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We left Friday afternoon and caught the train to Jakarta, it was nice to get away for the weekend with the girls, after just over 3 hours we arrived in Jakarta.We left the station and made our way to the taxi station and got a taxi to our hotel.That end up being a confusion, as he did not know where it was and had to stop several times to ask for directions, we soon discovered that it was because it was down a side street and the road name was not well known.The hotel was nice, nothing special, but good for what we wanted and the room had 3 beds so none of us had to be on our own.We got ourselves showered (which was really nice, it a proper shower and a bath, with hot water, oh how I had missed it, it is now small things that please me).
We were ready and were off out for dinner, although we were very tired we were looking forward to having some food that resembled home and didn't include rice.We arrive at an area 'Lonely Planets' Guide had recommended and had a walk around to see what we wanted, we finally decided on a restaurant that served Mediterranean food and it was AMAZING, had warm pitta bread with hummus, lamb kebab and some garlic potatoes, we were all in heaven and were VERY stuffed by the time we had finished.After our gorgeous meal, we went to look for a bar to have a drink, this was very exciting after only being able to get beer in Cirebon, we eventually found an Irish bar, it was so nice and could have completely forgotten I was in Indonesia, there were lots of 'Bule', they had proper alcohol (hello Malibu, how I have missed you my friend) and live music, we couldn't have ask for anymore from the bar, had such a great night and it was a great way to start the weekend.
The next day (Saturday) it was time for shopping and proper shopping in a shopping centre with English shops, it was very exciting!!When we arrived at the mall we headed straight for Starbucks, oh how I had missed having that available to go to whenever I wanted.After our great drinks, we went and explored the mall, I discovered many English shops including, Marks and Spencers, Miss Selfridges, Topshop/Topman, Debenhams and Dorothy Perkins within Debenhams, which was the best one to discover!!It was also very funny shopping in English shops with English sizes and 2 American friends who had NO idea with the sizes, that Chrissy picked up a size 20 top, couldn't stop giggling, cause I can guarantee that Chrissy is NOT a size 20, she is smaller than me, after some English coaching we found the correct size. We shopped so much, that it was time to eat, this time we went for pizza, the restaurant was very much like Pizza Express, I had dough balls to start and duck pizza, with a beer, it was so yummy again!! We got a taxi back to our hotel and again, the taxi driver had issues finding it, also telling us that it didn't exist, although we knew it did as we had stayed there, hehe!! When we got out of the taxi and were walking through the hotel, Kate realised that she had left all her shopping purchases in the taxi, after running back out to find the taxi had left, the nice man on the hotel desk phoned the taxi company to try to get it back, but with no luck, we went and got ourselves ready for the Java Jazz Festival.
We arrived at Java Jazz Festival, feeling a little overwhelmed, there were so many people and in true Indonesian style no directions or signs, so we followed the crowd through and looked around.We spotted many people walking around with beer, but were unable to locate it, so in true bule style, I strolled up to the next person I saw with a beer can and asked where they got it, some things will never change.He directed us to the Heineken stand and right next door was the Jack Daniels stand, just what 3 alcohol starved bules needed.After many drinks we thought it was about time we tried to see some music, a little bit unsuccessful to start with as I said before the Indonesians don't do organisation very well, so we had no idea what was going on in each room, until we finally found a program of each stage, by this point it was getting late, but we saw some amazing artist, especially the last ones we saw, that was proper jazz.After an amazing night we returned to our hotel to sleep ready for our last day in Jakarta.
Sunday we returned to the same mall as Saturday, so that Kate could re-purchase some of her items she had lost the previous night in the taxi, we also did some more shopping and went to the cinema and saw No Strings Attached, was very good and would recommend it.After the cinema we went to a different mall to do some food shopping to purchase items that were not available in Cirebon,my best buy was bacon, not available at all in Cirebon as most of the population is Muslim, they are not able to eat pork.Along with many other things we had brought we rushed back to the station, as we were very close to missing our train again, like our previous travel trip, but if we missed this train, that would mean no train till the next morning and we would not be back for school, so that just couldn't happen.We luckily made it with 5 minutes to spare and the train was late, so we were safe.
I had an amazing weekend and doing it with Kate and Chrissy made it even better to have some amazing friends to share it with.Here's to our next travel adventure.
lots of love
xxx
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