Backpacking is hard.

Flight was an uneventful 9.5 hr, sat beside this cool Norwegian lady, Carrie, who grew up during the Nazi occupation. Now hanging out with Trev's family, the Kielys, in Reading (200,000 pop) which is just 40 minute coach ride from London Heathrow. Outside of the towns, the farms are so green and flat it looks a lot of like Cloverdale or Tsawassen. There's a lot of churches everywhere.

On the bus met a Vancouver couple, the husband Nathan was a former CBC documentary maker so he gave me a couple tips on camera work. Namely, how to get that ugly ass spot off my lens.

A bottle of Concho y Toro Del Diablo Shiraz (yay familiarity) is only 7 pounds ($14 Cdn) here, what does Earls charge like $28? Talk about markup, especially since the spending power of the pound here is about equal to the dollar. My coach ride cost 15 pounds, for 40 min.

The Kielys have been amazing hosts.. we leave for London on Saturday night to get to Luton airport though which is another hour from there, to fly to Amsterdam at 7am Sunday morning. Trev and I walked around Reading for a few hours, there's really not much craziness here.. and its easy to get lost. The lots are very small and houses are all brick, but we're in a nice neighbourhood if you go by the number of Benzes, Mercs and Land Rovers seen. The Caversham district of Reading is laid out strangely, as opposed to grids its more circular bunches of mini-burbs, with food stores randomly intermingled and every Asian 'restaraunt' or take-out place is deserted.

Went 10 pin bowling with Trev's cousin Nikki, her bf Martin and crew and put down some beers, the bouncers (?) wouldn't let us into the alley with hoodies on, because of recent hooliganism from ... hoods. And my favorite black hat was also a no-go inside because it covers the face. Other than that strangeness its about the same... 4pack of redbull is 2.50 => 5bucks no tax, less than half what you normally pay at home.


That and the liquor.. strange considering everything else is really expensive. had some fishnchips for dinner that were actually pretty good, but the 3-inch armor of batter on it leaves the Lululemon in me wanting to run a marathon or reach for the handle of a toothbrush. Reading actually reminds me of London, Ontario, except instead of $80,000 lots they are supposedly £300,000. And the slimmies could all do less 5kg on avg.





We'll probably take it easy today and check London tm night, then to Holland for a week and make our way towards Belgrade where we'll be staying with Dillon.