Rich Garner's website » travel

Paolo’s Bday trip to Florence

Rich — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:30:48 +0000

Paolo’s birthday gave me a great excuse to get away from London for a bit and sample a bit of the Tuscany lifestyle. Not sure whether it made things better or worse. Damn the lifestyle is good out there – the weather was 28-30 degrees but strangely not too hot, mostly due to a fresh breeze. Friday Viks and I went into Florence and explored. Found this crazy Cemetery with the most ornate head stones and Mausoleum’s I’ve ever seen. A beautiful way to celebrate the afterlife. The rest of the time we were either somewhere Near Piazza Santa Spirito be it day or night. Not sure entirely why. Florence has an odd approach to social life – it’s a lot more discreet than London that’s for sure. To say it’s more sophisticated is an understatement.

For Paolo’s birthday we met up with his friends and work colleagues and went for a few drinks and after a lazy day in the sunshine around the pool the next day, we caught the train back to Pisa to catch the plane.

[View with PicLens]

Beachcombing – Bulabog Beach Boracay

Rich — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 07:44:55 +0000

When you spend the majority of the time in the city there’s something fundamentally refreshing about finding yourself on a beach. But that doesn’t mean that the force of nature takes over your body and flushes the stress out in the reverse of what happens when you go back to a city. Instead it seems to creep into you, slowly, once you have relaxed enough to have let go of some of the stress already. Though I knew this on holiday, I was ill and my body was trying to reject pretty much everything so it was confusing trying to relax.

But after about 10 days there and almost getting into a routine of going for a swim from 5.30 – 6.00pm when the sun set over white beach (see the white beach gallery) it finally clicked. The next morning I woke up with the sun and despite feeling tired I got up to have a walk along the beach. There were more people up and about than I thought, despite it being 6am – as it was near the full moon the tide was all the way out – over a km – and the locals were out fishing in the shallow pools for trapped fish, clams and crabs.

[View with PicLens]

Bulabog Beach & Laketown, Boracay

Rich — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:00:31 +0000

If you were going to make a beach and bay area from scratch that was ideal for Kitesurfing it wouldn’t be that much different from Bulabog beach. The wide bay, shallow water and relatively calm, warm water is exactly what you want. However, I suppose in an ideal world the wind would be blowing 20-25 knots a day from 8am to 6pm when the sun goes down, but unfortunately I only got that one day out of 11.

So, rather than learning how to jump, which was my intention, I learned another important lesson, patience. Not the one I had intended, but I suppose a far more important one. The reason why there aren’t many kitesurfing shots is because when there was kiting to be had I was out in the water. Also, there didn’t seem to be much point in taking lots of shots of kiters who were just riding – the wind just wasn’t really strong enough for them to be pulling tricks, so I’ll have to wait for next time.

Laketown is the small local town that sits between Bulabog and white beach. It’s a bit of a Shanty town, like most of the local towns in Boracay, but it certainly has a buzz about it, being at the top of D-mall. D-mall is a street of commercial shops that lead you to white beach from the main arterial road that runs east-west across Boracay. In no way did I manage to capture the buzz of the place as I just wasn’t in the mood to be taking photos – I was on holiday and feeling unwell so the two things together meant I spent most of my time asleep, walking about in a daze and eating.

Although I liked Bulabog, I think it’s better to stay on white beach or close and walk to Bulabog to kite. You can leave your kite stuff there in most cases so you only need to drop it off once, something easy when you can catch a tricycle there anyway.

I’d highly recommend Ocean riders kite hire & school – they’ve got the right attitude to kiting – serious but positive. It’s not about being cool it’s about having fun. Kiting’s a dangerous sport and it’s important to know the people teaching you and the equipment is good & safe. Choose wisely if you’re not taking your own gear and stay somewhere nice as you get a lot more for your money in the Philippines and if you’re lucky enough to get wind you’ll want somewhere comfortable to escape to and get a good nights sleep.

Having said that, there are some mad bars on the Island, not least of which is the Jungle Bar, at the East End of Bulabog, where they hold the Full Moon parties. If you go, don’t get there before midnight and don’t have the drink called ‘Fuck you Archie’ as it contains Rohipnol. Something I found out the hard way.

[View with PicLens]

A day in town – Florence, Italy

Rich — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 09:03:28 +0000

After dropping Paolo off at work I shifted over the left hand side of the car and drove his Chevrolet Matiz City Car towards Florence Centre. At least that’s what I thought. Paolo’s only instructions were ‘go straight’, which was far from useful.
It wasn’t so difficult to follow everyone else, but when I’d been driving for 20 mins and seeing signs for Trieste and Fiesole I felt like I was losing any sense of direction. My Italian isn’t great so I just kept driving till I saw something that looked familiar. It didn’t happen, so I turned off the road towards the area I thought had more people in it when I looked down the side road, drove for about 5 minutes, found a space and parked the car. I still had no idea where I was still so no idea how to get back so had to draw my route from the car, along with road names until I found a newsagents!! selling maps. Brilliant. By the luck of Thor I was just 5 minutes from the Old Palace….

[View with PicLens]

Veronica’s Hawaiian Party – Florence, Italy

Rich — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:25:24 +0000

Slightly co-incidentally, but then not at all, I had arrived at Paolo’s resort-style home on the weekend of Veronica’s Hawaiian Birthday party. Terrible timing as you can see.

[View with PicLens]

Casa Paolo La Speighe – Florence, Italy

Rich — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 12:00:41 +0000

Hanging out with Paolo in his resort style pad in Florence. Well, it’s not Florence really. It’s like saying Surrey is London. The one, the only, Paul Cherryfield.

[View with PicLens]

Neill’s Stag Doo – Part I

Rich — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:12:39 +0000

And so it begins. Starting from the Moran in Chiswick in a Beekeeper outfit, we headed out in the community fun bus towards Wales. Despite being on a stag doo, no-one had brought any beer and the M4 wasn’t going to oblige as it’s banned from being sold in the service stations. Nothing like big brother trying to control the British drinking habit! A few old skool dance choons and 4 hours later we were in deepest, darkest Wales.

[View with PicLens]

Jin & Renata’s Wedding @ Warsaw, Poland

Rich — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:01:25 +0000

After a polish catholic ceremony in Warsaw we headed an hour out to the countryside to a remote reception hall with a floating reception area. After a glass of champagne we headed to the dining area which was a purpose-built room, surrounded by glass windows and trees. Beautiful. Was suprised to see a shot glass with a stem but soon discovered this was standard fare in Poland and that Vodka was the drink of the night. In fact, we kinda got told off for drinking anything else. In a twist on what I thought was tradition, apple juice was the chaser. Shots of vodka followed by a swig of apple juice. It works! Not only that but I didn’t seem to have a hangover, despite getting through at least a litre of vodka throughout the course of the night. Music was mostly supplied by a jazz / swing cover band who played some great tunes and got everyone on the dance floor. The weather was gorgeous, but it was a little hot and humid even after dark. Jin & Renata both seemed to be having the time of their lives and rightly so. Met some great people and it was a shame to leave the next day…

[View with PicLens]

Barcelona trip @ casa Miranda

Rich — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 19:38:49 +0000

Barcelona Trip

A quick break to Barcelona Weds 14th – Fri 16th June. Arrived really late on the Tuesday and woke up to hot sunshine and a glass of Rosada across the road from Miranda’s flat. No-one of me, Miranda, Bea or Johnny had any plans or intentions other than to do nothing stressful so we spent the days strolling or lounging on the beach. The trip out to Sitges was extra-special, well worth the train ride. Was great to swim off the beach and climb up the rocks out in the bay and then dry off melting into the sand. Very relaxing and much needed. You want beerfantacocacolaspritemasagee?

[View with PicLens]

Balloon trip – Christchurch, New Zealand

Rich — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:20:03 +0000

Possibly the most beautiful experience of my life so far. The Balloon ride started in a field a few miles outside Christchurch and we ascended up through the clouds so that we could see the mountains in the distance across a sea of grey beneath a blue sky.

We descended back done through the clouds, falling at 10′s of metres a second without feeling a thing. Exhilirating. The landing wasn’t so peaceful, but it was great fun none the less.

[View with PicLens]