27 and tanned

Hmmm, so much to share and so little brain capacity to stay focused for enough time to write it all.

But I shall try. Lets start with my birthday. It was seriously great. I had one of those moments when I thought about how much I loved my friends and my life. I went out and drank way too many cocktails on the Saturday night and then completely paid for it the next day which was my actual birthday. To celebrate my coming of age that is scarily close to 30, I had a Sunday lunch at a pub in East London. It was really cute, with board games stacked on an old piano in the corner and taxidermy on the walls. However, I was so tired and I struggled to keep my eyes open for most of the afternoon. So when my friends were still surprisingly there at 730pm, I left my party early, cause at 27, you can do that.

So now I have just come back from my longest holiday for the year - a whole 9 days. Yep, it was long and exciting to be away for more than just a weekend. The first stop was Ibiza. I didn't really think this destination through, as Ibiza is the number one holiday spot for the Brits abroad. And well, I'm not the most tolerant person. I was thinking more of the sun aspect and wanting to go somewhere I'd never been before. The plane ride was scary. We were faced with 18 year old girls wearing fur print cowboy hats (I didn't even know these existed) with stripper shoes, boys with matching partly shaved eyebrows and families whose vocabulary mainly consisted of 'innits' and 'aw shu-ups'. Hmmm. Luckily we stayed on the other side of the island with the Spanish who also go to Ibiza for their summer holidays. All in all, Ibiza wasn't as tacky as I thought it would be. We found a beautiful beach near the national park where the yachts pulled up to be ferried food from the beach side cafes and where chillout tunes played while you sunbathed on actual sandy beach and swam in the clearest of water. After summoning up enough courage to venture out to San Antonio where all the English congregate, we were again surprised to find it wasn't all that bad. In fact, we watched the world famous sunset from Cafe del Mar, sipped sangria and had a brilliant time. We then walked a couple of doors up and ate dinner at another waterfront cafe while Groove Armada played their warm up set. Seriously, life doesn't get much better than that.

We then headed to Valencia for La Tomatina. My, how that was an experience. 30 000 people trapped in a tiny square in Bunol with 5 tonnes of tomatoes being hurled at you from a truck. This is after being squashed for about 2 hours watching the men climb up a lard smothered pole trying to pull down a leg of ham. Then being sprayed with water and trying to avoid the local tradition of having your t-shirt ripped off and then be whipped with it. There was a point where I was worried I was going to be crushed by the crowd, but then my attention was diverted to being pummeled in the head with tomatoes, my goggles breaking and then getting the tasty mixture of tomato juice and urine in my eyes and mouth. Yes, urine. Males standing drinking sangria for 4 hours and no toilets is recipe for peeing on the squashed tomatoes. But all in all it was a fun and totally crazy experience. I'm glad I did it - probably for the last bit which was when the crowd dispersed and I could finally breathe and get a few throws in. Oh, and being hosed down at the local fire station was pretty fun too!

Valencia itself was really beautiful. We had the best paella I've ever tasted. It was squid ink with pieces of calamari cooked on top. My god. We were all scraping the dish to get every last morsel. This was then topped off by dancing with the locals to Spanish music at a bar. Oh, there was also torilla, salmon and sangria flavoured icecream. I can't say I was that adventurous in my pickings, especially when there was also the likes of donut flavour to choose from. Wait, I think I might need a moment to reflect.

Probably the worst part of my trip was the realisation of how disgraceful some Australian travelers are. I had been told by a friend of how they were actually worse than Americans but I didn't believe him. But it's unfortunately true. The people I met made me ashamed to be Australian. They were rude, arrogant and just downright disrespectful. Most Australians pride themselves on being a carefree, happy go lucky bunch of people, but it seems now when they go overseas and come together as a group, a really strange mentality erupts. They go mental. They stand around singing cold chisel at the top of their lungs, are disrespectful to local people and actually have the audacity to complain that they just want some Aussie food. Are you fucking serious? What is Aussie food anyway? I know that there are people like this all over the world, but I just thought we were a little better than this. Now, I've seen that we're no better. We have no right to look down on Americans for their ignorance when we are just as bad. And, to top it off, there is a large percentage of people walking around with Southern Cross and boxing kangaroo tattoos. When did this happen? When did we go from ridiculing Americans for having their flag patriotically hung outside their homes to inking ourselves with Australian paraphernalia? Have I missed something?

Ok, I'm going to stop now otherwise this will turn into a full on rant. Actually, I think I might have already had one.