State Of Origin

Because I’ve had so many busy days during my journey, I’m now having to retrospectively complete a lot of these entries. As a result, I’m currently about a week behind and using a six-hour train journey to catch up on everything to date. It’s harder than I expected, though, and these entries take a surprising amount of time if I want to do them properly. I may have to start shortening them to make sure I can keep up with each day, but we’ll see how that goes given how much I seem to be doing on a day-to-day basis.

After several incredibly busy days travelling and wandering around with Stef, today was a completely empty day where I did very little. I slept in, spent a few hours lying in bed, called the folks, and eventually started making my way to a Scottish pub to watch the State of Origin. Luckily, Dad had found what seemed to be the perfect spot to watch it. It was about a 20-minute walk away, but it was guaranteed to be showing the game, so I made my way there. I had hoped there might be a few other Aussies around that I could meet and make some friends with, but when I arrived, the place was absolutely packed with Australians from all over the country - although, unsurprisingly, mostly Queenslanders and New South Welshmen. At first, it was far too busy to even find a seat, but a nice family invited me to sit down with them. They were supporting Queensland, and we ended up being some of the only people in that particular section of the pub cheering for the Maroons. Luckily, that didn’t stop us from getting very into the game. Of course, the highlight of the night was Queensland winning the series with a very convincing victory. Being able to celebrate a State of Origin series win in a pub on the other side of the world was pretty special.

After the game, another nice family invited me to join them for a few drinks. I happily accepted, and we sat around chatting for a few hours. They bought me a couple of beers, which happened to be 6% and 7%, and eventually they went on their way, leaving me to wander home. By this point, I was quite drunk - and only getting drunker. It was a strange experience walking through Rome in that state, still stumbling across monuments hundreds of years old tucked away in tiny streets. There’s something pretty surreal about being completely pissed and casually walking past buildings that have been standing there for centuries. Eventually, I did make it home. And although I just laid in bed to recover from the walk, I fell asleep. I woke up at some point later and decided to wander out to find some dinner. By the time I found a nice restaurant and ate, I realised I was near the Trevi Fountain. Curious to see it at night, I decided to take the long way home. I quickly discovered that the fountain was somehow even busier at night than it had been during the day. I could understand why, though - it looked incredible under the lights. Once again, however, I didn’t stick around for too long before deciding it was time to head home and go to bed.

And that was my entire day. Much shorter than the entries from the previous few days, but this was mostly a recovery day anyway—and a very necessary one at that.Read more