U.K. Tour and Koninginnedag

I must warn you: lots of things happened, so this is an extremely large post. There are also lots of photos that look like shit because of unavoidable negative light conditions.

First of all, a couple of images that shows the reunions we usually have around the F1 racing and italian dinners.

Giovanni, Lars, Camilla and Max.

Watching the San Marino race in Max's. Try to guess which is Giovanni's favorite team.

Parting in the Netherlands:

Koninginnenacht:

The night before the Koninginnedag, a celebration known as the Koninginnenacht (this time, April 28) takes place. My friends and I decided to go to Den Haag. They went by train, but it's so close that I decided to go by bicycle.

I was expecting some party in a particular place, but I found people and party everywere in the city. Only then I could visualize how heavily populated is this country.

It took some time, but we finally meet with Giovanni and Salvatore.

There were some awesome babes, unfortunately, I couldn't get better images.

Koninginnedag, Amsterdam:

Since April 30 was sunday, this year the Koninginnedag was celebrated on April 29. We decided to go by train to Amsterdam (where all the dutchs go on this day), but since I had to prepare my bag for a longer trip, I arrived late to the station, where Giovanni and Roberto decided to wait for me. I packed clothing for seven days, my camera, cheap food (pasta, ham sanwiches, coke, milk, bread and jam) and personal hygiene tooling.

A nice view on the way.

The train was realy crowded with orange people. I learned later that in this day, nobody pays the train ticket, because it's impossible for the ticket checker to walk through the wagons with all those people.

Once we were there, Giova and Roberto began to look for something orange to buy and wear:

I suggested to go to the Museumplein (you can check it on the map) because it's a great place to sit and stay, and a perfect place for a concert. I was right.

Wow, check out that babe! Later in this place, I got separated from Giove and Roberto: they had to go back to Delft, and I had to stay (I had tickets for the UK and Warsaw).
Instead of the very nice, quiet dutchs, who wouldn't kill an ant, that I was used to see until now, here I found a crowd of crazy perverts with crazy orange hats, it was really cool.
On the celebration of the national holidays, I would expect traditional food, music, dance and clothing. Instead, the dutchs wear orange cow-boy hats and dance with tecno-music.

Fedde and me.

A couple of dutch guys (Fedde and Kees) invited me a beer, and offered me an alcoholic conversation, which I accepted. They explained me that since germans and french refuse to learn english, the dutchs are forced to learn english, german and french. Fedde speaks also latin and greek, that is a total of 6 languages (in school, he is not studing to be a translator). Many other dutchs friends joined the conversation later.

Since there was no place in any hostel, I had to sleep in the Vondelpark. My dutch friends told me that I would usually got arrested if I was caught by the police, but because there would be so much drunks drifting around this night, I had nothing to fear. The night was a little cold, but I was prepared for that, I brought with me lots of clothings.

The next day there were still events, but no crazy parties anymore.
I saw this really cool game, (10 euros the ride) similar to bungy jumping. The participants gets microphones, so everybody can hear their screams.
I can still hear the screams of a couple of dutch girls, whom you can see in the picture below, after their ride, haha.
Later, I went to the mall, where they were giving away orange candys for free. In the evening, I went to the Shiphol airport, which ended being a great place to sleep: it was warm, and it was possible to lay down across the seats. The next morning (monday, may 1st) I was ready to go.

Girls Conclusions:

Dutch Girls are very beautyfull. I think the average is 4 stars (see The Tucker Max Female Rating System).

The United Kingdom:

Edinburgh, Scotland:

When I got out of the plane, my watch ran out of battery, so I depended from my mobile phone, which was also running out of battery, which was a problem because the U.K. has a different king of electric fit. Edimburg is really cool: lots of castles and tradition. Everithing on this city yells "this is scotland, we are proud of being scotish".

East Princes Gardens.

National Gallery of Scotland, entrance free.

Edinburgh Castle.

I entered this place and bought a scarf as a souvenir. The traditional clothing is very expensive: the skirts cost at least 50 punds (1 euro = 0,7 punds). The weather was great.

I left my luggage in a hostel called Calledonian Backpackers, close to this church. I thought The Netherlands was an expensive country, but the U.K. is even more expensive.

Edinburgh Castle.

View from Edinburgh Castle.

Castlehill Lawnmarket

Scotish music next to St Giles Cathedral.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse.

College of Edinburgh.

My souvenirs: a key ring and a scarf.

In the evening I made a lots of german friends in the hostel: they invited me to drink vodka with orange juice and play "UNO".

Girls Conclusions:

Here, the girls are not so tall as dutch ones, and tend to be less thin, however, they are very nice in personality. Instead of being blue eyed blonds as the dutchs, the scotish girls are browned haired and eyed. I give the average scotish girl 3 stars (see The Tucker Max Female Rating System).

Belfast, Northern Ireland:

The day I arrived Belfast (May 2nd) it was raining really bad. I think I had never seen so much water falling from the sky in such asmall period of time. Thus, I couldn't take any pictures. I made friends with an australian, a japanese, and three US'. The australian taught me how to sucsesfully use the U.K. electric fit to recharge my mobile phone and my camera.

There wasn't much to see in Belfast, even the souvenirs sucked. However, the hostel was very cheap.

The City Hall.

The clock Tower.

Girls Conclusions:

In Belfast, the girls I saw were, in average, fatter than scotish girls, though there were notable excemptions. Sometimes they are red haired, but this girls are still not common. I give the average girl 2 stars ( see The Tucker Max Female Rating System).

London, England:

London is amazing, there is so much to see that, fearing that Warsaw could potentially be as boring as Belfast, I decided to sacrifice my flight to Poland in order to stay more time in London.

Deciding what to do in St James's Park.



Westminster Abbey.

Protest in front of the Parliament.

London Eye.

Right after I took the picture above, I was waiting for the green light to cross the Westminster Bridge, when a motorized cop stopped at the crossing, I didn't undersand why. When the light turned green, I stepped forward and the cop yelled me a "Hey", so I stepped backards and, confused, saw Tony Blair passing through in his car.

I did what I could to get a good picture of the Houses of Parliament.

The englished liked me so much that they decided to create a meal after me!

The Imperial War Museum.

Southwark Cathedral.

Tower Bridge and the HMS Belfast.

Tower Bridge.

Tower of London.

I walked the whole afternoon with my 15 kg bag on my back to see the Tower Bridge, so at the end it was late, and I was very far from any park. In London the weather was so warm that I had decided to sleep in St James's Park, where it's allowed to.

Swiss RE Tower.

St Paul's Cathedral.

Royal Courts of Justice.

Statue of Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, responsible for the British victory in the Battle of Britain, WWII.

Finally, I made it to the park, and slept much better than in the park in Amsterdam, since it was not very cold. The next morning I decided to take pictures of the places I failed to because of negative light conditions, and go to a couple of museums. London has some of the bests museums in the worls, and they are for free!

Old Admiralty and the Horse Guards Parade.

Guards Memorial. The U.K. has 5 Foot Guards regiments: Grenadiers, Coldstreams, Scots, Irish and Welsh.

The Buckingham Palace.

Admiralty Arch.

Trafalgar Square. Unfortunately, Nelson's Column was under maitnenance.

Horse Guards.

Houses of the Parliament.

Then, I entered the Imperial War Museum, wich was amazing. If I had more time, I could had spent a hole day in there.

Interiors of a submarine replica.

The trench experience of WWI:

Later, I walked a lot again, to see the British Museum:

The age of enlightment.

Rosette Stone.

The museum's central court.

After that, I walked even more torwards the Marble Arch and the Hyde Park, which is huge, more than 2 square kilometers:

Italian Gardens.

Kensington Palace.

South Flower Walk.

There are lots of squirrels in this place.

Albert Memorial (front) and Royal Albert Hall (back).

Wellington Arch.

WWI memorial.

Since the Hyde Park is closed at 20:45 hrs, I had to go back to St James's Park. The next morning I was resting from all the walking next to the park's lake, when I heared some military march and a crowd following some red uniforms: it was the ceremony of Changing the Guard of the Buckingham Palace, which takes place at 11:30am.

After the military marchs, the band played some themes from the Beatles, like "Yesterday" and "Michelle".




I coudn't leave without souvenirs. I bought the metal soldiers in Trafalgar Square at 5 pounds each. Then I went to the Luton Airport to spend the night and catch my flight at 4:00am.

Girls Conclusions:

The average english girl is very nice (personality), but is not very beautifull at all. However, it's common to se concentrations of very beautifull girls (4 stars) once in a while, because it's a big city with a lot of people. I give the average english girl 1 star (see The Tucker Max Female Rating System).

At the end, of the seven nights I spent in the trip, I spent 2 at hostels, 2 at airports and 3 at parks. The night that I didn't spend at hostels, I tried to sleep 8 hours, but I only succesfully slept 4 hours. Man, I should write a book about homeless travel!

When I was back in my room in Delft in the morning of saturday, may 6, I was so tired that I lied on my bed. I thought: "mmmh, I could really use some sleep, but it's midday, I'll never going to fall aslee.... zzzzzzz".