The day started off in a similar way to which the last had finished, with a nice beer. After getting up and stuff we headed to a local Tapas place for food. More details which I can’t remember about, the name of the place we went to and the name for the drink we had. It was basically lager with a load of lemon cordial in it. Very refreshing, perfect for that early drink. The Tapas here was also better than the stuff from the day before (did I mention we had Tapas the day before?), highlight was definitely the croquet style yummyness.

After foodage we wondered down to the Valladolid football Stadium where Nicko and Vicko are season ticket holders. Poor them I say.

The other reason to head down in the direction of the stadium was to check out the traveling zoo… well that’s atleast what it called itself. Turns out this is code for caravan with a couple of donkeys, which charges you an arm and a leg (I think maybe this is how they feed the animals?). So we skipped that and headed back into town to hit one of the locals for the end of the rugby, which of course Jefffo loved…

After the rugby we headed to pick up some more beer and a couple of bits and bobs from the garage whilst Vicko went on home to start preparing the roast dinner for the evening. And what a roast it was! I wish I’d taken pics of it, but was too busy scoffing it, definitely a 9/10!

After waking up bright and early, OK stop there, what a lie. Our flight in was delayed which meant we didn’t get into Madrid until very late, and then had a number of hour drive to Valladolid. Luckily Nicko didn’t fall asleep… unluckily Vicko did meaning Nicko had no clue where to go. Funny scenes as you veer across lanes and slip roads. We survived, and got back in time for a beer, but there is always time for a beer, even when its 3.30am.

The plan for the day was to check out a bit of the city, grab some Tapas and head to the pub for some rugby. Sounds like a good plan to me, especially when we added in the siesta and Mexican we were going to have for dinner.

I will talk more about Valladolid tomorrow, as by then we will have had a much more in depth look around the place and actually taken some pictures. For today, I only captured one thing and that’s the Bullring. Unsurprisingly, that’s where they do the Spanish tradition of Bull Fighting. A totally pointless, ridiculous activity (not even going to classify it as a sport), saying that though if there had been any on whilst I was there I would have liked to go. Cultural experience and all that.

Pub was good, rugby was bad, we played like tools but still won. Joining us in the pub were a couple of Nicko’s mates, an Irish guy (and his visiting parents) and a Welsh guy. Good laugh. But it was very quickly siesta time. Siesta time confuses the body clock a bit, meaning that dinner isn’t really dinner, much more of supper. In Spain it is customary to not go out for food until 9 or 10 oclock.

I’ve no idea on the details of the Mexican place we went to, maybe Nicko or Vicko will fill some of those into the comments section below, but the one thing to say is that it is important to like cheese. Nachos as a starter consisted of a massive bowl of melted cheese with some tortillas sticking in it. It was nice, the Jalapenos were a hell of a lot tastier than the ones we get over here. Main course was enchiladas, guess what, lots of cheese. Not as much as Vicko got though, described as a blanket because you could fold it back. Slightly strange and it got very sickly quite quickly. Picture time, look at the boys looking all happy…

With some heavy cheese sweats / cramps going on we heading to another bar for a quick couple then retired home. Day done… How did everyone get on with Day 1’s quiz?

No not the houses of Lords, I mean the cricket place, it was a Twenty 20 World Cup warm up day. Which basically meant two games, firstly South Africa vs. Sri Lanka, followed up by England vs. West Indies.

As you would expect at any cricket related event there was a certain amount of beer involved, fuelled by the fact that we were going for my birthday celebrations.

Both games were relatively anti-climatic, West Indies didn’t bother letting Gayle bat which is a shame as he is one of the most exciting batsmen in the world at the moment. England did have their full team out though, and also had them out during the gap between games to warm up. Its cool to get up close and have a little chat with them.

You can check out some pictures from the day here.

Good Friday is meant to be fish and no meat, but we cheated a little, we had both. Of course, first the BBQ had to get firey:

Chilli, garlic and ginger king prawn skewers to start, followed by hand made Bomhead burgers. Then chicken marinated in either BBQ or Hot Piri Piri sauce, sausages and hand made Barker burgers. Barker burgers had chorizo and parmesan in them, very good!

Few beers few ciders a bit of poker and the day is complete.

What I did do though was plan lots of stuff for the final two days I was in Aus. And I got Pizza…

Lunch was courtesy of Pugg Mahones, then we moved onto the Melbourne Rooftop Bar / Cinema before hitting Softbelly again.

Big thank you to him and his t’other half Duffinio.

So I went to the Motorshow at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre, to be honest it was a little bit of a let down. It was set up more as one big car showroom for selling purposes rather than a hall with lots of crazy concept cars and prototypes etc. There were some highlights though, the F1 car (obviously as the first GP of the season is a couple of weeks away in Melbourne), there were also a lot of very attractive models fashioning the cars. Never have I come up with so many pointless questions to ask…

After around an hour I got bored of wondering around and had ran out of questions so thought it was time to head to activity two for today. As you can read here I went up to the MCG on event day yesterday so couldn’t get a full tour. To get to the MCG I had to walk along the Yarra River, it’s a good couple of miles but it’s a rather pleasant experience. Would have been much better if there weren’t a few thousand people there watching some Water Skiing tournament.

Up at the MCG I could have the full tour, and what a tour it is! Got to go around the inner workings of the stadium, into the changing rooms (they put our club’s showers to shame), up to the top of the ground and had a look around the member’s area. Membership is extremely cheap, only $550 a year (approx £250) the problem is the 27 year wait for membership. Did I mention I went on the pitch? *BIG GRIN*. The view from the top:

For dinner, I tried out a new game I had been thinking about using for a while, simply go up to a deli style food counter and when they ask you what you would like you say “whatever the last person had”. It has not gone well, ended up with some Lamb curry, Meatballs and couscous. I don’t like couscous… the silver lining, I discovered Blue Tongue Lager, more on this later.

For lunch we went over to The Celtic Club, which appeared more like a members club or British legion than a bar but anyway they did good burgers.

The afternoon was dedicated to the MTUB (Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade) meet-up in honour of STA Travel and Earn Your Stripes. We all met up at Softbelly (as mentioned here) and it was a great chance to share a few beers with some great locals.

After which we went for Chinese, got fed a lot of VERY strange stuff I had little idea about. I think there were prawn dumplings (where the dumpling had the texture of skin) along with custard puddings (as a starter). Some of it was brilliant, some less so.