Amsterdam: What an Escape

On the saturday night in Amsterdam we had our "big night" and what a night it was, we spent the sepnt in the lively Rembrandtplein, having a geat dinner outside at the Three Sisters pub (the steak comes highly recommended...by me) and then went to a few bars, including one that had been done out to look like a cave in Ayres rock (in Australia, or did it have it's name changed, and does it have caves? basically it was red funny shaped walls, and it was an Aussie bar). Then we went to a club called Escape, which was filled with some of the most attractive ladies in Amsterdam that don't need to be in front of a window. We all danced like uncoordinated troopers for many hours, mostly on the podiums, showing those crazy dutchies how to really 'throw some shapes'. The drinks were astoundingly expensive, and I eventually resorted to buying water when tiredness kicked in. We slowly dragged ourselves back to the Botel along the Damrak, after eating gigantic amounts of chips and collapsed on my bed.


This was from the toilets in the Brazilian Bar, where the beers cold, the music funky and the people are friendly (one guy loved Steve's Thundercats t-shirt). I loied the way that there was just such a huge amount of graffiti on the walls, I almost etched my name on there, but I'm just such a goody-goody.


DJ booth in the Outback bar (at least I think that was its name, I could just be stereotyping), that dude knew how to spin some tunes. I do have more interesting shots from that bar, but I think that fall behind that curtain of censorship that the guys have set up from the trip (intriguing, no'?).


One of the many shots of the (HOT!) dancers in Escape, but I feel this one really captures the essence of the night, brilliant, just brilliant.

SPACE INVADERS around the world

SPACE INVADERS

Looks like I've solved the mystery of the little space invaders mosaic in Amsterdam, apparently it's this big global game.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, we live in a weird and wonderful world.

Amsterdam: Amstel Botel pics

Of course, I had to take a picture of myself brushing my teeth in the little Botel bathroom, wearing yet another of my Threadless t-shirts. Its funny, I never stop and ask myself why I take these pictures, I just think toothbrush pictures are fun.


A rather unusual addition to the regular hotel information sheet. From the exotic smells that were experienced in the hallways, this rule was very, very loosely enforced.


Just a quick pic of me and Tiggy boy's room, the cameraphone seems to have destroyed all perspective, but you get the idea of our surroundings.

Amsterdam: The infamous Botel!

I realised that my Amsterdam coverage was a bit sparse, and seeing as I went on about the Botel a lot before we went it only seems right to talk about it now.

It wasn't the prison ship that everyone had expected, although when we turned up in the rain, there were a few cries of "where have you taken us Bone?" which annoyed me because I'd often made the case that they couldn't complain because most of them did bugger-all towards the organisation. To be fair, we all changed our tune after a bit of a nap (the joys of flying at 6am). The the staff were friendly, and chatty when we rolled in at about 5am only semi-coherent, joking about giving us a wake-up call at 7am. The rooms were fairly small, but this was to be expected since it is a boat, and apparently most rooms in Amsterdam are small, even in expensive places. They were very clean though, Tigg worried a bit about securityy, his fears were laid to rest when the cleaner left a penny on his bed that had been found on the floor.

There was a wide variety of tv channels available (I didn't realise that 'in-house movies' meant porn 24 hours a day...), the view canalside was lovely, the bar was well stocked and reasonably priced. Whilst it isn't exactly situated in the heart of amsterdam, the walk to the main areas isn't long, and even my feet managed okay so pretty much anyone should be able to handle those cobbles.

If you're young, or in a big group, I would defintely recommend the Botel, as long as you're not expecting five-star accommodation, remember, you get what you pay for! (we paid £60 per room per night)

Leeds: Gurnfest

My weekend was occupied with a v.tiring but v.enjoyable trip to Leeds for a party, and the lovely Rosie's birthday.

Me, Greeno, Ben, Anna and Marques were packed like proverbial sardines into my 206, and the 2 hour journey seemed to take a fair while and it was hot, but we still had a good trip, with old-school stories and classic games (would you rather have 3 legs or an arm in your back?) keeping us going.

Upon arriving in Leeds we realised that we didn't actually know where Rosie's house was, and that we hadn't been given the right street name, but in the end we got there. Showered, changed, drove to a different house for the party. Where I had to catch in the drinking stakes, but never fear Frosty Jack's extra strength white cider came to the rescue, along with pouring vodka straight into the red bull can. It was at this point I realised just how classy I am....

It's always a bit tough for 5 people to fit into an alien crowd, since everyone else was from Leeds Uni, so there is a tendency that you'll just form your own crowd and not meet new people. As if by magic, the social powers of Frosty Jack's came about ("you cannot taste alcohol, and yet, it's 7.5%"), which led to much blokey booze discussion. We also managed to form quite a large circle for a rowdy game of 'Drink while you think' which was a lot of fun, and resulted in the emptying of a few cans.

Then we headed out into the infamous nightlife of Leeds, we hit a fair few decent (and expensive) bars, and I enjoyed a fantastic Lynchberg Lemonade in the Elbow Room, donated to me by Ana since she didn't like it (a Smirnoff Ice in exchange for cocktail, unfair to advantage to me on that one).

Rob and I enjoyed White Russians at Revolution, which I didn't think was as good as the one in Leicester, but it was quite cool the way that they had an outside area, even though it was pretty much an alleyway.

We then headed to the Townhouse, which was all exposed brickwork and filled with posers, which which meant it was expensive, but it was also filled with attractive looking ladies. Upon the advice of Corina (from Rosie's uni course) I purchased sloe gin and lemonade cocktails, which means I have finally found a use to the couple of bottles of sloe gin in the pantry.

As it was getting near 2a.m. a few of our group decided to head off, but since it isn't every day that I go to Leeds, the hunt for a club was on, we found one place and this is how Ben's conversation with the bouncer went:

Ben: Alright.
Bouncer: What make are your trainers?
Ben: Adidas
Bouncer: Sorry mate, can't come in

Boy shoulda worn a pair of Nike's! So then we found another club, it was called Rehab, and every person we spoke to told us it was only good if we were pilled off our faces, we I said "the windows are shaking, it has to be good!" Marques and Anna left. I wish we had too. Instead we paid £12 to get in (after persuading the bouncer that I wasn't that drunk, he thought I'd fallen over in the queue, simply not true) and found ourselves listening to the same repetitive house music for about an hour and a half until we left the pillheads to themselves.

Got a taxi back, chatted with Greeno till about 5, was amazed at the pace of a slug going up and down the wall. Was shocked by the stickiness of the floors (Ana's shoe actually came off on it in the morning). Slept for a few hours. Went round to Rosie's. Ben cooked an amazing full english breakfast for 8. Drove home. Collapsed on sofa.

Brilliant, thanks Ro (and her friendly friends).

Firefox is turning life to Opera

Well, it's 2am, and I've lost all of the bookmarks on my computer. I know most people have a lot of bookmarks, but I REALLY had a lot of bookmarks, I had more than a page of just t-shirt sites, and I can only remember 3! I've managed to salvage around 70ish from my history but it's not the ones you visit that you really need to have bookmarked, is it?

There are quite a lot of tutorials out there on the web about how to recover lost Firefox bookmarks, but when I did eventually find the elusive file it was corrupted, which makes no sense as I hadn't used my computer since Friday, but there isn't much that can be done now is there. Bye bye meticulously researched dissertation sources.

I'll do a write up of my night out in Leeds tomorrow, including how we paid £12 to get into a club that we were repeatedly told was "only good if you like drugs." I don't do drugs, but that place woulda probably turned me if we'd stayed till it closed. Just to clarify, I don't do drugs, I was just making it clear that it wasn't a great club.

*Title Explanation* I think I might give the Opera web browser a shot, even if it is ad supported. Oh, and I'm considering moving the blog over to a Wordpress based system.

Barrow Superbowl where the fun never ends

Due to a rather boring story involving bed-linen and Debenhams I found myself with nothing to do in the coastal town of Barrow, surely the most mocked place in Cumbria (though I can assume Cockermouth gives it a fair run for its money). The answer of course lay, as ever, with the combination of Pizza hut and Superbowl. The Pizza Hut buffet now has options, you can skip salad and simply gorge yourself on pizza, and for a pound less!

Suitably doughy Neil and I moved walked across the complex to the bowling alley, where we requested one hours bowling for £15, but we were told that we could have 2 hours bowling, a drink, AND a scone for just £5.95 each, which we obviously went for as it was the cheapest option. We didn't quite make it through the whole 2 hours as our hands eventually succumbed to the ache of seven games (I won 3-2 + 2 draws), but nevertheless it was damn good value.

btw, I didn't see Nixon at the superbowl, but I just wanted a picture and google imaged it.

2nd btw, I am posting from in bed, oh the glory of wireless internet!

Amsterdam: Red Light District

I wasn't all that shocked by the red light dstrict in Amsterdam, I guess it just depends on how you apporach it. Yeah I got offered cocaine every 20 seconds, but I wasn't exactly hassled by it, you just walk on and no one cares. And it wasn't as seedy as I imagined it, like the the pubs there are just like the ones outside of the RLD.

Admittedly the windows are pretty unavoidable (especially if you make sure that your route home from from the club just so happens to go via the main 'lady street'), and the women populating them are fairly attractive, largely, but our group did manage to restrain ourselves, although I'm tempted to say that Tigg's only reason for not help the local economy was because he didn't want 'the walk of shame'.

Note to any potential patrons, we found that it's probably best to go around 10 or 11 o'clock, as the quality at 5am was dramatically lower, although if you're looking for a hooker at 5am then their looks probably aren't going to be your number 1 priority.

We did get a couple of great quotes from the greasy sleaze merchants outside the doors of the sex shows. "Quality sleaze and filth" and "it's disgusting, you'll love it!" Which brought much laughter from us, which was probably his aim.

P.S. I didn't take the above photo, because I didn't want a pimp throwing me into a canal.

ack! it's broken

the blog seems to be broken at the moment, as I can't see the frontpage, though I can get to my archived pages. I don't know if this is the case for everyone, but I can't see how I'd fix it so I'll just have to wait (or blame it on the settings of my router).

And around half the world rejoices

SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR - GELLAR DESPERATE FOR TOPLESS ROLE

Ok, possible tabloid headlines for this story:

Buffy's Bountiful Boobies
Gellar load of these
Sarah Michelle, Un-topless hell
Gellar wants the breast roles

Ok, bored with that now.

Plugging the Dam

I've had some major laptop issues recently (the damn thing often refuses to turn on) leaving me with half of the previous memory, which I hope to rectify quickly by buying/ordering a new memory chip tomorrow. Because I just don't like having to do things on a computer even more slowly than usual. I appear to be suffering from a worryingly common fault on Sony Vaio's where the 2nd memory chip slot breaks, I've seen a few DIY fixes (bits of broken cd to push it, wrapping it in tape, even soldering the connections) but I think I'll just buy a 512mb chip for now, and then if I do get it fixed then at least I'll have gained a performance upgrade from my few days of frustrating laptop ownership.

I also bought GTA:San Andreas today, so I may well struggle to pull myself away from it in my quest to blog anything and everything about Amsterdam. I've found that there is something surprisingly satisfying about giving Carl Johnson bigger muscles, and hanging with 'ma homies'.

Amsterdam: Future, meet the past

So me and Tigg were enjoying a leisurely stroll around the great city that is Amsterdam (before the rest of the group had even got out of bed) and as we approached an archway to Dam Square we spotted this odd little mosaic high up on a wall.

I don't think it exposes my geekery too wildly to say that its a character from space invaders (or it could be Pac-man, I can't be quite sure, actually I'm swaying more towards Space Invaders now). I just thought it was really cool how an image from a computer game (however old it is) was on what was probably a centuries old building. And that it was created in such a well crafted tiled mosaic seemed to make this form of vandalism so much more socially acceptable. Maybe it will inspire a wave of mosaic graffiti the likes of which hasn't been seen since the bad boys of Rome were tagging the Forum. Maybe not.

Amsterdam: First Stop, Bewley's hotel, Manchester

I thought I might as well begin near the start at the hotel that me and Greeno stayed in the night before the flight. Takeoff was at 06:10 and I figured that to try and stop a migraine I should try and get as much sleep as possible before we got there, and a single room costs pretty much the same amount as a twin so Greeny might as well come along.

We stayed at the Bewleys Hotel which is located about 5 minutes walk from the Terminal 1 building, which was great, excpet we were flying from Terminal 2 (all KLM flights are T2, I think) but with the help of the Sky Bridge we were able to walk to Terminal 2 in about 10-15 minutes.

The hotel was very nice, nicer than the Crowne Plaza next door, where I had stayed a couple of years ago. It was a modern leather sofa type of a place, with granite-esque floors (or maybe they were real, I can't remember). All very bright and clean, with friendly and helpful staff.

The room (£69 a night with additional costs for off-site parking) was pretty big, so much so that it had 2 double beds in it, which was nice. The bathroom was granite/avonite and chrome, with a powerful shower (in the bath). I was quite surprised that we could only use 1 bathroom socket at a time, as Rob wanted to charge his toothbrush, and I wanted to charge my razor, but we couldn't which was a tad annoying, but not exactly that inconvenient. Another odd thing, you couldn't remove the tray for the tea and coffee making facilities (a kettle) without taking the stuff off the tray, as the drawer in which they were contained didn't pull out far enough...

The lack of air-conditioning is a hefty drawback of the place, as it was a hot night and even just under a single sheet I struggled to sleep and got all sweaty.

There restaurant and lounge bar served good food at reasonable prices, I had a ceasar salad that was pretty darn big, and filled with decent non-processed chicken. We also enjoying the first pints of the holiday, the first of many.

By 3:40am we were on our way to meet the rest of the guys at check-in.

btw, the beds at Bewleys can take the strain of someone jumping up and down on them as Rob enthusiastically demonstrated within seconds of getting into the room.

The Bewley Hotel Group

Let the deluge begin

I'm back from my kerr-azy long weekend in Amsterdam with the boys. From leaving home to getting back my holiday lasted 5 days 40 minutes or so, and it was quite the adventure. A lot of blog space will be taken up with tales from the Dam (although it has been agreed by the group that some stuff won't be muttered outside of ourselves, so it may be a bit PG-13 at times, we do have reputations to protect, y'know?).

Much like a dike without a finger in it there is going to be a veritable flood of pictures from the trip, especially considering we used 7 disposables, 1 roll of film, 50 digi shots from Tiggs funky Fuji, a load on Tyson's digi cam, and a few on Smoothie's new Sony that he got as a birthday present from the girls. All in all, about 250 shots we reckon.

This will probably turn into a bit of a guide to Amsterdam when I've finished with it, so I might tie it all together and make it available as a download on rapidshare or something.

Let the deluge begin

I'm back from my kerr-azy long weekend in Amsterdam with the boys. From leaving home to getting back my holiday lasted 5 days 40 minutes or so, and it was quite the adventure. A lot of blog space will be taken up with tales from the Dam (although it has been agreed by the group that some stuff won't be muttered outside of ourselves, so it may be a bit PG-13 at times.

Much like a dike without a finger in it there is going to be a veritable flood of pictures from the trip, especially considering we used 7 disposables, 1 roll of film, 50 digi shots from Tiggs funky Fuji, a load on Tyson's digi cam, and a few on Smoothie's new Sony that he got as a birthday present from the girls. All in all, about 250 shots we reckon.

The London Bombings

I feel that the events of today should not pass without comment on the blog. As a Londoner I've found this all pretty shocking, from the initial reports of power surges that had caused explosions and shut down the underground, to the awful realisation that this was a terrorist attack upon the city that I love. My distress at hearing about people killed on the buses and trains that I use so frequently in the capital was made more vivid by its contrast with euphoria I felt yesterday upon seeing London chosen to host the Olympic games in 2012. I can only hope that those injured in the attack recover quickly, and that those who have lost loved ones do not suffer themselves too much. Further to that, I hope that London itself does not descend into a paranoid daze, but instead remains as the vibrant city that so pleases its residents and those who visit it.

That's It! I'm outta here!

To Amsterdam!

I'll be back on Monday evening but won't post until Tuesday sometime, not that I've exactly been regular recently...

Apologies For My Absence!

Yo! Clairey's back in the blogging zone! Mate, these last 2 weeks have just been so crazy, I've barely had the chance to sit down, never mind in front of the computer!

So I didn't go to Green Day... sob sob. Was totally my own fault though, don't drink guys! This statement lasted about 24 hours, as the next day I was back on the liquid refreshment for my leaving parrrrrrrrrrty. Which berocked as to be expected. Then messed around for a couple of days, working at the school etc etc. Boring. Then I went to Edinburgh to see my friend who moved up there. Was classic. And the beginning of a heavy drinkage week to leave York for god knows how many months in true styley! VERY eventful weeks dudes.

So I'm back in the LD now. Enjoying eating real food, not uni shit and getting loads of sleep! Also doing some major paid work which is just grand. Just bought an I-Pod too! Yay! Off to Milton Keynes this weekend. Was SUPPOSED to be seeing Oasid on Sunday, but there was a balls up on tickets so to cut a long story short, I'm not going. Never booking a ticket for Milton Keynes again. The place is blatantly doomed. 3rd time lucky for Stereophonics in September. Not going with Bone et al, they'll probably be at the front, whereas I was too late booking and possibly got tickets out of the stadium or something knowing my luck. Knew I shouldn't of walked under that bloomin' ladder!

Not that I should complain on a day like today, when you look at the horrors taking place in London.

Stage One: Complete

My 2nd year university results arrived today, I got a 2:1, which is pretty good, but I was hoping for better marks after all the work that I did. It'll be a big task to get a First overall with next years modules, but you never know, and an almighty dissertation may well make that a bit easier.

Just 3 days until I'm in Amsterdam!

Because you'd just die without me writing something

My day was pretty empty again today, even though I actually spent pretty much the whole day being active in some way or another.

• I delivered oil

• I bought boxes for my brothers stuff (he moves out of his flat this weekend)

• Shopped at Marks & Spencer, it's amazing how you reach that £35 mark and get your free 6 aberdeen angus quarter pounder burgers, isn't it?

• Paid off Dads credit card bill, not with my own money of course, don't be crazy.

• Sorted out a hotel for a night before the flight to Amsterdam, just a week to go now!

I've been looking at my stats and I've decided that the people at Yahoo! love me, nothing wrong with that at all. E.g. if you search for student blog city university then I'm top 10, doesn't that seem a little odd that out of about 2 million pages I'm in at no.9. Even more oddly, for a student of Leicester University, if you add in london to that search then I'm no.4, happy days. Also, my review of "Say hello to sunshine" by Finch seems to be getting a rather wide airing through the portal that is Yahoo!, if they keep giving me hits then I may well begin preferring them to Google (who also give me a fair amount of random hits).

I am still getting a worrying amount of hits from people searching for "blackbootyinmotion" which I assume requires no description. They'll be sorely disappointed when they realise that I very rarely talk porn on these hallowed pages, the only reason it came up (....sorry) before was because in the gostats rankings I was just above them, about a year ago.

Well, wasn't discussing my stats and hella standard day lots of fun.