Just got back from a 5-day stay in Madrid where I attended a conference altogether with my buddies from work. Most of us arrived on Wednesday afternoon. My trip was really great. First I became very popular with a gay steward on the BA flight, who was kind enough to provide me with 2 meals. Then my neighbor happened to be a very sympathetic lady from Chicago whom I befriended and to make the trip even more exciting, I was called an 'ASSHOLE' by the first Spanish person I came across right after I left the airport gates when I accidently crossed her path with my carry on ;o)) ... I did make an effort and appologized in Spanish, to which she responded in English making sure that I did understand what she got on her mind ...

 

I checked-in Auditorium hotel around 7pm. It took us good few hours to organize ourselves and leave for Madrid's center. The taxis dropped us close to Plaza Mayor. I didn't know yet that this square will be probably as much of sight-seeing as I will have done by Sunday ... at that time Madrid looked all promising tough ... we found a restaurant just some 50m from the square supposedly famous for serving great roasted pork meat ...

 

It was time for the first party right after dinner. First we were struggling locating a decent bar. It took us quite some time, energy and a few members of our squad to find a disco, but we did eventually - 'El Palacio' was the place. The club was full even though it was Wednesday, so we stayed late until 5am. The party was successful. We've befriended a group of Irish ladies there, took documentary evidence and left for the hotel to recharge batteries for the conference.

 

Thursday started around midday with the opening session of our conference, after which we were served a great buffet lunch. I truly loved the food and ate like a pig!!! The rest of the afternoon went quickly by as I was sitting through the conferences and was all ended by a great served dinner. The programme for the night was pretty much obvious, so all my colleagues were asked to gather quickly in front of the hotel and taxis were ordered to take us to the center again. This time we had a group of maybe 20 people. First club we found was called Sweet, where we met a group of American girls, with whom we danced a bit, and then we strolled off for El Palacio again. Unfortunately El Palacio wasn't as good this time as the day before as it was way too crowded. I've made a contact with a cute Spanish girl, but that only happened shortly before everyone decided to move on. The guys insisted we do a strip club, which I was opposing to, but was beaten by the majority vote. And that's how we ended up in a place, which later became a source of so many jokes ;o))) ... The ladies there were super ugly and old and the place displayed no signs of any possible activity - i.e. no dancers, nothing ... on top of that my friends were asked to pay extra 30EUR to see the ugly old ladies dancing, which simply didn't happen ;o))) ...

 

Another great finding was the one of Mobile Chinese Restaurants on the streets of Madrid. Basically, when we asked locals about food, they have pointed their fingers towards a small Chinese person standing on the sidewalk next to a card box. Somehow this person was supposedly selling food although nothing was to be seen ... We never worked out how this system worked, but it didn't really feel somehow hygienic to eat there and we couldn't really figure out where the food came from either ...

 

Our party was over at around 6am, so it was just about time to take a taxi and head back for the hotel. For some reason this turned out to be an increadible deal of a problem. Apparently we hit exactly the period when taxi drivers change shifts and when people leave bars - drunk - and so there's hardly much of a will on the drivers' side to give anyone a ride ... yeah, it took us another hour and a half to get back to the hotel. Good thing was though that this delay made us arrive right in time for breakfast!!!

 

Friday morning was lost in sleep for me and I got out of bed just for the check out process then attended 2 presentations and grabbed some lunch. The conference was over around 3pm and so we left for our hotels in the center, checked in and went to sleep again. Early in the evening we met at Plaza del Sol. A few beers followed, then a few more beers, then burger king and then finally we were ready to go out again. We chose to visit the Sweet bar again, which we reached at 12.30 just to find out we're definitely the very first customers there!!! The place started filling up at 2am (that's when London't parties are way over ;o)). Our people showed up too, so we grew into a big group again. I've managed to make a contact with a group of Spanish girls and found a very cute dancer for some time. Again, the guys decided to make a move, which brought my dancing lecture to the end. Our next destination was a 7-story-club called El Capitol, supposedly famous in Madrid. We stayed until 7am although not much of a success appeared what's regarding ladies ...

 

Saturday was the sight-seeing day. Tim, who was my hotel room sharer in Madrid, and I left our hotel around 3pm, bought some coffee and started on a bit of a sight seeing. That came into an abrupt end when our friends showed up. We only got to see Plaza Mayor again when we got pulled into another restaurant with our buddies. From there we did a short walk towards the Royal Palace, which was nice and that was pretty much all what's sight-seeing was concerned ...

 

The night started with a dinner. I was pushing hard for McDonald's as I didn't feel much like experiencing, but was outvoted again, so we did tapas instead. The version of Tapas we were served was something of a Toast, which didn't really look like tapas at all ... we raised an informal complaint, created some fuss, paid and moved on to the club called Villa Rosa. For some reason this place didn't seem to be frequented by people of our age, the music played was all but club-like (in other words rubbish) and good looking ladies could only be dreamt of ... so we left ...

 

This was our last night and we all wanted to really have fun. Therefore we didn't mind doing some hour-hike across the city center to find a club Ananda. This place was boasting a very interesting setup of space under the bridge with loads of music and dancers and mainly really fit and hot women everywhere. As it turned out though, this night we made a crucial mistake of showing up in Tshirts and jeans while everyone else dressed up much more formally. It probably made such a difference to the ladies that they couldn't be even bothered to speak to us. Therefore one of my friends, for instance, got badly turned down when only nearing by to one of the locals ;o))) (he'll be thrilled I mentioned this here, lol).

 

We left for the hotels around 6am just to do a bit of sleep before the check out in the hotel, then a small lunch and our Madrid stay was over. I had a great time and will want to return sometime soon to continue on all the partying, which I find a bit expensive, but worth it!!!

 

 

It was a nice Sunday afternoon, so I found it appropriate to spend it outside of my flat for once ...

 

Strolling down the Thames Path I originally wanted to check out the place where Cutty Sark used to be. Small surprise (big one in size though) awaited me on the way to Greenwich. I don't recall seeing an aircraft carrier this close. The pics have been posted in my photo library. Following the Thames path alongside the river brought me to the Greenwich underwater tunnel, which leads directly to the sight where Cutty Sark could have been found for such a long time until very recently when some dumbass most likely set it on fire!!! It was very sad to see the place without the famous clipper being present. However, according to the British media, the boat should be rebuilt eventually, so let's hope this happens in a near future.

 

There's a small Chinese place, which I tend to visit every time I pass by Greenwih. I'm not entirely certain about its name, but something tells me it contains 'noodles' and maybe even 'fried' ;o)) ... The food is cheap for London's standards and also plentiful. After I have completely filled up my stomach in its possibly most stuffed way I continued up the hill to the Greenwich Observatory, which provides with a very neat view of Canary Wharf and Central London. This time I could also enjoy looking at the huge ship parked just next to the Greenwich docks.

 

Sunday provided a great sunny weather, so it was time to lay down and do some reading. Many locals did so as well, in fact Greenwich is generally a very popular place to spend a Sunday afternoon at anyway. After couple of hours I've wrapped up my towel, grabbed my camera and headed back to the center of Canary Wharf where I finally wanted to take pictures of fancy cars, which were posted there as a part of the Canary Wharf Auto-exhibition. Unfortunately I wasn't lucky this time and only found a few remaining pieces. All the Porshes, Mazzeratis, Corvettes and others were removed as the exhibition closed on Saturday (the day before!!! Damn it!!!).

 

The last point on my agenda was the cinema to see a movie called Exiled, produced in China I guess. I would only recommend it if you ALSO have an Unlimited Cinema Card, otherwise don't bother paying 7GBP for this (unless you're really bored ;o)) ...

 

And my Sunday was over. I'm flying over to Madrid on Wednesday to attend a conference and then spend the weekend there altogether with my work colleagues. We've planned lots of clubbing, so I'll get back to you with another blog covering the event. Hopefully there will be something interesting to report on!!!

So I returned back to London from a great weekend stay in my homeland - Czech Republic - and I had a blast there. I met quite a few of my buddies, caught up on our present whereabouts, picked up on some gossip and then partied away ...

 

Friday night was a chat night. I used to play floor hockey when I was young-er, well, during the uni ... my friend Michal and I met and strolled over to a local broadly frequented bar where I encountered at least a dozen of people I used to play floor hockey with, or with whom I studied at high school. People seemed to be glad to see me after such a long time too and were happy to share the news with me and so did I ... it was interesting to see what variety of fates we all have followed after our high school graduation, or even after our university studies ... I got home at half three in the morning ...

 

Early Saturday morning my parents and I left for a day trip to the Czech mountains east of our hometown. I was driving and my parents were navigating ... we got lost of course ... first I had no clue which way to go and my parents seemed to disagree on pretty much every single crossroad ... anyway, we made it with a good hour of extra drive ... The place we targetted was Sindleruv Mlyn and it's really one of the Czech Alpine-like towns, which would with no doubt appeal to anyone ... I took a few pictures that will be posted here ASAP ... hopefully by the time you read this they will be available ...

 

Saturday night was another one not-to-waste, so Michal showed up at our doors again, we grabbed my sister Denisa and her boyfriend Tomas altogether and left for a sit down place at the center of Ceska Lipa (my hometown). There we drank Mojitos and enjoyed a great view of the beautiful town center Ceska Lipa has to offer. Shortly before midnight it was time to swap bars and so we headed to another one, which trully had a surprise hidden for us. Well, the whole Czech Republic is always full of surprises, so this one counts in as one of those ... the waitresses in this new bar were topless!!! First I thought they had some special naked-like-design-clothes, but then I realised they only had very short skirts on them and that was about it ... my sister proved to be very liberal again and didn't spoil the fun, so we entered the place ... Another appealing attraction of this bar turned out to be the nearby casino room ... Surprisingly I actually won some money (and spent it right after) ... Michal won £10, I won £5, my sister came out even and Tomas, who was that night's loser, lost all his bet within 5 mins ...

 

At 1am Denisa and Tomas gave up on further entertainment, but Michal and I were still up to something. So we swapped bars and took a taxi to the town's most popular disco ... I only went there to relax for an hour and then return home ... however, that didn't happen ... it's been a long time since I've been to a Czech club ... well, yes, the music is generally crap, but the women definitely live up to their reputation of being simply beautiful ... I must say that at least 50% of them were truly fit and 20% of the total were incredibly HOT!!! I just didn't feel like going home in such a company ...

 

We stayed until 4.30am!!! and then called it a night. And it was a good one ... Can't wait to visit my homeland again!!!

It's about time I posted another blog I guess. Not much has really happened since I've returned back from holiday until this Friday, when I finally met with Tim, who's my new flatmate and whom I've last seen around mid April when I was leaving the project in Warrington. While I was travelling, Tim moved into my flat to replace my former flatmates and the first opportunity for us to catch up on things was this Friday.

 

Tim arrived later in the afternoon with two friends - Phile and Luis. The guys play together in a band and that evening they were playing for Cancer Reasearch charity on a sight-seeing boat! I found it quite cool and luckily enough (for me), Tim happened to have a free ticket on him, so I happilly joined in and there I was heading for a free boat ride on the Thames river 

 

The night went really well. The guys performed some really nice Scottish / Irish folk music. I really enjoyed listening to it. Later in the evening they wrapped up and went on to enjoy the boat ride. In fact all of us but Tim did, who had eagerly offered himself to man the local casino table. The rest of us enjoyed the beauty of London at night all the way from Big Ben to Canary Wharf area. At one point Phil and I decided to demonstrate our compassion with Tim and went on to help him with his what we thought "tedious" job. At that moment poor Tim was surrounded by eight ladies. For some reason guys appeared to be to scared to face Tim in Black-jack, so only ladies did and Tim certainly didn't seem to suffer at his table ...

 

The boat ride was offer around half ten. I insisted that we grab a quick burger, which is more of a tradition of my nights out in London! And so we did - in fact the guys weren't really given a choice. When I'm hungry I know no compromises

 

The night finished in a club called Motion right beside the Embankment station. Since we were with the charity, the entry to the club was free. We didn't enjoy it too much anyway though. The place was incredibly packed, there was no way one could dance without being constantly pushed around by people cruising from one side of the club to another ... so we gave up and at around 2am jumped on the bus and headed home ...

 

It was a good night, we had lots of fun and all that while contributing to a well-being of the world around us!!!