meet me further down the line...
well here i am, six weeks deep, with a profound respect for a lot of new things. i have packed europe in only my rainbows, my feet are now a permanent shade of black on the bottom. what can i say, it has been an amazing summer. salamanca was unbelievable, i learned spanish, i learned what staying out all night actually is, and i couldnt have asked for a better group of friends to do it with. portugal is portugal, its too out of the way for mainstream american travel and its a good thing because its one of the coolest places ive ever been. traveling to england solo was also one of the best decisions that ive made. you get a sense of independence that you cant find anywhere else when you do something like that. its truly liberating. we had a blast in nice, kind of a nice break from 5am clubbing and defintately a welcome change from the cardboard i was sleeping on in hostels. i realized that instead of being bored all the time that if i learned how to read a book i could occupy hours of train/plane time. this has been quite a discovery for me. past that i cant really describe what happened this summer. it has been the best time i have ever had and its beyond words. i am chilling in my hotel room in paris now, its 550am. i cant sleep, but im glad because maybe it will put me out on the plane. this terrorist business is quite scary, paris is on lockdown every where. i flew out of gatwick last week and now its all over the news. also scary. last night i got on the internet and found the hard rock cafe here. yea call me a tourist but i have had some serious ranch dressing withdrawls. i ate a cheeseburger that was entirely too large and greasy with some fries that i soaked in ranch. unfortunately they did not have bud light or natural light, but i made do with a bloody mary and a studweiser. today i got up and did absolutely nothing (except going to subway and having a few afternoon cocktails followed by a nap). it was excellant, i just laid around and watched about 6 consecutive hours of BBC repeating the same thing over and over. "Top stories this morning (the same thing we have been talking about for a month) Hezballah and Israel. Still fighting. Attempted plane bombings in London. London. Attempted Plane bombings in London. London scared. Israel kills ten more children/terrorists. Good for them." Its kind of ridiculous, but at least they keep you updated. Its nice to watch foreign news because you at least get a more worldly perspective on everything thats going on. I am dissapointed that I just heard the UN passed a resolution to stop the fighting. I was hoping Israel would have a chance to drop a few nukes (a few as in 40) and possibly destroy everything in the middle east. Thats a solution to peace process, if they are all dead then there is no one to suicide bomb our planes and buildings and shit. if the arabs dont want that kind of publicity and connotaion associated with their religion, then heres an idea, quit being terrorists. i mean really, they hide behind towels and sell oil, how much more scandalous could they be? (they have been whining on british tv all day about islamic racisim, i wonder why...) .
i have been dreaming about that orange and blue for a few weeks now, im starting to get a knot in my stomach. boys ill see you on sunday, its going to be a ridiculous year...
so heres the end of my tale, a great one it has been, full of adventures and stories no one will ever believe, but i was here and i still dont believe half of what happened so. anyway thats it, lo es fin,
sweet home alabama, lord im comin home to you
a little bit of monaco in my life
a well i had a couple of interesting days so far. mick jagger is staying in the next hotel down the street. thats pretty cool. him and dad are the same age, hilarious. anyway monday night we went out to the casino in nice for a while. there was nothing there but slot machines and video poker and both were in french. i opted to lose 5 bucks in video poker before making a move to the slot machines. first spin i won 50 credites. i did not understand what that meant. i played through all 50 credites with no remorse. i then played with about 3 more dollars and all of the sudden the machine starts flashing and going crazy and some woman came over to celebrate next to me in french. i still had no idea what was going on. i won 250 credites whatever that was. she then pressed some white button on the machine and all of the sudden i had 250 credites in my lap. well i collected them into my jug and turns out i won 125 euro. thats the first positive result of any type of gambling i have ever ventured into (that puts me only around 100 in the hole from college basketball season). so i took the money and ran back to the hotel. yesterday i laid around and went to beach. pretty standard. hung out in the piano bar at the hotel last night. really good music. today we got up and headed to monte carlo. i have never seen anything like this.
we were walking along outside the hotels, and i guarentee you that there is no city in the world with more ferraris, lamborginis, aston martins, maybocks, bentleys, rolls royces, porches, and high dollar benz. this is a picture outside some hotel...thats a lambo diablo, clk, ferrari, 911, ferrari, and some mercedes that has no business being in that picture
and of course we are in monte carlo, so we felt it was necessary to go in and make a donation to their casino. notice the two brand new 6 series convertables. its such a ridiculous town
another shot of the city
yea so we had a good day in monaco, bout to go grab some food now. im gonna get up and go parasailing in the morning before i catch my train to paris. the folks leave tomorrow so ive got a few more days by myself. should be a good time, but its getting down to the end of the line, so i gotta make it count
livin it up
ah well where to begin. i dont remember what pictures i put up yesterday, so ill just guess. we got to marseille via jimmy's shitty driving and we only made it due to my excellance in all fields of navigation including inaccurate directions deciphering (in spanish) from the guy at our hotel in barcelona. he said just follow "signs". whatever. anyway it was a fairly good looking drive on the way to marseille. lots of beach. we got to marseille and i once again navigated us to our hotel. we stayed overlooking the port. it was tight. saturday night there was a party and jacques and jackies house so we had a nice evening with them, shane and marie laure, edith and manu, and maurice and marie-po. shane and i then did a bit of marseille by night and he finally forced us to leave the bar at 3 oclock in fear of getting divorced. i then slept on the floor of the hotel. i woke up feeling all kinds of wonderful and headed to church for baby jack's christening. after that we drove out to this cool club at La Ciotat which is down the coast from Marseille. we had cocktails followed by an incredibly drawn out lunch and then a bit of swimming in the med and the pool. we got up this morning and loaded up to the train station. every one already had tickets, except me because i have a railpass. in typical graham fashion, i couldnt get on the same train with the folks, so i had to spend an hour in the train station bar and then ride to nice by myself on trashy city to city train (not the TGV). anyway got here a few hours ago, we are staying in an old palace right on the med. quite nice. there are art galleries and stuff on the first floor, fairly ridiculous. anyway my fingers hurt and i am tired of typing. peace
barcelona and marseille
well we made it to marseille and dad is not good at driving in europe. here are a few pics. ill jot down the story later as i am out of time.
its been awhile
yea so my laziness has over powered my ability to do everything. the arrival of the folks has not only brough fresh clothes, unlimited money, air-conditioned hotels, and free food, but it has also brought expensive booze and a desire to sleep all day and do nothing. with that in mind i have ignored blogging all together. we are packing up to leave barcelona this morning. i had an excellant three days here, though they were much more tame than previous encounters with barcelona and london. so yes, dad has the great idea to go and rent cars this morning TO DRIVE to marseille. i get scared walking across the street and my lunatic father is convinced that its better to drive with all of these morons than to ride on the faster, cheaper, and easier train. i have stopped trying to use logic and reason with him and have decided that i will booze cruise all the way to marseille and ipod it out. by the way i went bought angels and demons and read it one day again. those books are pretty addictive. or maybe thats my personality... im out peace
big wheels keep on turnin'...
ah so my last day in london was a bit of fun. i dont believe i got to mention my aussie buddy drilling everyone with the the fire extinguisher last night (or two nights ago i have no idea what day it is), but thats a noteworthy detail and it was quite funny (for me). today i went and walked around downtown, went saw the tower of london, which was actually not much of a tower at all. i then got on board the HMS Belfast and toured it for quite awhile. since you obviously dont know what that is i will tell you that its a WW2 era battleship. spent about 3 hours on there this afternoon. i got bored so i walked into a bookstore after that. bought the da vinci code, and then read all 600 pages of it over the rest of this afternoon. it was pretty good. tomorrow i think im going to go to westminster and maybe buckingham before i get on my plane tomorrow night. im getting bored and everyone in my room tonight sucks. well nada else. im gonna go ipod out for a bit.
