Benidorm 2006
Benidorm Pics
Going away for only 4 days and 3 nights meant we needed to hit the ground running; there wasn't going to be any chance for cranking it up a notch here. After escaping the clutches of Purvis's new best mate on arrival at Alicante, we were met at the airport by Brian, who had organised the trip for us. Straight to the hotel to get set up, a quick unpack later and it was out for a couple village burgers to prepare our stomachs for the night ahead. A bit a relaxing in the hotel with a fridge-full of San Miguel and a pack of cards then it was off to the Ibrox bar to start the evening off. Purvis probably regretted the decision to go and see some fat sod of a comedian, who spent the night just ripping into him, basically. He seemed to think he needed some blood, apparently. And he found his long-lost son in Gaz.
Friday morning after the first night and it was down to the beach. Purvis was suffering from his customary next-morning illness and Dodge was in pursuit of all-over redness. Just a day of snoozing on the beach really. Dodge and Fagan went on to watch the Argentina-Germany match, while Barry and Purvis decided on a bit shut-eye.
It was in the back of our minds not to overdo things too much that night with the England match coming up the next afternoon, but that went out the window pretty quickly. Oh well.
Saturday morning and we're off to the karting place for a bit of pre-football racing. Now some Brits on holiday wouldn't even bother trying to talk to a Spanish taxi driver with no English, but that sort of thing doesn't worry Baz. ("Tiene usted estado ocupado?" & "cuándo le hace se baja del trabajo?", for future reference). There's always the language of football if you're really struggling, and just pointing at your England shirt and repeating "Rooney, Beckham, Gerrard" can normally get you through. Our mate Beppe the taxi driver seemed to like Beckham, though we suspect he may have been thinking of Posh: "Ci, ci, Beckham!!! Pechos grande!!!" Baz thought he'd found some common ground when Beppe kept mentioning Fernando Alonso ("Aye, good player, him... Liverpool. Aye").
The karting, though, turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for Barry. All looked to be going well as he led going into the last few laps, but he peaked too soon and was left sitting on the roadside waiting for RAC assistance. Dodge went on the take the spoils, his tactics of sitting tight at the back early on, saving up for a late spurt, paying off. He pipped Fagan to the line, with Purvis coming in a very, very distant third.
Lift home then it was finding a place to watch the match. Champions was the recommendation from Brian, but time was getting short so we settled for Churchill's, over the road from our hotel. The match itself seems a bit of a blur now, other than the sending off and the penalties. It turned out to be all too much for Fagan, who had to go sit outside after Lampard's miss. He was back inside on hearing the reaction in the pub to Viana hitting the post, though. Just for a few glorious seconds after Petit missed Portugal's third penalty we thought we were going to have a wild night of celebration.
But it didn't turn out that way. We needed to find a way to pick ourselves up again. With hindsight, it might not have been a good idea to sit in the Ibrox bar, the home of Benidorm's Glasgow Rangers Supporters Club, still wearing our England shirts but, meh, what the hell.
The only way the get over something like that was to get smashed. So that's what we did. To the point where Fagan and Purvis ended up in the wrong hotel, wondering why our room key wasn't working, and why there were Spanish voices in our room ("There's some fucker in there!! Ripping us off!!").
So then that was it. First thing next morning, it was just shove everything into the cases (including the room key into Dodge's pocket) and straight to the airport, and back home to support any team other than Portugal. Thats pretty much it, another top holiday, plenty of what we needed, lots of Beer and Sunshine.
Big thanx to Purvis for the write up
