Contiki!!

- Sorry about not many pictures, there is a vast shortage of cheap or free internet around, so I can't be spending long waiting for pictures to upload. -

Evenin' chumps!

Today we’ve started our journey on our Contiki tour through continental Europe after spending just over a month in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. I’ll go into the finer details of the tour a little later, but for now I’ll just stick to our time in London.

You’ll notice in the last post that I mentioned we were visiting Manchester, after our time in Liverpool. No-one seemed to be able to tell us what exactly there is to see in Manchester, apart from having a fantastic night life. We managed to find quite a few things during the day, despite what everyone didn’t tell us. What we found to be especially cool was this big park in the city centre. The council, or someone, had some ingenious idea to get a whole heap of deck chairs, and just stick them in this park. I love seeing stuff like this, and when it isn’t abused or broken. It wasn’t until about halfway through our little rest when I realised that this park was in the most ideal position to have full exposure to the sun (On the odd occasion that there is a sun). It’s refreshing to see business people take off their jackets and shoes and sit there in the sun on these public deck chairs. Of a night time, I do believe they have public screenings of various films, the football and other cool stuff on a super huge projection screen. Free stuff brings the community together, and there isn’t enough of it. To see so many people using these deck chairs made me insanely happy.
Compared to other destinations we’ve visited, Manchester isn’t quite a tourist city. There’s definitely nothing to go out of your way to see, but if you’re a fan of the football (We get in a lot of trouble if we call it soccer), you’re in luck. Unfortunantely, Ben absolutely loathes football, and I’m not all that fussed on it. Eventually I’ll go and see a game, get into it all, but there’s no point dragging that old chap along. Only things such as museums and town halls can be found, which are in every city around the world and there aren’t even that many tours that are usually force fed to a traveller. That being said, 100 pub crawls were available. As we soon discovered though, these pubs crawls actually involve no crawling in pubs as there are no pubs at all. I don’t mean to sound like an old man, but every stop was a night club, with terrible music which was far too loud and girls who are just breaking their ankles trying to wear heels with little success and make-up you could carve off like cheese.
Anyway, shortly after arriving in Manchester, we left again. Somehow we managed to do so without coming across this gay community that we heard so much about. Big Boy Ben felt as if he missed out on part of the city, but I’m sure he’ll survive.

And so we arrived in London, thankfully together. You see, when we left Manchester, I bought my ticket, but Ben had no cash, so he tried to use his card with the ticket machine. For a reason unknown to us, the card wasn’t accepted, so Benjamin went and tried to get some money out of the nearest ATM. After numerous attempts and replies of “This transaction has been cancelled”, he resorted to buying his ticket from the ticket desk with his card. It finally worked, but all the tickets for the bus I had bought the ticket for had been sold. At this point, Ben was going to be arriving in London 2-3 hours after me, but managed to be put on stand-by for my bus. Luckily, a few unlucky bastards didn’t make it to the bus, so Ben took one of those seats. Thank Christ.

Our accommodation was a hostel above a pub, which is always a good idea unless it’s the day before Australia Day in Geelong – As a certain German can vouch for. The chap who checked us in accidently put us in the wrong room, so instead of being in a 12 bed dorm, we scored two single beds in a room with an ensuite – Hell yeah baby! He told us that if no-one else booked the room, we could just keep it, due to the mess we’d already made.

Simply looking at the map of London (Home to a population of 7.1 million) is quite daunting on it’s own. It’s a big place with many big things including Benjamin’s alternate form, Big Ben. There is way too much stuff to see in this city, but we gave it our best shot. Our accommodation was in the scummy sort of area (Which we were soon informed of is next to the dangerous part of town) and the nearest underground stop was the high class area, where the cheapest item on the menu (Side of chips) will set a chump back like $8. I KNOW!! Quite obviously we did not eat here. Needless to say, London itself is still bloody expensive as a whole. At 25 pounds a night, our accommodation was the cheapest in London for a Saturday night. Go for it, have a look at the conversion rate…I can’t imagine how much our room would have cost if we paid the actual price for it.

Although seeing the popular things like London Bridge (Turns out is a piece of shit), Tower Bridge, Tower of London, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye and other cool stuff, there is still plenty on our list to do for our return to London, including a night out, Abbey Road and seeing a concert. Unfortunantely Ben won’t be here for it, but I do intend to go and see Kings of Leon with The Black Keys (And a few other bands) as a support act. I missed out on all the tickets, so I have to hope that Ebay can be my saviour.
Half the fun of being in London is finding your way, in the tubes especially.

Last night we had to go to a meeting concerning the Contiki tour in which we were informed of a predicament. With all the volcano ash in the air and lack or airline services, many of the travellers who had expected to come on the tour could not make it. About half of the expected people cancelled, and so with very small numbers, but in the case of three different tours, we have been joined. Our tour, of 46 days, will run as normal, but with us are the tourers of a 22 day tour and a 32 day tour. I’m not sure what will become of them, where we will leave them, but the whole situation kind of sucks for them I think, as I believe some of their tour will be cut short, and some of the places they were expecting to go may be cut out entirely. I’m sure it won’t dampen their spirits though.
Yes, about 80% of the tour is made up of Australian’s, with three Canadians, four Kiwi’s, a Springbrok and a Londonite. They all seem like cool people for the time being, I’m sure after 46 days I’ll be a better judge on that and will be able to elaborate a little further.

We’re now pretty much in Paris and with nothing more to report on, I’ll leave it there.

Au Revoir!

Oh yeah, we had lunch at some bus stop place and the lady behind the counter had like an entire conversation with me in French. Basically I threw the money at her and said merci and got out of there.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


Bonjour!

And so the Contiki tour truly does start. Everyone jumped on the bus in the morning, not knowing each other from a bar of soap. Already though everyone was insanely friendly and it didn't take long to start making friendships. After a long and early morning of meeting tour guides, tour cooks, bus drivers and weighing bags, we were well on our way towards France. About an hour and a half out of London, we made our way to Dover, and would you believe, the cliffs really are white? Here we jumped on the biggest ferry I've ever seen (It had multiple levels, heaps of coffee shops, a couple restaurants and a massive duty-free shop) and after another two hours we were back on the bus and in now in France. It hit as quite a shock seeing so much writing - None in English. This has been the first time on the trip when I have genuinely felt like a tourist, or rather an outsider. I didn't choose very wisely in my ignorance, having expected everyone to be able to speak fluent English and be more than happy to meet an Australian. For now, I cannot judge the whole of France based on my experience in the city of Paris. Let's consider that every advertisement we saw could not be understood by us. Hearing people talk amongst themselves and having no idea what they're saying was a very new experience. Obviously I'd heard backpackers in Australia talk amongst themselves and such, but not on a scale as large as this.

Anyway, after arriving at our campsite, everyone was assigned a job to help out in our little camping community. I, for example, am a water gatherer. Water taps are usually found outside our campsite, so my job is to take a jerry can, fill it and take it back. A pretty cruisy job compared to some others. Ben managed to become a part of "Team Erection" - Setting up a marquee for the kitchen. Our tents are strange and awkward, but are quite spacious. Looks like I'm stuck with Ben for the next 40+ days. To start the actual 'touring', our guides took us for a night tour of Paris - The city of Love. It was fantastic...Such a beautiful and majestic city.

To kick off the city-tour, we found ourselves in a little restaurant eating cheese and real champagne. You see, similar to Bourbon (Must be made in Kentucky to have the name Bourbon), to be called champagne, the wine needs to have been made in the little town of Champigny. Any other wine with bubbles found is probably just 'Sparkling Wine'. Shortly after, we were face to face with some escargot - Snails baby! This stuff was actually quite champion, it was chocka's full of garlic, olive oil and some other stuff (Pesto or something?). Our bus, or coach as it's supposed to be called (Bigger than a bus) was our transport around the city. Just as everyone was mellowing out in the beauty of the city, we were informed that we were about to go through one of the biggest round-a-bouts in Europe. To be more precise, it kind of sounded like "Ok guys, now we're about to go through one of the biggest round-a-bouts in Europe, woo! But, I have to mention that we're not entirely sure what the rules are or how it works, so those in the front seat may want to buckle up". Despite sounding like just a little joke or something to keep us interested...The experience suggested otherwise. When approaching this monstrous creation, the bus (not gradually) got faster and faster and screamed into the middle of this thing, killing almost 4-5 people dispersed in several auto-mobiles. This thing had no lanes, it seemed no rules and was an absolute disaster. After our rather large day, the group all went for a brew and smashed up the sacks (Almost quite literally being sleeping bags) relatively early. How cold is it in France you ask? Too cold to sleep in underwear only as everyone in the group found out. It sucks though, because you get in the sleeping and everything is warm and fine, until about 1-2-3am when you wake up shivering. You know that you need to get some more clothes on, but to do that you know you're going to have to get out of the sleeping bag, which is even colder, therefore you just try to go back to sleep, but find yourself just shivering the next couple hours away.

Our next morning consisted of waking up to bacon and eggs, cereal, juice, fruit, tea and coffee and for some (Oh yeah!) an insanely hot shower. After this, we were taken to a small town (Little towns are called Chateau's I'm pretty sure) and this small town was home to a massive castle looking thing full of art. This art stretched all the way up the walls onto the roof, and then had paintings (Usually huge one's that took up a good portion of the wall) hung on the wall as well. If this wasn't enough, an old-ass clock and some vases seemed to find their way into the already packed room. I love how safe and comfortable it feels around the group that we hardly know. For an organised tour, we're granted a lot of freedom during our days. After visiting this small town, the bus took us into town for some free time. Here Benjamin and myself found ourselves in the Louvre - Home to the Mona Lisa. Again, the place was massive spanning over kilometres, over a series of floors. Needless to say, we lost each other in the first room and therefore spent the next few hours staring wildly at the ancient art on the walls and the fantastic artefacts found upstairs in the Egyptian section. It turns out they have ibis birds in Egypt. Such a bird is seen as god-like almost. Among the people who were mummified and put in tombs were cats, hawks, ibis and fish. How a fish is important enough to be made into a mummy I'll never know. After numerous hours by ourselves, somehow Benjamin and I managed to find each other and made our way out to find the group.

We'd signed ourselves up for the optional (and expensive!) French dinner that nearly everyone was attending. It included an entree, main, desert, cheese and bread, some wine and a tea or coffee. The choices for entree were Escargot, quiche or fish. I was quite surprised with the group as there was only myself and one other out of the 20 attendants who had the Escargot. One of the snails got stuck in it's shell, so I had to crack the bastard open. While munching, I realised I hadn't managed to get all broken shell bits off. It's just like an egg. For dinner, the option of beef, duck or fish was available. I think almost everyone went for duck, it's not the sort of thing one can just buy back in Australia. For desert we got some kind of cheese-cake with custard. A chap at the table informed us that it was the French who in fact invented custard. Who-da-guessed? We were only supposed to have half a bottle of wine each, but managed to convince the waiter to score some more for us. He told us to drink it very quickly and give the empty bottle back before his manager returned. Legend! With everyone now pissed, it only made sense to climb the Eiffel Tower. Not literally climb it of course, there was a lift to take us up. Of a night time - as I mentioned earlier - Paris is gorgeous. There were heaps of couples 300 metres in the air making out. Good on them I say! One of the chaps from our group managed to get himself drunk enough to decide that relieving himself off the side of the tower was a good idea. We scored ourselves some happy snaps, and returned to the campsite to further drink ourselves into oblivion with our group. I don't know how people can drink themselves to the point of passing out standing up, or spewing in their tent - but it happens! One of the Canadian chaps on tour was talking with us and wanted to prove that the Canadian way is circumcision. He then convinced his Canadian friend to further prove this. Quite obviously, both chaps ended up walking around with no pants - one of them didn't end up finding their pants again.

And so the entire next day was free-time again. After seeing countless museums and cathedrals (Including Notre Dame) Big ol' Ben and I found each other in a seven story shopping complex. We lost each other on the first floor. After giving up the search, I made my way to the top floor which has a stunning view of pretty much the entire of Paris. It wasn't until here that I realised how high the Eiffel really is (See picture). About an hour and a half later I decided I'd make my way to the Moulin Rouge part of town and whilst on a train at the central station, who did I find standing outside my train? Yes, out of all the people I could have stumbled across, it happened to be Benjamin. Imagine, in the whole of Paris. We eventually made our way back to the campsite by about 10pm where we found everyone drunk from playing Kings. With that, I smashed up some sleep, not knowing what became of Ben.

This morning sucked. Packing up the tent and such wasn't fun, but that's camping. We're now on our way to Lyon, stopping halfway for some wine-tasting. Woooooo!

Catch you booyyyzzz on the flippers!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Heyo!

We’ve been travelling for about 9 hours today so far, and not being able to sleep has provided me with another opportunity to hit up some bloggin’ action. I did manage to get to sleep about an hour ago, but was woken up by my tour manager, Tara, due to the fact that my toe was turning blue from lack of blood. My toe was squished against the arm rest for quite some time, and apparently didn’t enjoy it. It also happens to be my birthday, fark yeah! Just in case I forget, the inhabitants of the tour sings Happy Birthday every couple hours, usually in the most public place we find ourselves in. Enough about that though, I do believe I’m supposed to be writing about Lyon and Barcelona.

Basically, everyone jumped on the bus in the morning and after a few hours, we ended up at the Contiki Chateau for some champion wine tasting. On arrival, it was rather stunning to see the how far the vineyards stretched. The vines here look a lot different to those in the Barossa Valley. One of the reasons is because of the strong hold of tradition they keep when making their wine. No machines are used in the process, and instead the entire community climbs up the hill to the vineyard, and despite being paid very little, work the long and tiresome art of grape picking. Payment for the work seems to not matter to the locals, because they know the rewards will be far sweeter. Apart from simply working because of their passion and tradition, the locals will always have a huge party to celebrate a successful harvest. It’s awesome!

As I mentioned in the previous blog, the plan was to stop here for a wine tasting session. Based on my last experience of wine tasting in the Barossa, I was pretty damn excited about this. Unfortunately, this visit to a winery only involved one glass of wine, but they did have cheese and crackers. It was a thoroughly enjoyable drop, and the organisers even taught us how to properly critique a wine. With an hour to spare after the tasting, it seemed fitting that Benjamin (Now converted wino) and myself hook into a whole bottle. Everyone on the tour was a bit pissy on the drive to the camp, it was great!

We didn’t actually get to spend any time in the city of Lyon which was most unfortunate, but it gave the group some more bonding time together. I assume you all know what I mean by bonding. The campsite was on a huge hill that overlooked the city and was quite dazzling of the night time when the lights came on.

Next morning was a lovely 6:45 wake up and a quick departure on our way to BARCELONA BABY!! Since starting the tour, it’s all anyone has been talking about. Thongs and shorts all the way. The trip was only 11 hours, and due to the early wake up, pretty much everyone slept on the bus. Like most nights, everyone participated in some Kings and some 2am rugby training.

Our day in Barcelona was amazing to sum it up. First thing for the day was a big bus tour, including a drive up the biggest hill in Barcelona. From here, we got an awesome view, and saw a huge amount of beautiful coast-line. Our tour manager is like a huge history buff and knows everything about everything and took us for a big walk around the Gothic chunk of the city and it was beautiful. Throughout the city were all of these busking champions ranging from Spanish guitars, accordions to drums. The musicians behind these instruments were gorgeously talented, and deserved to be much bigger than a busker, but it made me to happy to listen to on the walk past. About one minute after the mini-tour finished, I’d lost Ben to the Spaniards.

For the rest of the day, everyone had free time, in which we spent most of on the main street of the city. Hundreds of street performers seemed to have flocked to Barcelona, and a good majority of those were on this street. All the acts varied, each it seems trying to out-do the last. A couple of us decided to have a munch on the local plate - Paella. It’s pretty much rice with a few vegies and a heap of seafood. It was good stuff. Sangria is the drink to have also, which I didn’t actually buy any of, but managed to get pretty smashed on by sipping others. Although there is no traditional or correct recipe, it’s always red wine, usually combined with sparkling wine or juice of some kind with chopped up fruit and sometimes other stuff. You never know whatcha gonna get. In the traditional Spanish style, we found a patch of grass and joined a heap of other Spaniards in a siesta under the shade of a palm tree.

Being ANZAC Day, we all smashed up the Aussie Bar and found heaps of fellow diggers celebrating the nation. Shortly after the Aussie bar, some people had booked a “Flamenco Night” as an optional extra. Benny Boy and myself decided against it and joined the other scungy bastards in a park where we proceeded to drink cheap Rose out of the bottle and Sangria out of the box. Once the Flamenco finished, everyone made their way to a Barcelonian night club and bar street.

After then spending two nights in the French Riviera and checking out the Monte Carlo, we made our way to Venice, where we're currently in a pub. We go for a Gondela ride tomorrow, woooo!!

I'll try and keep it updated a bit more frequently.

Later dudes.