Obrigado very much!

I don’t really know what else to say about my 4 days in Portugal…

the water was blue,

Dave and the boys were on top of their game,

and at lease two of the three monkeys managed to stay out of trouble…

(I'll give you one guess which little monkey was allegedly run over by a motor vehicle while crossing the road - such a rumor is of course unsubstantiated)

In a word- perfect!

Sometimes they get the best of you and sometimes you the best of them...

Yah, so I visited all of the famous mosques, toured the palace, bartered in the grand bizarre, and took a boat across the Bosporus to Asia, but I don't think anybody wants to hear the play-by-play of my weekend. So what I will tell you about is the top two highlights on my two-day turbo tour of Istanbul.

1. Sometimes they get the best of you...

It's true that you don't have to work very hard to get ripped off in Turkey. But I like to think of myself as somewhat of a wise, seasoned traveller who's paid his dues and learned a lesson or two- I mean, shit, I've got a whole drawer full of broken Rolax watches and Ray Brand sunglasses. So, I was walking along the Golden Horn (Istanbul's harbour) minding my own business and rocking out to a little crazy poker when the shoe-shine man walking in front of me drops his shoe-shoe brush. Being a good lad, I picked it up and jogged up to him with a little, "here you go my friend." (everybody is "my friend" in Turkey). To show his sincere gratitude, the man offers to shine my worn-out, soon-to-be-trash New Balance sneakers. While he went to town with his little toothbrush he asked if I had kids. "Not that I'm aware of" I responded (he didn't think that was funny). He did however proceed to tell me of this wife, step-mother, and eighteen blind children. How could I possibly accept a free shoe-shine after hearing that... ahh there's the rub! I offered him all of the change I had pocket- about 10 lira or 6 bucks. "No, paper he insisted." The man was looking for bills. Keep in mind he could have bought Kebabs for his wife, step-mother, and seven of his eighteen blind children for 10 lira. I quickly realised that while accepting my "free shoe-shine" I had been surrounded by 4 other members of the shoe-shine mafia and my New Balance sneakers were quickly about to double in value...

2. Sometimes you get the best of them...

On a wise man's recommendation, I spent an afternoon at Cemberlitas Hamam. With no idea what to expect- I stripped down, threw on my loin cloth, and joined the 30 other sweaty naked dudes in the 400 year old steam chamber. Let me stress that I had no idea what to do, so I followed the lead from a few other guys and laid out on the massive marble slab in the middle of the room. As I was about to fall asleep, a gigantic hairy man grabbed my ankle and pulled me over to edge of the platform where he proceeded to scrub my skin off with soap and steal-woolish pad. Ten minutes later- after having 3 layers of skin removed (head to toe) and feeling exfoliated as hell- I used a bucket to rinse the soap off and followed my new friend in the adjacent chamber... Had it not been for the constant pain, I might have felt slightly awkward about the semi-erotic beat-down I received there. When it was over I returned to my private dressing chamber to decompress and reflect... I left the bath house a new man and feeling like a million lira.

Such are the Turks... honest folk trying to make a living (some more honest than others). A would-have-been travel companion declined the opportunity to accompany me on this weekend adventure believing that Turkey is too dangerous- I found this to be ridiculous before and even more so after. I found the people to be delightfully friendly and I left Istanbul with a affirmed love of the Turks and a acute case of Cholera.

I have a dream...

... that one day I will ride in a bad-ass moped gang.

And last weekend I got one step closer towards realising that dream on the island of Sardinia with Ryan, Willie, and my hog Trigger.


To be continued...

Winner [win-er]
1. A person who wins; victor.

"In life, there are winners and losers." Well that's what I've always heard and so believed. Although this weekend I learned that's not always true. Life- maybe, but in Football- No!After 90+ minutes of what can only be described as a stalemate, the Fulham/Blackburn football match ended in a draw. Lame. Yet, on the way out the underdog Blackburn fans cheered and sang as though it had been a victory.

Winner [whin-erz]
1. A man who picks up a French speaking Senegalese woman in a pub by asking, "are you looking for the guy selling nachos?"; A man who yells on a crowded street without provocation, "French chicks are hot if they're not fat!"

I am going to liken the former Republic of Yugoslavia to the great state of Washington.

Kim and I started our tour in Split, Croatia- or Bellingham if you will. Split is a very interesting city. The old town dates back to 293AD when retired Roman Emperor Diocletian built a palace here. The oldest part of the city is built completely within the walls for this former palace creating a juxtapose of new and old. After two days in Split, we took a ferry through the Croatian island, not unlike the Washington State ferry line from Anacortes to the San Juan Islands. Kim and I spent 2 nights in the town of Korcula (Friday Harbor for comparison). Korcula was pretty sleepy this time of year and it worked out well that the only day poor weather was while we were there. From Korcula we travelled to Dubrovnik- the Pearl of the Adriatic, as it is called. A city of such beauty could only be compared to another jewel- the Emerald City of Seattle. Like it’s Pacific Northwest comparison, Dubrovnik is set on a beautify coastline. Dubrovnik is seriously an incredible city. The old town dates back to the 7th century and, despite receiving an 8 month pounding from the armies of Serbia and Montenegro in the early 90’s, it is probably the most picturesque city I’ve ever seen.

For our last day in Dubrovnik, Kim and I decided to rent a car and do a little exploring. Our first port of call was over the mountains east of Dubrovnik and across the boarder into Bosnia Herzegovina. We stopped for lunch in the town of Trebinje which is rumoured to be one of the three most beautiful cities in Bosnia. I will compare Trebinje to the magical central Washington town of Ellensburg (note: sarcasm). Like Ellensburg, Trebinje isn’t much to look at, but I did appreciate the fact that at 11 am on a Sunday morning the entire town seemed to be out in the town center drinking (I have to assume that similar to Ellensburg there isn’t much else to do either). My first impression of Bosnia- like central Washington, it appears to be little more than a barren wasteland. After lunch we headed south to Montenegro. The coast of Montenegro was beautiful, like that of Washington, a mixture of beaches, rocky outcroppings, and river valley inlets. Kim and I found the town of Kotor to be particularly amazing, although we couldn’t quite figure out the purpose of fortifying the steep hillside above the town (not sure if you can see in the picture below, but there is a wall running all the way to the top of the hill).
Back in Dubrovnik, we had one more amazing sunset and night out in the old town…

Good things come to those who... stay out really late.

So last weekend I was walking through Dam Square in Amsterdam in the early AM hours of Saturday morning and who should I run into? Dave Matthews.

It was very random, just waking with back to the hotel and I looked over and said to Curt, "there's Dave Matthews". Dave was really cool, he talked to us for a few minutes, indulged me by listening to my drunken ramblings of a story, and even gave me a hug. It was awesome!

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me, but I did take this picture the next morning- just use your imagination. The weekend was capped on Saturday night by one of the the greatest shows I have ever seen- Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds at the Paradiso. Truly an amazing show in an amazing venue. The Paradiso is an old church that has been converted into a nightclub. With just under 1,000 people at the show it had a really intimate feel. Dave was in rare form. It was really interesting to talk to some of the Dutch people at the show who were shocked that we would come all the way from London and Luxembourg to see this guy that they had never really heard of...

Man, Amsterdam- such a great place.

Last night in Oxford... click here for the video

(Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds)

Video 2 and Video 3 - Not mine, but really good.

I guess I should have mentioned, that sandwiched around my momentous visit to Auschwitz was an amazing weekend in Krakow. While I’m not going to say much, and I’m definitely not going to talk about the amazing Polish girls, I will say that Krakow has jump straight into my top three most favorite European cities. Completely unscathed by WWII bombs, Krakow is a gem!

Ryan and I made the most of our 2 nights in this post-Soviet paradise…