Library Times

The Lisburn library is a strange beast, and we had to brave its depths to plan The Trip. On going in for the first time on monday, we were quickly told to shut up at the first computer we went to, by some old guy who was writing an email. We weren't particularly loud or anything, but apparently we were ruining "his concentration" on this email he had written a sentence in. This quickly became a running joke for the next 4 days, and anytime anyone talked loudly we would say out loud that our concentration was being ruined - trust me, this was comedy gold, even if it does not sound it due to my poor writing skills.

The reason we went to the library in the first place was due to the copious amounts of travel guides found therin, I particularly liked the rough guides and lonely planets from tanzania last summer. So we got to work (after kyle got himself a library card so we could access the internet) and started route planning. Beginning in England and working towards Spain, it was a long, hard and slow process, we tried to find the best cheap place in the area we were going. On our very tight budget we realized early on that hotels were out, but I suspected as much to begin with, we would have to stick to hostels and campsites. The good news is that all we found were of excellent quality compared to the ones I've stayed at in the past, and they almost all had good reviews.

Amsterdam proved rather difficult, most of the youth hostels varied from dodgey to very dodgey such as Bob's Youth Hostel ( www.bobsyouthhostel.nl ) which had a website all written in third person, and some pretty shocking reviews. We ended up with a campsite impossibly close to the city centre, which suited us perfectly.

As I said earlier on the Library is a strange beast, and had some interesting characters which me and Kyle couldn't help but laugh at. There were these chav's that swore and laughed at some bebo site, they were so stereotypically chav it was unreal, then there was these 1st year girls that ended up following me about for the best part of an hour due to my literature choices (I left a certain book back for Natalie which they found hilarious - emphasis on the for Natalie there).

We finished the route, and successful planed The Trip, and although it took awhile we think we got a real nice route through some real nice places with some good quality campsites and hostels. The fruits of our labour can be seen here ( http://sites.google.com/site/thetrip09/the-route ) all typed out by Kyle - he did a pretty good job I'm sure you'll agree.

Anyway glad we got all that sorted, Adam out.

Genesis

I'm in my last year at school, and most people decide to go on some far flung adventure to Spain for their last ever summer holiday before university, but mostly on planes. So, me and me friend Kyle thought, why not go on a road trip to Spain instead? And instead of having a soulless 2 weeks in some tourist driven s-hole, getting drunk every night and not even remembering the whole thing, It'll be a more cultural experience - and of course I can still get drunk every night - but only with more culture. 

So using only googlemaps and our avid imaginative minds, we plotted a course that would take us through france, belgium, the netherlands, germany, china and then back to spain. This proved to be a logistical nightmare when Kyle refused to drive for more than 4 hours a day (even after I offered caffeine injections), and would have become more of a year long experience than a monthly one. So back to the drawing board again and we decided a more sensible course. Starting off in Scotland, England, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and then along the Med Coast to his house in Spain.

Righto then, simple enough, but how much would this cost, 50 quid was my first estimate, but the price escalated to the point where we would need a full team to share the price with, so we started our recruitment drive by asking subtle questions like "Are you free for a month this summer" and "Do you have around 600 quid spare?". We managed to recruit Kenny for the cause early on, a fellow medic hopeful in the same year as me. But finding the fourth member is proving more difficult ...

Doing anything this Summer?