Well, the Easter holidays are very nearly at an end - which means I'm back to work tomorrow morning, ready to commence the next chapter of my ongoing quest to get qualified as a primary school teacher.

This next half-term is a whole eight weeks long, and so it's going to be a tough one.

Saying that, I've been so busy during my fortnight off that I suspect returning to the educational coalface will actually feel in some ways like a break!

So what have I been up to?

Well for starters, those of you who have been following the separate blog I've been doing on the official Mongol Rally website will be well aware that my friend Ed and I have been quite busy with our ongoing prepartions for the rather silly adventure we have planned for this coming summer. And in addition, there was also the surprise screening of 'The Labyrinth' at Nottingham's Broadway Cinema that I arranged as a surprise for my esteemed brother Al's 30th birthday.

Meanwhile, I've been busy with other things too. So many things, in fact, that I'm going to make this blog entry a two-parter... or else it's in danger of being as long as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'!

In this first part then, I shall talk about trips I've made during the holiday to some of Europe's coolest cities - Manchester, Paris and... um, Doncaster!

My trip up to Manchester, first and foremost, was to attend the Hacienda Warehouse Party - an all-night rave held inside a massive disused railway arch underneath the city's Picadilly railway station!

Now some of you who are reading this will be sufficiently clued in to not really need any explanation as to what this event was about.

For those of you who aren't however - well, during the acid house era of the late 1980s and early 1990s, illegal raves were often held all over the country, usually taking place in warehouses and other such similar venues.

It was at these raves where the Stone Roses played some of their first ever gigs, and the events quickly became a huge part of the whole acid house scene. Often, organisers would only actually announce the venue on the actual night, in order to give themselves the best possible chance of avoiding getting busted by the police.

Sadly of course, I was far too young to be going to these sorts of events at the time.

Nonetheless, as someone who has long been a bit of a scholar when it comes to most aspects of music and popular culture, the illegal raves of the acid house era have long been a source of fascination for me.

Indeed, while most people would probably take the opportunity to pay a visit to Egypt during the time of the Pharoahs or whatever, I've often thought that, if I had a time machine, I'd definitely go back to Manchester in the late 1980s!

And happily, the Hacienda Warehouse Party was a chance to do just that.

Yes, the whole idea of the night was to try and replicate as closely as possible one of the illegal raves that I've read so much about - so needless to say, I wasn't going to miss it for the world!

And pleasingly, it was a big success!

Sure, those people there who were old enough to have experienced acid house first time artound would probably have regarded the night as a bad facsimilie of what they experienced first time around. To me though, it was exactly how I imagined the original thing to have been like.

The night featured a stellar line-up of DJs including A Guy Called Gerald, Peter Hook and Shaun Ryder, plus a live set from 808 State.

Naturally, the kind of tunes played all night very rarely strayed from the sort of sounds you would traditionally associate with acid house - not, I must say, the sort of music I would generally tend to listen to at home.

However, enjoying music at home is a completely different kettle of fish to enjoying music in a club.

In a club - or indeed a disused railway arch, as was the case here! - tracks such as 'Voodoo Ray' by A Guy Called Gerald just feel so right. And when you've got 2,000-odd people all going mental for the same record, it creates a brilliant euphoric atmosphere - the sort of atmosphere, frankly, that you never quite get at an indie club full of narcisistic teenagers, gazing at their shoes as they shuffle around self-consciously to the strains of some Smiths track or other.

All, in all then, with some amazing lighting and strobes accompanying the music as well, you basically had a recipe for a brilliant night.

And that's coming from someone who wasn't even on any drugs - though judging by some of the casualties strewn liberally around the railway arch by 4am, I suspect I was possibly in the minority on that score..!

Nevertheless, despite being fuelled only by beer, I ended up staying out dancing 'til pretty much dawn.

And as if that in itself wasn't rock'n'roll enough, I then went back to my hotel - which was situated, appropriately, bang opposite the building that used to be the office of Manchester's legendary Factory Records - and... yes, ordered an aubergine bake on room service.

Shaun Ryder would be proud!

So that was Manchester - but what about Paris and Doncaster?

Well despite them being poles apart in terms of romance and glamour, my trips to both of the aforementioned cities were for pretty much the same reason - to watch football! Yes, I'd love to pretend that I'm the sort of sophisticated guy who goes to Paris for all the culture and shit - however, my trip was in actual fact for the England footy team's friendly match against France, which took place at the Stade De France on Wednesday night.

Now I've written before about this on my blog - but just to recap, I'm currently trying to get to as many England games as I can.

This is all part of a masterplan to get myself to the World Cup in 2010 - because having joined the England members scheme, I basically get awarded points for every match that I attend. And the more points I accumulate, the higher up the pecking order I'll be when World Cup tickets go on sale.

That is of course assuming that England actually qualify for the World Cup!

They should do of course - however, you should never count too many chickens. Indeed, England's performance in Paris suggests that new coach Fabio Capello is going to have his work cut out trying to create a world class side out of the various overpaid prima donnas at his disposal.

Frankly, their display was dismal, with the players barely mustering a single decent shot and ending up losing 1-0.

Mind you, the match was an all-time classic compared to the absolute horseshit served up by Nottingham Forest at Doncaster two nights later, in another dismal 1-0 reverse.

So, hundreds of miles travelled, and hundreds of pounds spent... and what was my reward?

Yes, dire performances by both my club and country - in each case resulting in disappointing defeats by a solitary goal.

Still, such is the lot of the football fan. And to be fair, apart from the rubbish match, I had a brilliant time during the two days that I spent in Paris!

Not wanting to spend too much money, I'd decided to try and do my trip as cheaply as possible.

As such, while my friend Paul had decided to fly out to the French capital, I found myself going over by Eurostar - for a bargain £59 return.

And while Paul was staying in a nice comfortable Ibis hotel, I elected to slum it in the cheapest accommodation the city had to offer - a £15-a-night bed on a shared dorm in a youth hostel.

It was great - it was like being a backpacker all over again!

Of course though, travelling on a budget does have its drawbacks - not least the fact that the£59 return fares on the Eurostar are only available on the ridiculously early services.

And needless to say, I found myself wondering whether it was really such a good idea when I found myself staggering to the Eurostar departure terminal at St Pancras at the frankly silly hour of 4.45am on the morning of the England match.

A pleasant surprise was imminent though. For as I stood bleary-eyed in the check-in queue, I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder - and turned to find it was none other than Sanjay, one of my old mates from school!

Randomly, it turned out that Sanj was going to Paris for the match as well - and so after completing the swift journey from London in little more than two hours, I ended up spending most of the day pottering around with him and a group his friends who had flown out the previous day.

As travelling England fans, one thing we all had to do during the day was go to a certain hotel in the city to register ourselves.

And it is because of this that I'm legitimately able to claim to having 'entered Paris Hilton'..

Arf!

Of course, the match turned out to be pretty forgettable - however, I still had a whole day the next day to do a bit sightseeing.

Now I must say at this juncture, Paris had never been anywhere near the top of my list of favourite places. And I think that's probably a case of my judgement having been coloured by my previous visit to the city.

Way back when I was 18, you see, I'd gone on a package coach trip to Paris to see a gig by Oasis.

And frankly, pretty much everything that could have gone wrong on that trip did!

First and foremost, we arrived to find that the gig had been cancelled - this being due to the fact that striking French lorry drivers had created a blockade around the city, meaning that Oasis couldn't get their equipment to the venue where they were supposed to be playing.

What's more, we also arrived at our hotel to find there'd been a double-booking - and so rather than the swanky city centre accomodation that we'd been expecting, we ended up in a dodgy wild west-themed shithole miles out of town!

And to cap it all off, it absolutely pissed down with rain throughout the entire time we were there!

In spite of this rather lamentable experience though, I tried hard to enter into my second visit to Paris with an open mind - and I'm pleased to say that I was rewarded in spades.

Okay, it was once again pissing down with rain for most of my visit!

However, this time I found Paris to be much more in line with the view most people tend to have of it.

It's certainly an atmospheric sort of place - indeed, just walking around the city and taking everything in makes for a fascinating experience. There are certainly enough cliches to keep someone like me amused. There are lots of berets, for instance... while the majority of French men you see walking down the street seem to have large sticks of French bread tucked under their arm!

And needless to say, Paris is absolutely brimming with culture and history.

I suppose the culture aspect is something I'm much better placed to appreciate now I'm 28 as opposed to 18. I particularly enjoyed checking out the views of the city from the top of the Eiffel Tower - and despite the fact that it was absolutely swarming with tourists and will now forever be associated with the crap film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, I also found the Louvre art gallery absolutely fascinating.

Though I still maintain that the Mona Lisa is a-bit-shit-really!

All in all though, it's easy to see why Parisians seem to look down the nose a bit at us Brits - as frankly, their city pisses all over London as far as capital cities go...