Back to Toronto, my 2nd home

G’day all,
Sorry it’s been such a long time since my last update but I’ve just been having too much fun to get on with it. It’s been a great past week or two with non-stop fun and not a moment to ponder. After Morocco I caught the ferry back across to Spain and met up with Sean, Des, and Shane in Seville for one last night of partying together. I literally rocked up to Seville just before it got dark and met the guys at the hostel. They told me I had 10 minutes to get ready because we were heading off on a pub crawl so I didn’t have to for a shower or anything and headed like a feral. We had a pretty big night and drank a dangerous cocktail of various drinks included in the pub crawl. The following day I said my farewells to the guys and headed off alone to Lagos in Portugal. I knew I wanted to do some surfing in Portugal and Lagos had a nice ring to it so I blindly headed there with no expectations. Lagos is a small party town which I grew fond of the minute I stepped off the bus. There didn’t seem to be any Portuguese people in Lagos though as the whole town seemed to be run by young people from all over the world. I was met at the bus by a guy who took me to his hostel called the ‘3 Monkeys’ where I had a brilliant time. Within the first 20 minutes I was already booked onto a surf trip for the morning so I rested up for the big day ahead. Each morning I stayed there I had the biggest English breakfast and stuffed myself full before surfing. The surfing trip was more of a ‘learn to surf’ trip and everyone was pretty much surfing for their first time. I’ve grown up in the surf but have always body-boarded so surfing to me was fairly new too. Being the only Aussie on the bus, there were huge expectations on my shoulders to lead the way on the waves but I really had no idea either. We drove for almost an hour to the west coast of Portugal where we met some seriously nice waves and good weather. We surfed all day and by the end of the day I was starting to cut some moves on the waves and quickly booked myself onto the trip again for day 2. I had a great time surfing both days and can’t wait to get into it when I get back home now. I never really got to see much of the town of Lagos as surfing took up all my time but I had a little walk around just before catching the bus to Lisbon. I only spent one night in Lisbon and it seemed like a nice trendy little city but on Tuesday I flew off to London. It was nice to be back on a plane again but felt even nicer to be able to speak English for the first time in almost 3 months and be understood. People always say my accent is too strong and I end up finding myself trying to put on a bad American accent to get by sometimes. London was just a flyby visit to see my cousin Dave before flying off to Toronto, Canada on Wednesday. I was really excited to come back to Toronto as it feels like my second home and most of my best friends live here too. The weather was perfect when I arrived and I was met at the airport by one of my best mates Rob. My cousin Dan flew into Toronto a few days earlier and within a few hours we were all reunited at Rob’s new house drinking a few beers. Rob and Steve are my best two mates in Toronto and they recently moved about 5 houses away from each other in this really nice new area downtown. Dan and I have been in Toronto for the past week now staying with Rob and Steve and having a brilliant time catching up with all my footy mates each night with some quiet beers. On Thursday I showed Dan around town a bit, being my old home 2 years ago. We had a pretty casual day and went to the CN tower and soaked up the sun walking between the skyscrapers and china town. On Thursday night we went to footy training with my old team the “Central Blues” and found ourselves on the roster to play on Saturday. I couldn’t wait to play again and trained as hard as I could after no exercise in about 6 months. On Friday I wad so sore I could hardly walk and was wondering how I’m going to get through the game but after the warm up on Saturday I was good to go. It was a great feeling being re-united with my mates again and playing for my beloved Blues. We headed out to play a town called Guelph about 80km out of Toronto. On the drive out we traditionally listen to our pump up music as we cruised along the freeway to the game. The field was quiet rough and was layed in flowers and weeds and had a lethal looking cricket pitch waiting for us wanting to rip our knees up in the center of the field. We played really well in the first quarter and I got a nice hand pass off to Dan who kicked a goal and Rob kicked another. After that unfortunately we got goal after goal kicked against us and ended up losing by about 7 goals in the end. After the game we had a barbie and some beers before partying the night away downtown like the good old days. Dan and I planned to stay in Toronto for another week but after working out our plans decided we better leave for New York on Wednesday otherwise we will be behind schedule. The past few days I’ve been showing Dan around a bit more and we had a nice day down at the beaches in the sun. Last night we had some farewells drinks with Rob and Steve and today we head off to Niagara Falls then onto New York on a overnight bus from Buffalo. We had a really nice time in Toronto and thank Rob and Steve for having us but it’s time to move on. Next Stop….New York.

Woodsy

From Desert to Snow

G’day all,

Well she’s been a busy week of travelling this past week heading from the desert in Africa to the snow of the Arctic in just a number of days. I first flew into London and stayed with my cousin Dave for a couple of days to adjust and get some cold weather gear together before heading north. It was good to see Dave again and we went out to the famous “Walkabout” pub in Sheppard’s Bush to get me back into the rhythm of London life. I found it really hard going from the cheapness of Egypt to the high prices of London but the relief of not being hassled was a nice change. On Tuesday I flew to Helsinki in Finland where I stayed in a hostel inside the Olympic stadium which was pretty cool. There seemed to be nobody to speak English to there so I just went off strolling around Helsinki myself. Helsinki is a nice place but it’s probably a bit bland I’d have to say. It was also quite expensive so I had to stick to my London ways and try not to spend any money. The weather was freezing cold and it was snowing so I pretty much stayed in the shopping malls walking around Helsinki and even indulged in some traditional Finnish food…..McDonalds. I was expecting Finnish people to be friendly but I found myself being ignored by the locals when asking for directions on the street and when ordering my McDonalds meal the girl yelled at me and said ‘Wait a minute will ya’. On Wednesday I caught the ferry to Tallinn in Estonia and have been there for the past 4 nights. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia and is a big party town on the Baltic Sea. I fell in love with Tallinn the moment I got into the old town area and saw the beautiful cobble stoned streets and ancient architecture. I stayed at the Tallinn Backpackers hostel right in the middle of the old town and soon realized how friendly Estonians are and how much they loved to party. We had a great mixture of people staying at the hostel and I clicked with everyone really well once I sat down and said hi. Before I knew it I was in my party clothes and had a beer in my hand. The one crazy thing I found about Tallinn was that every single girl looks like a supermodel. There are no fat people, no ugly people, and nobody seems to have any imperfections. On my first night we went to a popular club here called “Hollywood” and I felt like the ugliest person in there as everyone looked like models. The next 3 days after that feel like a bit of a blur as all we did was head out each night and sleep in each day. I did get to have a nice look around Tallinn at the end though and walked around the town in amazement at how awesome everything looked and how nice it was walking around in the snow. I had a funny moment when I walked down to the lake which was frozen and watched ducks trying to walk on the ice as they looked like Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. Yesterday I took a bus to another town in Estonia called Tartu which is a big university party town. Everyone seems to be so nice here and if you ask for directions they seem to walk you to where you want to go rather than point in the direction. I think I’m sick of partying now but I’ll have to see how long I can last before heading to Riga in Latvia.

Hung-over again,

Woodsy

The Ireland leg begins…..

G’day all,
Well it has been a while since my last update mainly due to either not much happening or too much partying. My best mate Tate came and joined Sean and I at the “Kings Arms” on the Saturday before we headed off to Ireland. It was a huge celebration for the 3 of us to be finally re-united after not being together for 14 months and we really showed the English how to party that night. There were champagne corks flying left right and centre and we all ended up singing songs and wrestling until the early hours of the morning in front of a pub full of amazed English onlookers. On the Tuesday we got our 1 pound (+ about 30 pounds of extra charges) flight from London to Dublin on Ryan Air. We expected the worse as we heard the flights were really dodgy and disorganized however surprisingly it all went smooth as a jar of vegemite. I was so glad to finally be making progress again in the trip as doing nothing and being too cheap to do anything in England was doing my head in as I felt so helpless. Once we arrived in Dublin we found a cheap hostel, looked around for a bit, then sniffed out the cheapest we can eat and drink. We spent 2 nights in Dublin and all we really did was party and sleep in. I did get to meet up with a good friend of mine Elise who I met in Thailand last year so that was really cool. Dublin was a cool city but it was still way too expensive and big for us boys so we got a bus out to Galway on the Thursday. My cousin Dan met us at the bus-stop when we arrived and he let us crash on his floor for the first few nights until we settled in. I was also really excited to find out that our Welsh friend Kate who travelled with us through Thailand and Cambodia was staying with Dan. We instantly fell in love with Galway as the city has such a good feel to it. It’s so pretty and happening, and it has a great buzz about the place. After planning to have a quiet one Thursday night it ended up being another blinder as we also partied with Dan’s kiwi housemates Dom and Victoria and his other Adelaide housemate Shane. On Friday it was my 25^th birthday so we made it 4 nights out in a row. After spending 2 nights on Dans lounge room floor we were pretty keen to find our own place. On Saturday we hit the jackpot as we got a place right in the town for only 55 euros each a week and moved in instantly so we were thrilled to bits. We were so happy with our place we ended up throwing a house party and had everyone over for drinks before heading out on our 5^th night out in a row. The night life in Galway is fantastic. There are pubs and clubs everywhere you look and they all seemed to be packed out. In Ireland it’s illegal to smoke in pubs and bars now so it’s really weird seeing all these people standing outside the pub in the cold for a smoke. The past two weeks have been really fun however so costly and the alarm bells for my cash flow situation are ringing very loudly. Since Monday I’ve been on a job seeking rampage walking the streets of Galway with a pile of resumes under one arm handing them out everywhere. Today I got so desperate I noticed a tanning salon and an adult book shop advertising for full time positions so I had to blush and suck it up and hand over my resume to them. We’ve been in Galway for 5 days now and apart from the weather…We all love the place!!!!

That’s all for now,

Woodsy