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Fordy On Tour
They call Chesington the World of Adventures, but if they knew what happened to me Kyle, Andy and Mark then they'd have to re-consider their name!
The 2 weeks for the World Cup have been pretty manic but we all had such a good time!!
Day 1 started with picking up everyone and driving to Waterloo to be there for the Eurostar at 5.35am. We could tell it was going to be tough going from the start when we picked up Kyle at 3am and he was still asleep in bed! Anyway we eventually got to Waterloo after getting lost in london and arrived on time only to miss the eurostar as the police stopped us and took down our details and did a criminal check on us. Luckily they didn't find out about Andy's past.........only joking!
Good job we missed the eurostar though as Mark managed to leave his phone in the x-ray machine that scans bags etc and was lucky enough to get it back as we were still in Waterloo when he realised he'd not got it half and hour later!
Arrived in Paris late but managed to get to Frankfurt ok where we had a hotel booked. Next day England v Paraguay......... the other 3 had money to splash out and all bought a ticket off a tout for $500 each and watched the game in the ground, I however didn't have the luxury of money and watched the game on the big screens with about 40,000 other english fans shouting and screaming. After beating Paraguay, it was our intention to go to La Rochelle in France for a peaceful relaxing few days in the sun, but we almost couldn't get there as the whole of frankfurt public transport was shut down due to violence and fighting in the centre. Lukily our train was at about 11pm and by then it had settled and we got on the train.
The train journey was long but we had fun as we were sharing the cabin with a Vietnamese bloke called Ung! He was a bit strange to say the least but he gave us a present........... a mouse mat each, yep a mouse mat!! You can see some pictures of the famous Ung in the photo section.
La Rochelle was really quiet and pretty dull but we just chilled out by the pool and watched football. We did however see some pikey's beat each other up and throw bikes and metal poles at each other literally about 15 metres from where we were eating our meal one night! That was entertaining anyway. On another night one of the waiters dropped 2 bottles of pepsi on andy which drenched him so they took him into the back room and gave him a good seeing to and gave him a new t-shirt to wear, it was a nice spanking new Pepsi T-shirt, again this can be seen in the photos!! We saw France play in France, their fans are rubbish and the pubs had about 2 people wearing French shirts!
Next up was Nurenburg, where again the other 3 paid another $500 to watch the game, and again I saw the game with a different 40,000 others on the big screens! It was sectioned off and was like a little village with purposely built pubs, restaurant, stalls, music, it was like a mini carnival, great fun and good atmosphere!
All along we had planned on staying with some german bloke in Saltzgitter after Nurenburg in a cabin that he owned on his property. Andy's uncle is friends with him so it was agreed we could stay there, Anyway, the day before we were supposed to get there, we find out the German idiot has decided to go on holiday without telling us meaning we've got nowhere to stay for 4 nights! We were wise and decided to look at places that we could go to for a couple of nights then move on for another couple of nights, next stop we decided on..........Amsterdam!!
Got to Amsterdam and every accommodation was booked!!! However we were prepared, and we brought a tent along with us so we stayed at a campsite nearby. First stop in Amsterdam was a Sex Museum! Only in Amsterdam could you have that! We sampled the fine local delights in the cafés and had a visit to the red light district, was a good laugh!
However by this time Mark's mosquito bites from France on his ankles had got infected and his ankle swollen up and went manky.....time to visit the hospital! (you can't have a good holiday unless someone has visited a foreign hospital at least once!!)
We took a tour of the Ajax football stadium but unfortunately they were doing work to the pitch for a Robbie bloody Williams concert in a couple of days time so we couldn't see the pitch. We were also intellectual and visited the Anne Frank Museum. Saw Holland play in Holland, the fans were not as loud as i thought they would be, but definitely more passionate than the French! Went to a few more cafés and pubs and then it was time to move on again....
Next stop we decided on Geneva in Switzerland as it was on the way to Milan where we had a couple of nights booked already. Managed to get a hostel but the room was for 6 so we had 2 others in there too! One bloke was a canadian/chinese guy called Dave, yeah we were surprised by his name too! He turned up about 1am just as were we going to bed, we'd known him for about 5 minutes when he went to the bathroom to wash. We'd had a few drinks by this time and I decided to jump in his bed when it was dark and scared the crap out of him when he came back! The other bloke turned up about 1.30am was also from Canada but no idea what his name was, he didn't want to talk to us and went straight to bed without saying a word. We had the last laugh though as Kyle had already taken his pillow so this bloke had a fairly uncomfortable night no doubt!!
At the bit of Lake Geneva that we were at there was a big diving board (about 40ft high). Andy decided to jump off it but was stood at the top for literally half an hour getting the courage to jump. Me and Kyle got bored waiting for him to jump it so we went up there and about 30 seconds later I made the jump followed by Kyle a few seconds later..... Andy eventually got the courage to do it! Even with Mark's gammy foot he did the jump afterwards too.
Switzerland were playing while we were there and after their victory there was a lot of car horns and shouting going on.........much louder than Germany, France and Holland had been while we were in their countries watching football.
We'd had 2 nights booked in Milan as we were going to watch Rolling Stones play at the San Siro only for Keith Richards to fall out of a palm tree in Fiji and have to have brain surgery which led to the concert being postponed. When we got to Milan we tried booking up our train back to Paris so that we could get home. We were told every train was full up so we couldn't get anywhere! We eventually booked up the train back to Geneva and were going to make our way from there to Paris on the Friday. We thought it was a bit strange that all the trains were booked up so we called the english number and they told us there were still spaces on the train all the way back to Paris; so we went back to the station and asked again to be put on the train only to be told it was still full. We went to another booth and booked the train all ok, bloody Italians don't know what they're on about!
Our hotel was a bit strange, it was more of a hostel really than a hotel, they were having some refurbishment's going on so we were put in the disabled room downstairs! There were railings and handles everywhere! The toilet had a big hole in the front, Andy didn't realise and ended up pissing all over his shorts! Haha!
While in Milan we walked round the shops, ate some pizza, did more walking, ate some pasta, walked some more, ate pizza and pasta, walked, watched the Italy game in a big square with about 3000 italians on a big screen, walked more...... we were tired from walking!
Also went to the San Siro and had a tour around it.
Got on the 7 hour train journey from Milan to Paris and queued up to change our Eurostar from Monday to Friday (that day)........... it was full!! More panic and lots of phone calls and internet surfing and had the brain wave to get to Calais and get a ferry back to England. So got to Calais about 8.15pm and we were on the 8.30pm ferry back to home sweet home!
Sunday watched England beat Ecuador in walkabout and now in the process of organising to go back to Germany on Friday as me and Kyle have Quarter Final tickets to see us beat Portugal and also have tickets to see us win the semi finals too!
I'll give another update on my return!
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