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(Currently working in Paris, and for the most part living there too. Photos and whatnot here :)

Monday - Friday, 11 - 15 October 2010
(Working in Paris)

Friday, 15 October 2010 - Time for some Turkey!

 
I'm flying out from London tonight to meet Kristina for a long weekend in Istanbul, Turkey! From massive mosques to chaotic bazaars to Turkish baths to cruising along the border between Europe and Asia - should be good! We're flying back into Paris on Monday night, and next weekend we're off somewhere else (so too the following two weekends hehe, details later :)

Monday, 18 October 2010 - And now time for some snails, and frog legs

 
Kristina and I made it back to Paris tonight from Istanbul in one piece, and we're away again this coming weekend to Amsterdam. Meanwhile, the shit is hitting the fan in Paris (well, France as a whole) - details here :)
 

Tuesday - Friday, 19 - 22 October 2010
(Working in Paris)

Friday, 22 October 2010 - Weekend in the Dam!

 
Kristina's never been, I love it, so we're off to Amsterdam for the weekend - nice! Gotta love this working in Paris thing; Amsterdam is merely a train ride away :)
 

Sunday, 24 October 2010 - (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 200 out of 365

 
 
My, umm, fourth time in Amsterdam, and Kristina's first so the Red Light District was the first port of call right after arriving on Friday night hehe.

 
 
Second port of call: the other thing Amsterdam is famous for!
 
Space brownie ingredients: flower (i.e. flour hehe), chocolate, egg, sugar, cream, butter, and of course weed - yummy ;)

 
 
What goes good with space brownies? Well anything really but we opted for hot chocolate with an excessive amount of whipped cream.
 
Stoner.
 
Saturday was spent doing the same bike tour I did with Mum and Jared last year, and it poured with rain after which we were told it rains in Amsterdam around 200 days a year - bugger that!

 
 
And just like last year we saw windmills and the countryside...
 
...and the cheese and clog farm.
 
Speaking of clogs, our tour guide wore a pair for the whole trip hehe, nice.

 
Sunday we went to Utrecht (and got rained on again)...
 
 
...and Alkmaar where my grandfather was born (and got rained on some more).

 
 
Gingers: they're fucking weird!
 
Hahaha Sesamstraat! The Dutch word for street is straat by the way :)
 
That's not very nice. So yeah fun weekend in the Dam, despite the damn weather (see what I did there?).

Monday - Friday, 25 - 29 October 2010
(Working in Paris)

Tuesday, 26 October 2010 - Istanbul!
Photos and videos are here from the weekend getaway to Istanbul last week.

Wednesday, 27 October 2010 - Walk like an Egyption!

 
In the last couple months I've been all over the show - ten different countries in fact hehe (pushing my 20-something days of annual leave from work nice and far!) but I've got at least one more to tick off before the end of the year... Egypt! Snorkelling in the Red Sea, cruising along the Nile, quad biking in the desert, checking out the ancient tombs, and of course the Pyramids will be in there as well along with some friggin' scorching sun which I'm well in need of! Kristina and I fly out from London on Saturday, and get back again eight days later on the Sunday. Y'all have a good week :)

Sunday, 7 November 2010 - Walked like an Egyption!

 
Egypt, it's something else! We had an incredible week and saw and did some amazing stuff but it's hard work. Working out what is a fair and legitimate deal and what is a scam, who you can trust and who is just trying to stiff you - definitely not somewhere I'd want to visit if I'd never travelled before or had a problem with telling folk to shove it up their ass! Usual story then, I'm left with 500-something photos to sort and storyboard and caption etc., so watch this space :)

Monday - Friday, 8 - 12 November 2010
(Working in Paris)

Sunday, 14 November 2010 - One for the Kiwis

 

At the end of a tiny deserted bar sat a huge Maori man. He was having a few beers when a short well-dressed, and obviously gay, man walked in and sat beside him.

After three or four beers, the gay man got the courage to say a few words to the Maori. Leaning over, he whispered, "Do you want a blow job?"

At this, the massive Maori man leaped up with fire in his eyes, and smacked the shit out of the gay man, knocking him swiftly off his stool. He proceeded to beat him all the way out of the bar, leaving him bruised and battered in the parking lot, before returning to his seat.

Stunned, the bartender quickly brought over another beer to the Maori, and said, "I've never seen you react like that before, what did he say to you?"

"I don't know," the Maori replied. "Something about a job."

Monday - Friday, 15 - 19 November 2010
(Working in Paris)

Tuesday, 16 November 2010 - Egypt stuff!
This one took friggin' hours to put together (much like it did to put the trip itself together), but anyway all the photos, videos, stories, tips, and everything else from our week in Egypt is... here!

Saturday, 20 November 2010 - Disneyland Paris!

 

Every time I travel between London and Paris on the Eurostar I accumulate points that can be exchanged for various goodies (similar to frequent flyer miles or whatever). One of the goodies is tickets to Disneyland Paris hehe, and as of my last trip I had accumulated just enough points for two adult day-tickets. So Kristina and I were big kids for the day today and set out to meet Mickey!

Photos and videos here :)

Monday - Friday, 22 - 26 November 2010
(Working in Paris)

Saturday - Sunday, 27 - 28 November 2010
(Weekend in Dinant, Belgium)

Monday - Friday, 29 November - 3 December 2010
(Working in Paris)

Sunday, 5 December 2010 - No more Kristina :(

 
 

All over the news this week have been stories of the UK yet again grinding to a halt because of the snow. Kristina and I got the train through to London on Friday night and sure enough there is a lot of it, but you'd think that in this day and age of 2010 a country that encounters the same weather patterns year after year after year would learn how to cope with it, wouldn't you? Anyway, the point of the trip was that after landing here three and a half months ago just prior to our German road trip, Kristina had to fly home this morning (home being San Antonio, Texas). So last night was spent out on the lash with my (interesting) mates, including dinner at a restaurant a table over from Alistair Darling of all people, former chancellor of the UK who many people blame for Britain's current economic situation hehe. At least he appears to be doing alright.


 

Inevitably though, this morning came around and I had to let her go, and it was fucking hard! :( Together we did the German road trip, Lake Como and the Cinque Terre, Istanbul, and Egypt to name only a few, not the mention the myriad of other stuff we've done together over those months. Currently we have tentative plans for a another massive trip next April/May to cover northern Europe but time will tell on that one, dependant on both her and my finances as we've also got major plans for next September which I'll go into later. In the meantime though, I'm heading back to Paris.

Monday - Friday, 6 - 10 December 2010
(Working in Paris)

Thursday, 9 December 2010 - Could somebody please pass the salt, and the pepperspray?

 
It's all happening in London, and I'm bloody missing out on it! The government today won a vote in parliament to raise university fees three-fold, and that resulted in a lot of pissed-off students taking to the streets around parliament and smashing the place up - full story here. I'm back in London on Saturday so I'll go check out the aftermath but I dare say I've missed the best of it hehe - love a good riot ;)

Saturday, 11 December 2010 - Bonobo!

 
My work Christmas bash was this weekend, so I was originally heading back to London for that until I got a better offer - Bonobo in concert! Bonobo is the stage name of Simon Green, a British producer and DJ whose music I've been following for some years and have always wanted to see live. I got told off three times for taking movies because supposedly you're not allowed to, but stiff shit I paid my money, so here's some movies: here and here :)

Monday - Friday, 13 - 17 December 2010
(Working in Paris)

Sunday, 19 December 2010 - Nice day out there

 
 
Back to London for the weekend, and this was the scene coming out of the Tube - ice!
 
Yeah, hilarious. Actually what did have me almost pissing myself a guy just a little further up the road de-icing one half of his windscreen while the other half had a massive penis on it hahaha!

 
My coming back this weekend was mainly for this - Friday night at fabric which I talked about here when I came last year. To quote myself: "a nightclub in central London, and is one of the largest and most popular in the UK and widely regarded as one of the best dance music venues in the world." - yup, couldn't have put it better myself.
 

 
 
On Saturday morning I awoke with ringing ears to this - more falling snow. And the summers aren't much better hehe.
 
It's anybody's guess where that's going.

 
 
I headed into town and it was snow and sleet and slush and shit everywhere, with frenetic Christmas shoppers slipping all over the place.
 
Hahaha!
 
Anyway the point of my coming into town wasn't Christmas shopping (thank Christ), but to buy myself one of these - a friggin' iPhone 4. I've resisted for ages because I simply don't feel as though I need one, but my cheap little Nokia took a hit and the screen is on the fritz, so I figured I could buy another one or just buy something decent instead (£500 decent). Can anyone recommend some good apps?

 
 
On the way back home I took a detour to Hyde Park to check out the scene. It was all looking much like it did here :)

 
 
Sunday morning heading back for Paris, and these two were the second pair I'd seen this weekend lugging (or in her case dragging) a massive heater home hehe.
 
The other side of the Channel Tunnel on French turf. Apparently this has been the worst dumping of snow Europe has seen in 30 years, amd the coldest December on record for some 100 years. As a result, planes are cancelled, trains are severely delayed (like mine - 4 hours instead of the usual 2.5), and everywhere is chaos. This is Paris Gare du Nord station - it took me five minutes just to find a spot somewhere out of the way where I could actually take this shot.

Monday - Friday, 20 - 24 December 2010
(Working in Paris)

Wednesday, 22 December 2010 - Shortest day of the year

 

Shortest day of the year today in the northern hemisphere (or yesterday - one or the other), and it's Christmas on Saturday already! I'm heading back through to London on Friday, spending Christmas with the mates and staying put that week, doing the New Year's thing in London and then its back to Paris from January 2nd for the foreseeable future :) Obviously it would have been nice to get away for New Year's, but after all the travelling this year my annual leave has been well and truly used up!

In other news, after returning home to Texas not even three weeks ago, Kristina is coming back hahaha! Long story short, she does freelance swim coaching over the summer, and we've made some pretty decent travel plans from September which I'll bang on about later. In the interim she was planning to find some sort of random work to see her through until summer, but figured she could do that over here too seeing as I'm here hehe - good plan! The only problem is she won't have a work visa which will make job hunting slightly harder but by no means impossible. So anyway she just booked her flight tonight and is touching down in London on the 30th in time for New Year's! :)

Ho ho ho!

Saturday, 25 December 2010 - Merry freezing Christmas!

 
 
Matt pretending to know what he was doing in the kitchen (while Kate supervised and the Jamie Oliver book advised ;) Regardless, it was a fucking good feed!
 
The brand new Xbox Kinect got put through its paces. I discovered I'm awesome at dancing, useless at javelin, and all of us got humiliated at boxing... by a girl. Awesome :)

Sunday, 26 December 2010 - The digital story of the Nativity
Video here :)

Monday, 27 December 2010 - Let the sales begin!

 
Oxford Street at 4pm today - best avoided if possible!
 

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Page Comments


im fking jealous of the snow driving! lucky bastard!
- davydd