As I couldn't swim and hated the sun I went on holiday for the nightlife. I had visions of big nightclubs full of thousands of people and not leaving until it got light the following morning. Well that was what Faliraki was like..........for everyone else who was there except us !!!!
Before going I had been warned countless times about drinking alcohol in the hot daytime sun. Anymore than one or two beers in the afternoon meant you wouldn't be going anywhere at nighttime. The big group from Greenhill who we changed our holiday location to be with were doing just that. We would meet them at night to find most of them totally hammered usually asleep or unable to string a few words together.
It was not just once or twice some of them would go 2 or 3 days at a time without even leaving the grounds of their apartment. To me that was just a total waste of a holiday, they might as well have spent 2 weeks in the pubs back home if they were going to do that. In the last 10 days of the holiday there was just one night we all went out all night and ended up in a nightclub called millennium.
There were 3 among them who usually made it out with us every night without fail, Fish, Paddy & Bones (pictured L to R at the front) 2 of them I got to know well after the holiday. The problem was however they were a lot older than us (in their 30s at least) so they were not interested in going to loud nightclubs like I was.
After a few days every night started to follow the same routine, we would head into town about 8pm and start drinking in a few of the bars with the 3 above and any of the other crowd who were sober enough to make it away from their hotel room. Everywhere was always loud and lively, there were loads of cocktails, buy one get one free offers and generally a great time to be had by everyone.
However on the stroke of midnight all the music in the bars had to be turned off by law, they could still carry on serving alcohol all night but without music the place was dead. At this point everyone would finish their drinks and head off to a number of all night clubs that were dotted around town. That is everyone except us.......
What we would do however is end up at an Irish bar with Fish, Paddy & Bones. I have nothing against Irish bars of course but when they are nearly empty, have no atmosphere and nearby everyone else is spilling into the booming nightclubs it was the last place on earth I wanted to be.
After 4 -5 hours of drinking alcohol I need somewhere lively to keep me going, put me in a nightclub with a good atmosphere and loud music and I will be going strong for several more hours. Put me somewhere dead however and I just start switching off and get to that stage where every swig of beer just makes you feel worse.
It didn't take many nights of this before I started to complain, even Fish, Paddy & Bones once said to us "why are you sitting in here with us when you could be having a great time with the people your own age." Terry was one of them people who didn't care where he was if he had a beer in his hand. Mat Hall was the problem every time I asked if we were going in the clubs or "somewhere else" all I got was "I don't feel like it", shrugs of shoulders or just total indifference. Several times I questioned him in the daytime about it, first he tried to make out the clubs were expensive, then failing that he kept saying "I just can't get into it".
I was absolutely mad with Mat Hall as he had been building up the holiday for months before hand to be the greatest thing in the world and it was him who was about as lively as a 60 year old. Back home his girlfriend was having problems with her boss, whatever the problems were it was something he could do nothing about thousands of miles away on holiday.
I didn't spend a months wages to go on holiday to spend my nights out sitting somewhere that was as lively as an old mans pub back home on a Monday afternoon. By the end of the first week I had enough of the whole stupid business. Lack of sleep, the heat, the alcohol and most of all the lack of any action made me feel bad. Apart from the obvious examples of being sick, robbed or having an accident it was the worst possible outcome I could imagine to the holiday.
The last week I was counting down the days to go before flying home and it seemed to drag on forever. 4 days before going I stopped drinking alcohol as I just didn't see the point.
On the final night we were there Terry was ill and didn't come out. I had a glimmer of hope that Mat Hall might liven up a bit. He surprised me by ordering a big fish bowl cocktail, maybe we were going to have a good night out after all. Well no.......within 10 minutes of this picture being taken he just stood up said "I don't fell like it" and walked off back to the apartment.
About 24 hours of that holiday were worth doing, the rest had been nothing short of a nightmare, I was almost glad to be back at work....
No comments:
Post a Comment