I wasn’t sure what to expect from Greece as I’ve never had any desire to go there, maybe it is the lack of surf, but I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience after my girlfriend booked us 2 return flights to Athens for our first 2 week holiday together.

Athens airport was clean, well designed and easy to get around. We arrived late in the evening and took the metro from the airport straight to the centre of Athens where we were due to stay in an area called Plaka (an old historical part of the city). We stayed in the Student Travellers Inn for 2 nights, figuring that it wasn’t worth staying somewhere luxurious as we would be spending most of our time away from the hotel/hostel seeing the sights anyway.

The hostel was clean, quiet (we were staying at the end of the season) and centrally located in the Plaka area of town, which is close to all the sights including the Acropolis.

The weather was great, low to mid 20s, sunny and warm, perfect for walking around and seeing the wonderful architecture. I expect if you come in the peak summer season it would be unbearable and you’d probably pass out from the heat, traffic fumes and hoards of American tourists.

The sights were amazing and easy to get around on foot for the most part. I would definitely recommend strolling around the streets of Plaka, Monastiraki, seeing the Acropolis, the National Gardens, The Roman and Greek Agoras, Hadrian’s Library as well as the other main sights.

Greek food was a bit of an unknown to me, as I usually opt for nearly anything else when going out for a meal in London, but again I was pleasantly surprised and enjoyed all the traditional dishes including salads, souvlaki, grilled meats and  various cheeses. One thing I wasn’t really impressed with was the wine. Maybe we ordered the wrong thing or the cheaper options, but in general I thought Greek wine was crap (I usually go for full-bodied South African, Australian, Chilean Californian or Argentinean reds).

All in all our stay in Athens was amazing and I would recommend a stay to anyone who likes architecture, good food and friendly people.

Rose and I had a great start to our Greek holiday starting with a 2 day trip to Athens. The weather was beautiful, not a cloud in the sky, between 25-27 degrees, we couldn’t have asked for more.

We stayed in the Student Travellers Inn situated in Plaka in the centre of Athens. We walked around most of the sights including the Acropolis, various temples, libraries, columns and parks and got some amazing photos. We ate out both nights and were treated to lovely authentic Greek cuisine.

I didn’t really know what to expect from Greece, but so far my expectations have been exceeded and we are both having a great time. Our next destination is Crete!

You can now get all the latest news from Hungry Browser through the new widget I’ve just launched for Netvibes. It is availalbe for OS X, Windows Vista, iGoogle, Opera and Windows Live. Go check it out!

The new Freeview website is now live and is looking so much better than it was previously. I was part of the team that assisted in the redevelopment of the site and was in charge of developing the Information Architecture for the new site. Hopefully the new visual design and structure will be welcomed with positive feedback!

This weekend Richie and I hit up a dawn surf patrol at East Runton on the north Norfolk coast. We got up on Saturday morning at the unearthly hour of 5am. We strapped the boards to the frost-covered roof of the car and were on the road for 5.45am. En-route we were treated to a magnificent sunrise, the kind that makes it all worthwhile being awake at that time of the morning.

On arrival we were greeted by a solid 4-6ft swell, clean lines and plenty of enthusiasm to get ourselves into the water, albeit rather chilly.

We surfed for about 3.5 hours and I managed to catch a good dozen or so waves on both the 6′4 and 8′2. It was great to be rewarded with a decent session with some size after driving all that way and also after surfing in Devon earlier this year in quite poor conditions. I think I might have overdone it though, as I was shivering uncontrollably as I got out (took me the rest of the afternoon to warm up).

I took a few photos before we jumped in the water, all of which are on Flickr, check em out!

Rosana and I are off to Greece for 2 weeks on the 15th Oct. As a surprise anniversary present Rose booked two return tickets to Athens. I was stoked and touched with the gesture.

We are going to plan our itinerary over the next week and book up some accomodation. All we know so far is that we want to go to Athens and Crete and possibly one or two other islands.

I am looking forward to a little late autumn sunshine, taking some pictures and enjoying the scenery, architecture, food and drink and hopefully our first successful holiday together (if things go well we will book up a trip to Brazil early next year for possibly 4-6 weeks - serious surf time me thinks).

Countdown has begun!

This weekend Rosana and I hung out in the countryside and enjoyed the good weather and my mum’s bday. We took a little stroll around the back roads of Ugley Green and did a spot of blackberry picking. Here’s a few pics from our trip, the rest are on Flickr.

I returned a few days ago, from what could be described as the wettest holiday in Devon I’ve ever had. We had 1 full day of sunshine and then the rest was either showers or heavy downpours, which put a rather large dampener on the whole thing.

The waves were a mixture of 1-2ft clean lines and 3-6ft storm surf. We improvised and managed to use every board in the quiver from the 8′2, 6′4, 6′2 to 6′0. Richie even got stuck in and bought himself a brand new Tiki 8′4 Megamal and has now he renewed the stoke!

I took my Canon EOS and my new EF 55-250mm telephoto lens and got some pretty nice shots. Check out the a few of them on Flickr.

Hopefully as we move into autumn we’ll get some more sizeable and cleaner sessions, wonders will never cease!

I have recently been in discussions with Together London about collaborating with them on forthcoming web projects. The idea behind the company is to put together a team of highly-skilled individuals who work together in a flexible and more efficient way. By being more agile, cutting out a lot of the inefficiencies that occur in larger agencies we can deliver higher quality projects, more quickly and cheaply.

URL: http://www.togetherlondon.com/

I recently picked up the guitar again after a few years of hardly playing and have been getting back into playing. I started playing when I was about 14 years old, being taught firstly by a neighbour, then having a few lessons at school, and then mostly learning by listening to music and playing along.

Luckily I still have 2 Epiphone guitars that I have kept in good condition over the years. Hopefully with a little more practice I’ll get back to previous form and possibly even improve.