travel tales

1. Venice, Italy
Whilst sitting at a pizziera I noticed 2 policemen walking over to a big Italian guy in a huge long grey jacket, the big guy himself looked suspicious and I'd been watching him before because he reminded me of silent bob from the movies, anyway the police started yelling at him and he was yelling back and there was a lot of hand motions (as the Italians love to do), next thing the policeman took a knife out of his pocket and slit the side of the guys jacket, I thought that was a bit harsh until I saw a couple of passports drop to the guys feet, followed by three or four more, til eventually there was around 10 passports lying at his feet. So be careful where you keep your passport!

2. Between Heathrow airport and Acton, England
One Sunday, Fleur and I were a bit late to our local supermarket to get the weekly groceries, so we decided to go to the 24 hour sainsburys in Shepherds Bush, we'd never been there before but thought we'd be okay, so we headed off in our little red Renault toward Shepherds Bush, my god, we drove around for hours trying to find that bloody place, I got on the highway going the wrong way 3 times, yes 3 times, we nearly made it to Heathrow airport once (and if you know London at all, you can imagine how far out we were), anyway after almost 4 hours of driving around we finally found it, only to discover that it shuts at 7.00pm on Sundays (every other day was 24 hrs). We were sooooo pissed off at the time but now it cracks me up because the whole time we were driving around, we were only an overpass away from it but kept taking the turn before that overpass which led us onto the highway 3 damn times!!!

Fethiye, Turkey
Maree and I decided to pay a visit to our mates at the Boat House hostel (because we were staying on a yacht) so we walked there and it took around 30 minutes, after a few beers and a meal we thought we'd better head on back to the yacht, by this time it was around 11.00 at night and we were a bit scared to walk, so the offsider from Fez (the hop on hop off bus we were travelling on) told us he'd hail us a dolmish (mini bus), so we waited at the front with the bus driver (who was Turkish) and Brett (the offsider who was from Canberra) and 2 dolmishes sped past and didn't stop, so we were wondering what to do when all of a sudden this car come hooning around the corner and the bus driver stepped out and yelled something to the car and they stopped, then he turned to us and motioned for us to get in, Maree and I were like 'nooo it's cool we'll walk' cos there was no way! So Brett said 'it's okay I'll come with you', so we said 'Cool alright', the car was a 2 door so Maree got in first, I got in second and just as Brett was about to get in the guy slammed the seat back and sped off, now as you can imagine, Maree and I were packing it, whilst we were being driven at break neck speed toward the port, then the car stopped off at a house for 5 seconds then sped off again, luckily, Brett had taught us how to say stop in Turkish, so we started yelling 'DUR DUR DUR'!!! And for awhile they weren't paying any attention, then finally they stopped and we jumped out, ran to our yacht which was luckily just a minutes walk away, and did not look back, it was the scariest moment of my life.

Santorini Island, Greece
We met these 2 South African blokes (Errol and Greg) on the party island of Ios and had so much fun hanging out with them that we all decided to head off to Santorini together. Anyway arrived there and found ourselves a hostel etc etc, then we decided to hire mopeds, we got 2 to share between the 4 of us and first of all Marina (the girl I was travelling with) crashed into a parked car (it was hilarious I have to say!!), so I decided I'd be safe travelling with Greg (after all, he was a champion motorbike racer in SA) so the whole day went great, we rode from one side of the island to the other and really explored everything Santorini had to offer. After having dinner and watching the famous sunset at Oiu, we headed into Thira town, but on the way up the hill guess who came a gutser? Yep, me and Greg, luckily he stuck his leg out and we skidded sideways, preventing me from not getting too smashed up, I came out of it with a cut on my ankle and an extremely sore bum!! Greg, on the other hand, came out with an extremely damaged ego - fancy crashing a MOPED when your a South African superbike champ! Needless to say we all gave him heaps of shit!