Four likely lads travel the planet

Finally the blog you have all been waiting for, since we last checked in with the rampant blog checkers out there we have travelled further down the trail and made it to Dubrovnik in southern Croatia. By all means possible this place has lived up to the hype given to it.

Here are some of the highlights of our visit to Dubrovnik:

Day One:

We arrived in Dubrovnik from Split after a scenic drive down the delightful Adriatic coastline. It took us bloody ages to find the place we were staying due to one way roads and poor signage.

We called the bloke from the Dubrovnik youth service and followed his scooter to our new home. Our hosts we very welcoming and spoke little English, but managed to say "No Problem" at least once per sentence.

Went walking throught the old town that night, top quality as old towns go and quality fortifications.

Day Two:

Went for a walk around the peninsula looking for quality beaches and nudist beaches (only for the culture points though... serious you see enough nudity at the beach as it is)

Went to the dodgy sounding and dodgy looking night club "Latino Club Fuego"

We had an awesome time with Dangerous Dave and Jono

Melon and Jono, got on like a house on fire when they realised that Jono knew Ed (Callaghan) and went out with a chick that used to live with Ed.

Dave and Irish friends

Day Three:

Went to the dodgy sounding and dodgy looking night club "Latino Club Fuego"

We had an awesome time with Dangerous Dave and Jono

We met plenty of people here the second night. Melon, Jono and a new Swedish friend.

Morto and Melon made a new Norwegian friend, Anna

Kerr and Hengel with Russian friends

Hengel with one of Dave's new Irish friends

Drunken debauchery

Later that night Kerr (and the rest of us) felt that some swimming to cool down was in order

Day Four:

Went to the dodgy sounding and dodgy looking night club "Latino Club Fuego"

We had an awesome time with Dangerous Dave and Jono

We met more friends tonight. Melon with Norwegian friend

By the end of the night Dangerous Dave couldn't take very good pictures anymore

Day Five:

Final day in Dubrovnik, we hit the beach again and waited until 11pm for our ferry to Italy. Our sleeping patches on the deck were awaiting us. After 8 hours on the boat with little sleep we arrived in Italy

For those of you out there who require more debaucherous information regarding our exploits during this period of time please feel free to email anyone (except morto, cos he is the biggest dog of the lot)

OK so it sounds like we didn't do much else than go to the dodgy sounding and dodgy looking night club "Latino Club Fuego" and go swimming, which is true. But we have plenty of nice photos of that sort of stuff for those interested, but that is boring...

...and back by popular demand... man in chair

Well a few more days and 3 more countries knocked off.

Recent activites include soaking in warm, pungent public baths in Budapest for a few hours, coffee and cake (and a shiteload of Uno) in classy coffeeshops in Vienna and enjoying the paradise that is Bled in Slovenia, including tobogganing down a winter ski run in summer (see photos below).

Take it easy, go the French tomorrow (especially Franck Ribery, he is so French)

Dogs are allowed to wander around in pubs in Austria (what do you reckon Tommo?)

Up there with the best places so far, Bled




Our tryouts for the Slovenian diving team ended disastrously as you can see (note church on island in background, awesome)

So many things have happened since we last updated this blog, but all I can remember from the time is a diving Italian prick, an unfortunate Lucas Neill and a little Spanish referee who could.

We're out. The ride was great though. Even if it it did end in about the most shattering circumstance possible. One that Frank Farina could be proud of.

After thinking a little harder I can now think of some of the other things that have happened in the last two weeks. Some highlights of the trip since we last checked in......

1) Innsbruck, Austria. This place is magic. A city sitting in the middle of a huge valley and nestled by the river Inn. We went white water rafting here and managed to flip the raft on the very first bit of white water we found. We had been in the raft for about a minute. Awesome.

Form an orderly queue ladies

2) Liechtenstein. Actually, that wasn't a highlight at all. We just went there. Why not?

Shot from the Peugeot Partner catalogue, going out to Nick La Porta

3) Stuttgart. A definite highlight. We thought the celebrations were good in Kaiserslautern after the Japan win, but it was nothing compared to the way we celebrated after a draw! I hugged so many people in yellow shirts and have so many photos with random best mates for the night.

Thank you Harry

Litre beers make quality photography a little difficult

4) Czech Republic. Although overrun with tourists, Prague was a beautiful city, as was it's small village version, Cesky Kromlov. We spent five days in the country, drinking the best lager in the world, eating stodge and taking picture perfect photos.

Quality roads in Czech Republic as you can see, took 9 hours to drive 250km, Pilot Kerr was not impressed

5) Krakow. Not really a highlight either actually. We didn't see this city as well as we would have liked since we spent a day at Auschwitz. Needless to say, a happy enjoyable day it wasn't.

6) Budapest. Our current location. This city is beautiful with heaps to see and do, and we haven't even been to the Roman baths yet. I plan to spend the entire day there today.

Hengel's philosophy in life: Take the bull by the horns (Hengel wasn't actually posing for this either)

A detour is a choice between two tasks, each with their own pros and cons

Culture points meter broke after we maxed it out in Paris... sorry can't estimate the tally anymore

Sorry about the gap between the last few blogs. We are now promising each other for the third time this trip that it will never happen again.

Take care,

Liam and Michael