Someday we'll need to visit Spain

Haven't posted because I've had to wait for WiFi.   Apparently I went over my Europe travel package by $220!!! So I've kept my data off.

So now it's our last day in Benidorm and we're sitting at Rich's friends bar waiting for our ride to the airport for an 8 o'clock flight back to Gatwick, where we have a room at the Sofitel.

We've had a great time in Benidorm.  In the last two days we've pulled an all-nighter crawling from pub to pub after our spa day.  From one bar to the other we enjoyed some pool, darts, a little karaoke and a lot of alcohol. A lot.  I mean a lot.  For our midnight dinner that night we stopped at John and Joseph's when I got myself my fish and chips and Jac polished off a "Man vs. Food" portion of a mixed grill egg and every-meat breakfast.  And in case you haven't seen the photo on Facebook yet, a late night, early morning snack of curry at 520am.

Fast forward to 3:00 PM yesterday where I finally dragged my ass out of bed.  We got some KFC and watched game shows until it was time for us to get ready for our dinner and show at The Benidorm Palace.

The show was a Vegas-like variety show with singing, dancing, juggling, and acrobatics accompanied by a delicious 4 course meal including red wine and sparkling wine.  After the show we headed back to our apartment for a night cap and in bed by 2am.

On our last day we were determined to spend some time at the beach.  So off we went and got ourselves some day loungers.  While Jac and Rich spent an hour or so people watching I decided to try my hand at cable skiing.  I've water skied before.... when I was 16... how hard could it be?  Well the video I'll post later will show that it was a bit harder than I remember.  I was offered some photos but I'm pretty sure I can find cheaper postcards of beached whales at the gift shop.

After that workout I needed some fuel and Rich and I enjoyed some authentic Spanish Paella at one of the beachfront restaurants.  Now we're all freshened up, packed up, and getting a bit liquored up before our flight.  Livers will definitely need a break after this trip.

It's a bittersweet last hour but we're not leaving feeling like we missed out on anything.  Enjoyed some great times with great friends, old and new and I can't wait visit again.  We're already planning our next trip to Europe next year with hopefully 14 days or so to fit even more in.  Next year we may even visit Spain.  I know what you're thinking... we're in Spain now... Well yes and no.  Benidorm is in Spain but it's basically British.   I've only encountered a handful of spanish-only speaking natives.  If you're looking for a party with all night bars, cheap liquor, and food 24 hours a day then come to Benidorm.  You won't be disappointed.  Think Grand Bend but about 100 times bigger, and open all night.

Now I'm signing off for this trip.  Will be back in Canada on Saturday.  Hope you've enjoyed the bit of writing I've been able to do.  Looking forward to sharing more stories with some of you in person as well as some pretty good photos and videos.

Adios!

You want me to wear what?

Had an amazing day today.  Unsure of what the weather would bring, we looked for things to do indoors.  We finally settled on a spa day at The Benicaldea Spa with a Thai Massage.  We arrived around 1:30 and we're greeted with a beautifully relaxing room with multiple relaxation stations.  A dipping pool with multiple hydro massage fittings.  An Ice Room with a strangely relaxing ice bath we'd plunge into before scurrying to the steam room.  Multiple shower types, a Sauna, heated loungers and the piece the resistance, a foot bath where dozens of tiny fish feed on an all you can eat buffet of dead skin off of your feet.   Definitely one of the strangest feelings I've experienced.  Definitely proud of Jac though for stepping out of her comfort zone (no pun intended) and letting those little bastards chew on her feet for 15 minutes.

After about an hour and a half and polishing off a bottle of Moet champagne and chocolates, courtesy of Rich, Jac and I headed in for our couples Thai massage.  This is where things get a bit interesting, to say the least.  I'm used to having massages back home and am familiar with the entire procedure of getting undressed and positioning myself on the table prior to the Massage therapist entering.   Apparently they do things differently for Thai Massages.

Before leaving the spa area for the Massage room, Jac and I were handed a pair of paper slippers.  Once inside the Massage room we were both handed a pair of disposable underwear to put on and instructed to hop on the table face down over top the blankets, not underneath.   Ok fine.  Except for one thing.  When I say disposable underwear, I should probably mention that those underwear were thongs.  Yes.  Go ahead.  Picture me in a black disposable thong.  Then picture me laying face down on a massage table with my ass fully exposed as they come in to start the Massage.   Ok, don't picture it.

If that wasn't bad enough, no sooner does the Massage start that my 'maseuse' jumps up on the bed and straddles me sitting on my butt while massaging me.  I'm thinking to myself that this may end up being the best €45 I've ever spent.  With a full body massage over a nearly fully nude body however, I'm finding myself concentrating way too hard to remain cool, calm, and collected.  Let's just say she was grazing pretty close to the main garden.

However slightly unnernerving, it was a very relaxing hour followed by another hour enjoying the spa while Rich went in for his massage.

Definitely the most relaxing days we've had and could probably repeat that at least once or twice more if we had more time.  Now I'm sitting on the balcony of our apartment smoking a cigar after a snack of street kebab pizza.  Just chilling out before getting ready to head out for another drink filled evening.

Hola! Bienvenido a España.

It's been brought to my attention that my posts haven't been very detailed.  sorry.  I'll try harder 😊.  Also, sorry for the lack of pictures.  The blogger app is really bad and isn't allowing me to post pics and my Surface Pro is messed up.  So...you get what you get.

So on with it then.  After exploring Benidorm for most of the day and waking up from an impromptu nap in our apartment, I've finally got a bit of down time to put "pen to paper".

As you all read, Sunday was busy with loads of "touristing" but things went on to get pretty messy in the later part of the day (and parts of the next day as well).  I also left out a few details, as I've been told, so I'll attempt to fill those in in this post.

Sunday started off meeting Jim, Rich's friend who came to play tourist with us.  Irony is that every tourist attraction we visited on Sunday was also Rich and Jim's first visit and they've lived around London their entire lives.

To start our evening we ordered our 4th free Uber ride, this time to Covent Garden.  Yes, free Uber ride.  This was my first time trying out Uber and I'd highly recommend it over taking taxis.  The reason the rides were free is that between the 4 of us, we just referred each other which gave the referred a £10 credit and once that credit was used, the person who originally referred that person received another £10 credit.  Great way to get around the city. Once at Covent Garden Market, after the Maple Leaf I mentioned in my previous post we found a pub for dinner so that I could finally have my authentic Yorkshire pudding.  I ordered the first thing on the menu that showed a Yorkshire pudding in its image and that was the Lamb Roast Dinner.  Delicious, except....  no Yorkshire Pudding!!!  Apparently they'd been really busy that day and sold out.  Guess I'm not the only tourist looking for Yorkshire pudding.  I was quite disappointed but they did make it right by offering both Jim and I free pudding (English for dessert).  Jim was also disappointed by the missing Yorkshire pudding with his roast beef dinner.  At some point during dinner, another of Rich's friends, Rob, a London firefighter, joined us for the remainder of the evening.

Working in London, Rob was a great resource for where we should go and we found ourselves somewhere we never would've discovered had it not been for him.  From the street, picture a single narrow door.  Very undescript literal hole in the wall.   Go through the door and we're ushered down 2 flights of stairs into an amazing underground Irish Bar, complete with live Irish Band and recreations of tree roots showing through the ceiling.  I'll post photos as soon as possible.  Few pints of Guiness later and it's time to kick this party into gear. 

I got to ride in my first traditional London taxi to a night club called Roadhouse.   we walked in on the end of a flair competition which made for a great start to a blurry evening.  The 5 of us had a great time dancing and drinking and even made friends with another couple, Scott and Kelly from Malta,  who were in London for a Tattoo convention.  We closed the bar down around 3 am and made our way back to the hotel for a night cap then sleep as the next day was going to be our travel day to Spain.

Cut to the next morning.  Needless to say none of us were in any shape to fly but we had our traditional English breakfast then made our way to Gatwick via car service where Jim would leave us and we would board the plane for our 4pm flight.

A short 2 hour flight later and Rich's friend Sharron picked us up for a 40 minute drive up the coast from Alicante to Benidorm.  Spilling my coffee on myself and burning my hand was just the beginning of a series a few other "disasters" that night. Unfortunately it was dark by now and we really couldn't take in any of the views.  However there was a very interesting scene in the fact that there were barely any lights on.  Few street lights and buildings were also barely lit.  Picture driving past Toronto at night and only seeing the eerie shadows of skyscrapers and apartment buildings.  I had to ask Sharron if the buildings were abandoned.  Turns out there's a very good and pretty smart reason why there's no lights.  The lights actually just stay off most of the time and only turn on when people are in the rooms or via motion sensors as you walk by.  I still see a few potential problems with this but that's how they do it here.  Once we arrived to our apartment we decided to get supplies including a bottle of wine that I immediately dropped and broke all over the floor of the shop.  Disaster #2.  Once we got back to the apartment, I took out a glass to fill with our new bottle of wine and dropped it on the floor shattering it.  Disaster #3.  Time for bed.

Throughout the last couple of days I've tried to finish this entry without much luck. We've just been too busy taking in the views of Benidorm, making our way from one end of the beach to another,  stopping for food and drinks along the way at some of their hundreds of bars and restaurants.  I finally did get my Yorkshire pudding at a bar called The Yorkshire Pride.  It was worth the wait.

Last night we continued the pub crawl and met up with another of Rich's friends Paul who just happen to be on Holiday in Benidorm at the same time.  Got some mini golf in (winning by 1 point 😉) and gave a sea of retirees a jolt when I changed up the tempo of the lounge-music-themed Karaoke with my rendition of Johnny B. Goode.

We ended the night with a late dinner of curry at the Clay Oven.  By far the best curry I've ever had.  I want more.  Unfortunately, the dinner turned sour when some asshole decided he would yell at us from across the restaurant to tell us to quiet down because he's got a baby there.  Keep in mind that yes we've had a few drinks and might be speaking louder than normal, however, it's midnight and you have a baby in a bar.

Now it's Wednesday morning, I've had my chocolate milk and I think I'm finally going to get to finish this entry.  We're just trying to figure out what to do today as it looks like the weather might not lend itself well to a day on the beach.

Stay tuned.

Look Left even when turning Right feels Wrong

***This post was supposed to be published yesterday, however, somewhere throughout our adventure I think I got hit by a bus and my phone battery died.  Today's been all travel to Spain and we just got here.  Anyway, here's yesterday's post today.  Enjoy.
***

So right now we sit along the Thames river, under a light London drizzle with an Italian beer waiting for our rescheduled Eye Of London Champagne experience.  We were scheduled for a 3 PM ride but our tour of the  Tower of London cut in to our time.  The fact that we slept in until 10 am probably lends itself well to our slightly rushed afternoon but it was well worth it.

I've said that some of the best experiences are the hidden gems you find when you're not even looking.  Which brings us to this bar in a garden atop an old parking garage.  We can see the Eye of London and in a single line of sight, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.  The contrast of over a thousand years of history and the new is pretty impressive.

So yesterday we manged to see quite a bit of London after our hour long nap.  Our tour guide Rich was pretty good at making stuff up about things we didn't know a thing about.  Apparently Big Ben is the name of the bell, not the clock.

On our walk of London we also managed to take a small tour of Malaysia.  Well Malaysia Fest that was happening right in Trafalgar Square in front of the National Gallery.

London is quite a vibrant city (not including the weather) with street performers seemingly on every corner.  It is packed with tourists but I think it just adds to the experience.  We've seen so much I'm sure I'm forgetting things.

So after ending our night with an amazing performance of Wicked at the Apollo theatre, we started our morning right, yet late, with a great traditional English breakfast at Wetherspoon's before touring the Tower of London.

Now we're on our way to a Canadian bar called the Maple Leaf at Covent Garden Market to catch a Football game.  The real football, not this Soccer they rave about here.  Hoping for a Lions win on a £10 bet at one of their many street corner sports books.

Tonight should be a drink filled night with a late shutdown so don't expect anything more from me today.

One last thing... the title of my post today refers to the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road here.  And even though everyone knows this it still feels odd.  Even when crossing the road I've almost gotten hit a couple of times because I'm looking the wrong way for cars.  Good thing that they have the words "Look left" and "Look right" painted on the road at crossings or else it could've been more than twice.

It's called the red eye for a reason dummy!

Every once in a while I come up with this revolutionary idea.  This time involved taking the overnight flight to London. 

Here's my logic.  We takeoff at 10:05 PM from Toronto which is basically when we would normally go to bed anyway.  We'll just sleep the entire flight and when we land at Gatwick at 10:05 AM local time (5:05 AM our time) we'll be well rested and ready to take on the day at full steam.

Perfect, rational, logical thinking right?  Wrong.  Oh so wrong.

As you may recall, I ran into this same dilemma when travelling to Japan.

Anyway, after 16 hours of travel we finally made it to our quaint little hotel, The Grange Rochester, met up with Rich, and now Jac and I need a nap before we go anywhere.  Sorry Rich.

So much for my fool proof revolutionary plan.

Take that candy out of your mouth and speak woman!

OK.   I appreciate the fact that you may be a bit annoyed that your mundane minimum wage job is being replaced by machines.  However, since it still is your job to weigh my luggage and put it on a belt for yet another machine to take over, I expect to be treated with a little bit of courtesy and respect.  So hear this #airtransat.  Unless I clearly advertise that I'm hearing impaired and require sign language to communicate, please teach your staff to communicate using their words.  Sucking on a candy while grunting and pointing at me doesn't always translate well. I'm not even out of the country yet and I can't understand you.  I know, I know, minimum wage, boring job, cranky passengers... I get it.... BUT... it's still your job, so have a little bit of self respect and treat me with some as well.

Ok, now that that rant is out of the way.... started our day off early to drop our baby off at the babysitter's (that's empty nester for "dropped Kylo off at the kennel"), then made our way to Source Furniture to meet with a consultant and pick out new furniture for the new LEADWAVE headquarters due to open within the next weeks.  Following that we continued on to Oakville to drop off a TV and router for Jes then off to YYZ we went.

Now listen Pearson.  I'm not sure what your idea of security is but having this miserable, seemingly mute woman be the only person to check my passport while tagging my luggage for minimum wage isn't making me feel ultra safe.  You didn't even check it again at the security checkpoint.   How do you know I just didn't give my boarding pass to someone else?  You don't!  So get your shit together.  Never thought I'd say this but take some tips from DTW.   Their security might be a joke but at least they have a freakin' PF Changs!

So now we sit in the Plaza Premium lounge after paying way too much for mediocre risotto and slightly better ravioli and I find myself writing this post.... Apparently a long one as Jac just mentioned that I seem to have a lot to say and we haven't even left yet.  Sometimes I just feel inspired by stupidity.

Next time I write to you I'll be all the way "across the pond" as they say.

Good night.

Here we go again

Due to the popularity of my "Berubes In Japan" blog ;-), I've decided to blog throughout this next trip to England and Spain.

That's right folks.  The Mrs. and I are on our way to meet a friend in London for two days of "touristing", then we're off to fabulous Benidorm Spain for 5 days on the beach.

Not sure how much blogging I'll get to do since this will be quite the different adventure than Japan.  Just the fact that my guests on this trip are Jac and our good friend Rich means that there will probably be a lot more late nights and alcohol involved, which may mean a lot less time for posts; Coherent posts anyway.

That said, I did really enjoy blogging throughout Jes and I's trip to Japan as it's a great record of the trip and I hope to accomplish the same this go around seeing as it is our very first time anywhere in Europe.

Ok, so now we start. My vacation started at about 4:00 PM today as I mentally and physically checked out of work.  Staff know not to e-mail me unless the building's on fire.... even then, not much I can do from Europe so, just don't call me.

Anyway, on my way home, Jac's car decided to just stall on me about a block from the house and required friends and neighbours  of ours to help us push it home.  Welcome to #southmeadowlark.  It's currently on its way to Land Rover London.  Hmmmm.... British car breaks down the day before flying to Great Britain.... Maybe we should skip London altogether and just go straight to Spain.  But no.  I need to see London.  The history alone I believe will be mind blowing.

Alright, now that you all know where we're going, I'll sign off now and just leave you wanting more.