What a day!!!! I woke up in my beautiful bed with a cosy feather duvet and my many pillows. It was a good start. I then had an all you can eat breakfast. I had a bit of everything - cereal, yoghurt, fruit, juice, lemon cake, eggs, toast and coffee. Back to read my many messages - it was great.

I had lunch with my friend Alana. I ordered steak sandwich followed by strawberry cheese cake - it is my birthday after all|!!!! Alana wasn't too well so I decided to take a walk round the town and do some errands. Whilst pottering along I met Ann - yeahhhh. So Ann accompanied me to the post office to send my parcel back to the UK. I am so glad I had company as it took over an hour to accomplish this task!!! I lost count of the number of different windows we had to present ourselves to or the number of people who just ignored us until they were ready to deal with us. I didn't care I chattered incessantly to Ann, filling her in on all my adventures and she told me hers. It was surprisingly good fun being stuck in a post office when you have someone to gab away to. Afterwards we went to an English pub where we had a few glasses of wine sat on comfy sofas. It was like being in an episode of 'Friends' - this is the life. Then back for a quick change before we al went out for tea. We went back to the English pub as they actually did Bangers and Mash. The meal was superb. The company was great. I had the best day.

Then to make it extra special I got to meet Jane Bruccoleri (my cousin) and her lovely boyfriend Ben for tea the next evening. It was great to see family when you are so far away from home. We had Mexican tapas and a really good night.

Then to make it extra special, the following day me and Ann went back to the English Pub for steak and Ale pie and lots of wine. Then the owner - who looked like Mick Jagger, wore a fake leopard print fur coat and was unfortunately an alcoholic - found out it had been my birthday, so he started serving out the vodka shots. Crickey! We were so tipsy and Ann had a night bus to catch. It was an excellent drunken afternoon.

Nothing like stretching a birthday out!