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It's been difficult to keep up the blog so I have been typing it into my calendar on my phone. So finally here it is! From Birmingham to Milan!
Thursday, Sept 1
Lesley kindly drove us to Birmingham through the back streets - the scenic route. Very pretty! She dropped of us at Solihull and we jumped on a train to Snowyhill and then from there the metro to Bilston.
Bilston. Bilston is on the other end of the spectrum to the Cotswolds. As bill was walking us down some back streets to show us one of his clubs and have a drink he mentioned that we shouldn't walk these streets at night - people like to lurk about and there have been some shootings and stabbings. The english love their stabbings! At home you open paper and it's all car crashes. Here you open the paper and it's all stabbings!
Bill took us to his club and we met a bunch of his mates who he plays crib with. (some sort of card game) As they talk to each other it's like trying to listen to someone who's talking another language. It's an entirely different sort of English!
Friday, Sept 2
Bill took us to black country museum. Which, to be honest, I wasn't expecting much off. Well wasn't I surprised! remember old Sydney town back at home? Next to the reptile park, it was all old school and they were all dressed up from the 1900s and they performed whippings and stuff like that. Well black country town is just like that, minus the whippings. It was very cool and even though I don't really remember what I learnt, it was still interesting. And we went into an mine which was made to look like the old days. It was very cool.
Then bill took us to the crooked house which is very cute. It's an optical illusion and it was nice to sit out and have a pint. There's nothing really Much to say bout it except look at the photos.
That night Billy took us to one of his clubs. Where we met a few more of his mates. One in particular we won't ever forget. This man, I've forgotten his name, was ex military. And made sure we all knew it, and remembered it. At first he was nice enough, had a banter with us, had a chat. He was harmless. And then it got... Strange and weird.
He couldn't understand why we liked England and told us (a few times) that we'll come across strange and weird things on our travels. Him being the first. He then made Michael and I hold hands and look into each others eyes... And quoted poetry... 10 mins later he held my hand, looked into my eyes and quotes poetry. Again.
Strange and weird.
This gentleman is friends with one of bills nephews so he suggests that we go to The Exchange where he is and keep drinking. So we do. The four of us trudge on to this pub, somewhere out of town. When we get there there's not even 10 of us. There's the gaffer behind the bar, she was lovely. A guy who when we were introduced kissed my hand and looked like such an Englishman. Big orange bushy hair and beard and loved his sport so he and Michael had a bit of a banter. Bills nephew and his girlfriend, a guy wearing glasses, strange and weird man, bill michael and I. It wad good fun, standing around chatting to these people who were the real English. At some stage the gaffer shut the door and the curtains and we all just stood around drinking chatting and laughing. It was good fun:) above the bar there was English writing, real English writing that is very hard to read, I thought I did a good job of it and after strange and weird guy kissed me on the forehead. What a character
Saturday, Sept 3
Went into Birmingham and went to "The Bullring". The biggest shopping centre I have ever been in. From the outside There was an east wing and a west wing. which inside were joined under the road. Each side had 3-4 levels, it was amazing. Every girls dream! Except all the people. So. Many. People. 40 million people pass through it every year, there probably was 1mil there when we were, it felt like it. I couldve gone crazy. Anyone would've gone crazy. And we kind of did. On things we needed! Sleeping bags for Oktoberfest, a duffel back for travelling Europe and I got an awesome waterproof jacket which I can use through winter and when we go to the snow! It's unbelievably huge and we were wondering around for probably close to 3 hrs.
Let's explore Wolverhampton! Which is 2 mins down the road. We thought "it's the closest capital city to here, let's go have an explore, grab some dinner and have a quiet one"
Lesson learnt: when Alex and Michael say it's going to be a quiet one, it isn't going to be. so we caught the metro into Wolverhampton. We got off the metro at wolverhampton. There is no one around. Literally no one.
Well we're here, may as well explore. Lucky Michael is good with direction (I get lost when we've walked up and down one street). We walk around, stop at a map which we cant figure out. Meh we'll keep walking surely there's somewhere to go.
A walkabout pub! Haven't been in one yet so we popped in ordered some food and grabbed a beer. Between 7 and 930pm, at one stage we were the only ones in there. Started becoming a tad disappointed with the famous Aussie pubs when we were kicked off our tables and tables were being taken away. There's me thinking "what? This massive space is meant to be a dancefloor? There's going to be that many people here??"
Well by 11 we were drinking vodka redbulls with a shy uthilanian and dancing with his friends! uthilanians "i try to talk my language with you" me "we'll just dance!!" It bacame PACKED. People started racing to the side where an entrance to upstairs had opened up. Michael and I headed up. Well. We became FAMOUS. Somehow we started talking to a group of English people. And it started. "these guys are Australian!" "Australian?? How you goin mate??" they loved us. LOVED us. A girl even got a photo with Michael because she "wanted a photo with an Australian". Good night. Definately paid for it the next day...
Sunday, Sept 4
Woke up. Hungover. How can you spend over £100 when vodka redbulls are only £2?
bill took us to his club, the one we went to on Thursday night (we stuck to coke). Played some bingo and were in bed by 12, and we were still hungover.
Monday, Sept 5
Bought a ball and kicked it around. I found out that no matter how hard ill try, I'll never want to play soccer. Sorry, football. Someone said I had a bony body...????
Tuesday, Sept 6
Went to RAF museum. Spent 3 hrs there looking at planes. If your a plane enthusiast it would be great, if your me, it's not.
Was reminded how bad English drivers are today. I didn't think we'd make it home alive. People weaving in and out not using their indicators the way they should. Bad drivers, however very polite. Let people in where we wouldnt.
Finally understood what offside means in football
Wednesday, Sept 7
Happy birthday Michael!
Today Bill took us to Bridgenorth which is an old town and there use to be a castle there. We had to catch an elevator type thing to get to the top and the views were fantastic! There is still a bit left of the original castle and it dates back to 900's. Yes very old! So we walked around there for a bit and then we went back home. That night we went out for drinks in Wolverhampton with one of bills brothers, Dave and his wife. Ended up doing a few pub crawls, ended up at a club and all of us doing jägerbombs... For a £1...
Thursday, Sept 8
Sign of a good night? Losing your camera.
Being on the freeway from bilston to Birmingham. I felt safer in a tuktuk in Thailand. I remember when I was learning to drive and mum or dad told me that you just have to trust that the other person is going to stay in their lane. If I was learning to drive here, you wouldn't have said that.
Friday, Sept 9
Finally we arrived in Venice! After a 2 hour flight, an 1 hr wait for a bus, 3 n half hr train ride and a 20 minute taxi we finally got to our camping ground (we're staying in a little cabin), we arrived about 9:30 last night so we grabbed something to eat at the restaurant here and went to bed!
Today we extended our stay til Monday and went into Venice to explore.
Venice is awesome! Very different from what getaway shows though. It's very ghetto, which adds to it's charm. On the way in you travel over a massive bridge, on either side its all just industrial, containers and containers just stacked up everywhere and it looked like they build cruises ships there on one side too. In Venice there is a massive bus depot, the transports pretty good here, and you get off there, cross over the bridge and just start walking! We walked for hours, it's easy to get lost and we thought we'd be fine without a map but in the end we gave in and grabbed one.. Which is in Italian. So we went to St Marcos square and there was a massive line to get in to a building there. We think it might be a cathedral, it's very impressive, probably should research that.. There were tourists everywhere! And they're so dumb! They just stop right in front of you or they'll be groups standing in the middle of a pathway. If you want to read a map MOVE TO THE SIDE! bloody tourists. We'd had enough walking so we found a pub, which seems to be kind of hard to do. Majority of places are restaurants where you have to be seated and it's table service, to find a pub you look down the alleyways. We sat down had a couple of pints and there was free wifi so we hopped on and booked our accommodation for Milan! It was more than we wanted to pay but it was either stay out of Milan where there was no kitchen at this hostel so we would be paying for eating out breakfast lunch and dinner and we'd have to pay to travel into the city centre or pay a bit more, have a kitchen and be 15mins walking distance from the city centre. We figured in the long run it would be cheaper for us.
Anyway, so we left that pub, found a supermarket and did a bit of food shopping to last us the next few days! Got back to the camping grounds and cooked up a pasta with vegies, had a couple of beers, a bottle of wine and went to bed!
Saturday, Sept 10
We went to Lido today which is and island just behind venice and has a massive strip of beach. We had to catch a water taxi which was cool because we went through a few canals and it's a different way off seeing Venice. It was such a hot hot sunny day, so nice as it was freezing in Bilston and it was only the beginning of Autumn! I'm going to struggle this winter!! So we got to Lido, walked across the width of the island which was only 5 mins and went for a swim and laid in the sun! We had taken some sandwiches and muesli bars and water so we didn't have to buy anything, stayed there for a few hours, went back to the camping ground, made some dinner, ate, showered and headed back out to Venice to see what the nightlife was like!
As we were walking along there was big group of boys with whistles and flowers around their necks Out of nowhere one hands Michael a plastic cup with yellow stuff in it. It's cheap wine. Then the centre man comes up to us, he has a hat on, a jumpsuit with a cut out so you can see his bottom and a cut out around his willy too. He's pushing what looks like a lawn mower but it's a street sweeper with a smiley face on it and on his back is a big plastic petrol tank filled with cheap wine. And in his hand is a mug with boobs on it, filled with cheap wine. We walked with them for a bit and found out through limited English that it was his bucks night! We saw them on our way back to the bus too and he looked like he was coming to the end of his night. We found a pub had a couple of pints, watched people coming and going and then at about 11 headed off. Our last bus back to the campsite was at 12 and a taxi cost €40 so we didn't want to miss it!
Sunday, Sept 11
Today we're just going to chill out. Save a bit of money, we've still got a lot of traveling ahead of us! We're about to have some breakfast, do some washing and then head into Venice to see if there's somewhere that's showing a replay of the Australia Vs Italy rugby game. I don't care that much but Michael wants to see it, and to Milan tomorrow!
Monday, Sept 12
Went to the train station to check out tickets to Milan. There was one leaving in an hour for €17 each (instead of €34), so we had time to buy some nibbles for the three hour ride. The morning was going so smoothly! Then the guy came through to check our tickets, no problem. Although there is a problem. Apparently our ticket hadn't been validated. "validated? But we just bought it out of the machine" no no it's still not valid. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever. He wanted us to pay €46 each as a fine. We don't have that much on us. So he writes us a ticket and says if we don't pay our embassy is going to come to our door. Yeah right.
We have bought tickets from the same kind machine before. We have had our ticket checked before and been stamped, no problems with validity.
Towards the end of our trip another guy came up through the train checking tickets and stamping them, he stamped ours no problem. So we think the other guy was a crook and we're not paying the "fine"
Arrived in milan and hopped on the metro to our hostel, transport is similar to London and so easy to figure out. The only time we messed up was walking the wrong direction from our hostel! Arrived here, Zebra Hostel. It's really nice and the best hostel we've stayed in by far. We went for a walk to try and find somewhere to eat, didn't have alot of luck but finally found a cafe to have a sandwich.
Met two Aussie boys, one speaks Italian fluently and the other is learning it and both are semi working and living here so we went out for a drink and some dinner with them. Stephano took us to a place where you pay €10 for a beer but then you get all you can eat buffet. A guy I met in Fiji years ago got in contact with me saying he was in Milan too so after an hour and half of trying to find each other, we finally did and he joined us for a beer! The photo on my Facebook of a church all lit up, we were all sitting around there and there were hundreds of people sitting around socialising! On a Monday night, it was very cool.
Tuesday, Sept 13
we decided to go find the centre of Milan. The fashion capital. Another day of walking. We stumbled upon it and to be honest.. It was a bit disappointing. I'm not sure was I was expecting but all it is is hundreds of shops through a few streets. And they are nice shops. Shops that I didn't even think twice about going in. Gucci, Louis vitton, prada and all those big fancy expensive places. Although Michael did buy a pair of shorts and I picked myself up a dress (we didn't bring enough summer clothes!). We ended up buying a map so we could find our way home, grabbed some groceries and as we were making dinner we met 5 English boys and a German who went mountain bike riding, found that he liked and just didn't stop so he's riding his bike around Europe. Why not?
There was a Barcelona Vs Milan game on (michael being a Barca fan) so we all (my Aussie friend David came again too) went to a cafe that had the game on and watched it. All the chairs and been moved to be right in front of the tv and no one was talking, they were all just watching intently. Michael and I took them to a Carlsberg** pub type thing that we had found that day had a few more beers, went to another pub and before we knew it were back out front of the hostel talking to 3 Americans (one being completely off his head and playing a digeridoo), 2 hookers and it being 5am. Bedtime!
**Carlsberg. The best way to explain it is look at the photos (when I put them up). They're trying a new way of doing their beer, instead of using co2 they're using more natural ways of making the fizz. Everything in there was made of cardboard and you get a wristband to show your over 16 (yes, 16) go up to the bar and there are about 12 different beers on tap. You can try whichever ones you like and if you pay €10 you get a stamp card and you can have 4 beers, all around middie size.
Wednesday, Sept 14
Only left the hostel today to get some greasy food. Oh and spoke to Emma on skype! Yay :)
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