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Summer Vacation 2009 part 1. Read about my visit to Toulouse Bristol Bath Wells Windsor Basel / Basilea (Switzerland ) Torremolinos Mijas , plus my experience with EasyJet and AVE - Train. Hopefully there will be a part 2 vacation at the end of September. Here is a short summary of this years summer holidays, which were only 5 days. Honestly it was not that great. Actually a bit of a disaster.

It all started very bad with the EasyJet flight I had to take to Toulouse being delayed 5 hours!!! The worst was that all EasyJet flights were delayed and there were even people stranded for 2 days at the airport because their EasyJet airplane had not arrived in two days. Added worries because there was no one from Easy jet explaining the situation to us. Apparently EasyJet does not have a single extra airplane. Therefore if there is a technical problem with one plane, all other flights end up delayed because they have to use an airplane from another route to cover the route of the problem plane. I'm sure however the EasyJet CEO has given himself a nice big bonus anyway.

The visit to Toulouse was very short, because of the extreme delay of the EasyJet flight. At night I took a quick walk, but it didn't look very nice at night. It was full of black prostitutes everywhere...

During the day, I stumbled upon this great record store / book store that was selling vinyl 45 singles for very cheap. 4 for a Euro !!!! Toulouse itself is pleasant, but the cute part is rather small.

Then I went to the UK. Bristol has a mix of old and new. It is interesting. Took a train ride, which was too expensive, to Bath. Over there I had to pay $12 Pounds to see the Roman Baths. Was interesting. But the city of Bath at night is NOT illuminated, so there was no point looking around. Quite dissapointing. Tourist destinations should be illuminated at night. Each time I go to the UK some people show interest in wanting to meet me, but as always in the UK, in the very last minute they come up with some excuse and don't show up. The night time in Bristol was very boring and the youth hostal dormitory was very uncomfortable. The next morning I was supposed to visit the city of Wells but, you guessed it, it was raining so that had to be cancelled.

So far almost everything was going wrong in this summer vacation.

Now they sell these Rockstar energy drinks in the UK & Ireland which previously I used to buy from Trader Joe's in the U.S. . They function as great antidepressant. I hope they bring them to Spain soon.

Rockstar ingredients and nutritional value: value: energy protein carboydrate fat fibre soduium niacin vitamin b6 b12 panothenic acid
ingredients: sucrose glucose, citric acid , taurine, glucuronolactone, caffeine, inositol, vitamins : niacin, calcium pantothenate, b6, b12, guarana: paullinia cupana, seed extract, ginseng root extract

Another expensive train ride, this time to Windsor. The castle was very expensive, $15 pounds. From the outside it was ugly. From the inside it was not my thing. But the town itself was rather cute.

I did the boat ride as well. It was OK, but not great, partly because there is nothing to see but trees. No monuments or anything along the river.

Finally I got to Basel / Basilea in Switzerland. It will be the very last time I will go to Switzerland. It was horribly expensive. Also the fact that you have to constantly be changing to their local money and paying comision to do that costs more money. You cant have a sandwitch for less than $6Euros. Originally I was going to take the 1 hour train to Zurich for a quick visit. But round trip was $45 Euro, which I think is an outrageous amount of money for a 1 hour train ride. So I cancelled that.

The funny thing in Basel is that people swim downstream in the actual river.

Finally I got back to Spain. I went to see the village of Mijas. To be honest I do not recommend it. I was dissapointed. It is too far away, and it is difficult to get there. Then once there, it is very small. Just a couple of streets. The photographs that some people take, give the impression that the place has lots of streets and is interesting, but it is not the case. So don't be fooled, the pics create the impression that the town is worth a visit, but it is a very small town.

So add that experience to this semi disastrous summer vacation.

Overnight I stayed in Torremolinos which is not the sort of place I like, but I wanted to know what the nightlife is like. Honestly it was not for me. Because of the German and British influence the bars have these picnic lunch tables outside and people sit there with there friends outside of the bar. I don't know you, but unless you go with friends it is very boring and nobody ever meets anybody new while sitting behind picnic lunch tables. So it was impossible to meet anyone. Then many of the bars dont get any crowds until 4 AM and I was simply not going to wait that late.

The only nice place I discovered was bar BarXS ( La Nogalera ) whose owner probably dutch was nice to me & his helper from Liverpool was very friendly too.

I came back using AVE fast train service by RENfe. It took 2:30 hours. It could be faster. It made couple of useless stops, including one at a village I don't know why. In many sections it was quite slow particularly as approaching madrid. Most importantly it was way too expensive at $80 Euros single way. For that price I can get a round trip air flight. The views from the train were not that great as in many places the train is lowered slightly below the surrounding surfaces, so you really dont see much of anything.

All along the trip in every train or airplane ride I had annoying little kids sitting behind me, kicking my chair smacking my chair, screaming in my ear. I really wanted to smack their parents. Then I had a terrible back pain all along. And also some eye problems as I had got an "orzuelo" / Stye in my eye right before leaving . I have to go today or tommorow to have it pinched.

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Dario Margeli