Choosing where to go??! - Between Protugal, Spain, France, Cyprus

Hello!

Whenever I talk about these big plans I end up writing my life story, I'd like to avoid that and keep things as simple as possible. So I'll briefly go over the main points of my story:

* I'm 27 as of last week, professional I.T worker, with experience as a journalist, a degree in philosophy, and A-levels in sciences.
* I decided sometime last year I'd be leaving the UK in 2010
* I found a friend who also wants to leave and is equally up for liquidating and moving.
* We will be taking my car and driving to wherever we go. So we will have a car

I am looking for somewhere I can live and work for a long period of time. I have plans to set-up various businesses over the internet, but these may take some time to establish. I hope to have a few on the go by summer this year, but who knows if they'll be pulling in big cash or not. I don't, so I'll need a backup plan.

What's the backup plan?

Teaching English, working in a bar, anything like that.

What am I looking for?

Being completely honest - I'm looking for a massive party. Wherever I move to, I want to be pretty close to huge parties, great night-life, all-day sun, and beaches.

I've partied the UK to death for the last 10 years

Now it's europe's time.

I absolutely despise working in a grim office all day pushing paper around - that life was suffocating me. Ever since I commmitted to leaving I've been able to breathe again.

I don't know any other languages yet, other than English. But I'm prepared to learn, and learn hard. I have no delusion of fluency in anything less than a year, so it would be handy if local jobs were not TOO hard to come by WITHOUT knowing much language - where-ever I go.

My friend is similiar to me apart from some differences:

1) He can live cheaper
2) He can do shitter work and be happy
3) He's generally more easy going

But this isn't about him, so moving on ...

Countries we're looking at, in order of which one is "winning" right now...

1) Spain
2) Cyprus
3) France
4) Portugal

Spain is good - we'd be looking at either somewhere less than 20 miles outside of a holiday resort OR one of the major cities not too far from the coast...

I've heard people tell me this and that about how expensive it is to live there, and how jobs are so hard to come accross, bla bla.

Yeah, isn't that the same case EVERYWHERE in the world??

Cyprus has one major bounus and one major drawback. The major bounus is that we would have a free place to stay there for 1-2 months. The major drawback is getting my car there would be a challenge and we wouldn't be able to whizz about on the european continent every now any again (a planned extravagance of this adventure )

Another bounus to cyprus - I know there's a high proportion of English expats there - that means jobs for them etc.

France looks less and less likely the more I look into it. But I would love an expat to convince me otherwise

Portugal is one of those pie in the sky pipedreams.. I have too much of a lovely image of the place, even though I've never been and have no idea what it's like. As such I've been writing it off because I don't "trust" my own perception of the place as being based on facts.

But with a more informed view who knows?

Alright - thanks in advance for anyone with the stones to tackle this mammoth of a post. Let yourself get carried away and type more rather than less - I'll appreciate every single word.

Rich