board a random secret train) with about a minute to spare before the doors closed and it pulled out of the station, making its stately way across the lagoon to the mainland.

At Mestre station we found the train we needed and sank gratefully into the seats in one of the six person compartments. We were comfortable, and could now simply relax for the next few hours. Or so we thought - once again foolishly underestimating the ability of the Italian railway network to wreak havoc wherever possible.

It turned out we were sitting in the reserved section. There was no way for us to tell this, because nothing indicated that our seats were in any way different to the ones in the unreserved section. Unfortunately, by the time we did find out, all the unreserved seats were long gone and people were already standing in the aisles. The train continued to fill with people, and I soon found myself sitting on my backpack by the door, right next to the toilet.

Even this wouldn't have been so bad, but I was collared in conversation by Chandra, a friendly old Indian lady, who started to chat to me all about my life and travels. She then needed a bit of a sit down, so I gave her my place on the bag and stood awkwardly by the window as the train continued to fill and fill with people until it resembled an enforced game of 'sardines'. At this point there was no way that Chandra could have given me my seat back even if she'd wanted to (which I'm pretty sure she didn't). My legs started to get cramp. Chandra asked me about my religious views, and then actually punched me when I told her I was an atheist. It turned out to be a long three hours.

When eventually I arrived in Florence, I was a bit of a tired sweaty mess. I was soon picked up by the free shuttle bus to my hostel though, and everything began to change. The Heart of Tuscany Hostel is located in the rolling olive grove-strewn hillsides that lie about an hour away from Florence. It is just outside the tiny village of San Baronto, itself a short distance from Vinci - birthplace of Leonardo.

When I arrived I was treated almost immediately to some excellent homemade pasta and lots of lovely wine, and then fell deeply asleep in a four-bed dorm in which I was the only person. The hostel has been run for years as a more expensive, up-market holiday location, but at the start of April they decided to open it as a hostel. This means that for my mere 17 euros a night I had access to a swimming pool, restaurant and bar, and a panoramic view of the beautiful Tuscan countryside that was worth twice the price on its own.

I used the hostel as a base over the next few days to explore some nearby towns and villages, including Florence, San Gimignano, Siena, Pisa (that tower's really leaning, they're not making that up),and Lucca. In the evenings I enjoyed more tasty pasta and wine, and I even spent my last, slightly rainy day playing an increasingly heated game of Disney monopoly with a group of Canadian and American girls that very nearly ended in bloodshed.

If you ever fancy a cheap stay in one of the most beautiful areas of Italy (and why wouldn't you?), you could do a lot worse than tracking this place down.

Venice - Day Fifty

Okay, I've fallen a little behind on the blogging in the last week through a combination of busy, action-packed days and stone age internet connection speeds. As a result, the following are a couple of extracts from my personal journal, written shortly after my arrival in Venice:

I remember being at school (I'm not sure when, but I was definitely quite young) and learning that the city is gradually sinking and will one day be lost. I felt a real shock that this might happen before I got the chance to visit, and promised my young self that I'd get there before it did! Now I suppose it's a race between the rotting foundations and the risk of rising sea levels for what gets to finish the place off first.

I disembarked the night train (good word that), and strolled sleepily through Santa Lucia train station. I don't think there's a station in the world that can rival Santa Lucia for a first breathtaking look at a city.

Without warning, the concrete blah blah funcionality of the station drops away to reveal the Grand Canal sloshing merrily in front of you; gondolas, vaporetti, barges and speedboats weaving in amongst each other, and the graceful arch of the Ponte degli Scalzi spanning the water like an elegant alabaster bracelet.

Immediately you know that you can be nowhere in the world but Venice. It was yet another one of those moment where my natural, unbidden reaction was to smile and let out a gentle laugh of delight. I must be starting to look like a nutter.

The next morning, after I had spent my first day exploring the city in a fine light drizzle, I sat down in a sunny piazza and wrote the following:

Here are the first impressions of Venice that I scribbled down on a scrap of paper in a cafe where I stopped to grab a revitalising breakfast of croissants and cappucinos along the way:

• Too many tourists! Even on a rainy day in April.
• The city is very, very beautiful. Intoxicatingly, perspective-shiftingly beautiful. It's so familiar, and yet every side street and stumbled-upon piazza brings something new and intriguing.
• Venice is probably just as knackered (if not more) as Budapest, but it somehow turns its dishevellment to its advantage, like a frustratingly beautiful person who can roll out of bed with a hangover and still look like a movie star. The exposed brickwork, crumbling plaster, tumbledown ivy and lopsided church towers all just add to the charm of the place, in the same way that it is often the slight imperfections in a person that you end up becoming the most attracted to or affectionate about.
• I could stand and watch the traffic on the Canal Grande for hours. I stood on the Rialto and watched the hustle and flow of gondolas, barges, police boats, ambulances, vaporetti and so on and on for ages, a sea of tourists shifting around me like the coloured grains of a kaleidoscope for so long that I lost track of time as I simply stood spellbound and absorbed by the lifeblood that flowed before me down the city's main artery.
• Piazza San Marco is smaller than I imagined, and has less pigeons.
• There are barrow boys (well, men) everywhere. I hadn't really considered the logistics of supplying businesses in a city without tarmac roads until I watched the supply barges full of beer and food and a hundred other products, and seen guys sweating to get barrows up Rennaissance era stairways. This is not a good city to be in a wheelchair.
• I really can't decide who's louder; American tourists or the animated locals. They all bellow away like a herd of elephants after a wasabi enema. Italian is definitely a better language for swearing in though - I watched a wide-bottomed American lady clobber a guy in the face with her umbrella and nearly gave him a round of applause for the operatic volley of abuse he unleashed on her. I didn't understand a word of it but it sounded bloody good.
• I'm a coffee freak, and I've been saving my first authentic Italian cappucino for a city worthy of that honour (i.e. not Milan), and so there was a certain amount of expectation as the waiter brought it over to my table. I sipped it gingerly, only to discover... it was absolutely outstanding! Ordered another one immediately afterwards.

Vienna - Day Forty Eight

Saturday the 20th was a great day. I had been invited to a birthday barbeque, and ended up borrowing a mountain bike and cycling the width of Vienna to reach Donnauinsel - an island in the middle of the Danube that has been turned into a gigantic park. It took the best part of an hour to cycle there, but it was a beautiful sunny day, and after about ten minutes I stopped freaking out about cycling on the wrong side of the road (which is really off-putting by the way) and started to enjoy myself.

When we arrived at Donnauinsel we found a group of about fifteen to twenty people milling around a big circular public barbecue, and a huge feast laid out on two large picnic tables. Gabrielle, an Argentinian guy, had taken charge of the cooking, so I decided to get on with the important job of drinking beer in the sunshine and occaisionally throwing a stick for a yappy, happy and incredibly persistant sausage dog.

If you've never let an Argentinian cook you barbecue food, you're really missing out. Normally my manly pride would have had me poking coals and skewering sausages with the best of them, but I know when I'm outclassed. As if to emphasise his proficiency, Gabrielle pulled out the largest cut of steak I've ever seen (about the size of a small child) and started hacking portions off willy-nilly. He slathered them with a bit of secret recipe marinade and chucked them on the grill alongside the kasekrainer, wurst, halloumi and other assorted treats, and in no time everyone was chewing away happily.

As darkness began to fall, someone suggested we play some games. I got halfway through a drunken but passionate explanation of the rules of British Bulldog (a playground classic), when everybody suddenly broke into a game that was very clearly identical to British Bulldog. I didn't ask, but I'm assuming it was called Austrian Dachshund or something similar.

Missed the last metro home by exactly one minute, and had to repeat the epic bike ride in the dark whilst still slightly tipsy from all the beers. That seemed like a mini disaster at first, but the moon was nearly full and impossibly bright in the sky, the roads were quiet, and Vienna is even more beautiful at night. Various churches and public buildings became more dramatic than ever now they were suddenly backlit by a silver moon and wispy clouds - by the time I got home it wasn't just the cycling that left me breathless.