Sam's Holiday Adventures

Posted by on Tuesday 26th August 2003. 2 comments.

I’ve been away from Drunkit for a while – but now I’m back at Halcrow and again looking for excuses to waste time!

Holiday Number 1:
      Destination – Spain – Benicassim Festival & Barcelona
      Persons Present – Matt G, Claire (girlfriend), Jim & Charlie (Uni mates)

I have only good things to report from Benicassim – this is the best festival you could think of.  Situated a couple of hours train journey south of Barcelona, it has a spectacular location with the beach on one side and the mountains on the other.  We arrived with our tents on Wednesday afternoon, concerned about the scorching heat and how our tents would be like Sauna’s.  However, the camping areas have thin black material stretched out from poles about 10 feet high to offer shade from the sun – genius!  

We got our tents up quickly – despite severe issues regarding the soil being like concrete and therefore not ideal for getting tent pegs into – and were soon cooking Super Noodles on our tiny stove.  The huge beer tent was an obvious draw – Heineken sponsor the event so it was that or nothing, but at E3 a pint or E5 a litre we were not too downhearted.  

Thursday was a designated beach day – only about 20 mins walk away from the campsite is the beautiful Mediterranean sea.  The air so ludicrously hot that the sea was incredibly appealing – we all ended up with pruned fingers.  A trip to the local Supermarket provided us with lots of cheap Amstel and a bottle of Vodka, which would come in handy later on.

I’ve never before showered at a festival – don’t think I’ve ever even seen the washing facilities at Glastonbury or Reading – but in Spain they had a massive area of cold outdoor showers, which were by far and away the nicest showers I’ve ever been in!  We averaged about 4 showers a day each – so cold, so good!  Certain members of the group particularly enjoyed the high density of topless (and occasionally bottomless) women to be found here!

Unlike in Britain, the music ran from about 5pm until 5am – but nothing good was on before 9 or 10 most nights so we had time for beach in the afternoon preceding dinner and cheap beer before heading to the arenas.  Saw loads of great stuff, highlights including Groove Armada, Blur, Moby, Beth Gibbons (from Portishead), Death in Vegas, Suede (surprisingly good I thought).  

Confusingly, there was a Chill Out Zone sponsored by Red Bull (work that one out?!?!) but it got us all nostalgic about VodBull.  There was a kebab stall (decent quality, although not generous enough with portion size), and lots of Heineken on sale.  On our merriest of evenings, we ended up taking turns to do individual ‘comical’ dance routines to impress the watching crowds.  

The festival was undoubtedly the Mullet Capital of the World – there was such an enormous array of dodgy hairdo’s (eg shaved on top, long at the back, bleached mullets, curly mullets, undercut mullets) that by day 2 we had stopped pointing them out to each other – it was no longer a challenge!

After the festival, we headed up to Barcelona where we ate loads of fish, saw some cool buildings and did cultural stuff.  The highlight though was discovering an all you can eat restaurant near our hostel, to which we turned up to at 11.30, persuaded them to stay open and ate copious amounts of oyster, squid, chicken and stuff.  We were so drunk by then that on returning to the table with a plateful of food, I nearly slipped – one oyster fell from my plate – and the other 4 were in hysterics for about 10 minutes…  Claire passed out on her wine glass before the waiter brought us all ice cream, very nice.

I would recommend anyone to go next year – guaranteed sun, beaches, great music, The Nicest Showers On Earth ©, hilarious hair – the place has it all.

Holiday Number 2:
      Destination – Cornwall
      Persons Present – family, Andy Lewis, Brihony Williams.

Just had a chilled out week – played loads of tennis, cricket, Monopoly, Championship Manager (we’re kicking ass with Newcastle – Chopra & Ronaldo are dream team combo up front).
Andy, Brihony & I got very drunk one night after a pub dinner and ended up on the beach at 3am throwing her soft toy around for some reason…

No waves for surfing unfortunately.  Had a night in a real ale tavern in Newquay drinking Cornwall’s finest beers!  

A most pleasant time had by all!  And England won in the cricket.

Sam

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