An Introduction To My Contiki Experience

After 24 days of pure awesomeness, my Contiki tour has finally drawn to a close. Because of the sheer intensity of it all, I barely got time on the tour to sleep let alone write blog entries. Rather than just creating one huge blog entry that lasts pages and takes me weeks to write, I am going to create several blog entries over the next few days/weeks to do with the Contiki.

This blog entry is going to be a sort of 'introduction' to explain to you exactly what it is I did, in the simplest of it's forms.

We began the trip in London... hold up. Instead of me telling you the places I went I am just going to copy and paste the map that they have on the Contiki website:

There we are! So those are the places I went to, the numbers indicate the number of nights we slept there. There were 38 of us on the trip and we travelled by coach. Because of some legal stuff, the driver could only drive for about 3 hours before we had to stop for 45 mins, so it meant that the trip was stretched out and some of the days were rather long!

All in all it was an amazing adventure, one I'd definitely consider doing again sometime in the future. For those of you out there thinking about doing a Contiki, let me share with you a few things I learnt from this one:

First and foremost,

24 days is a LONG TIME!!! I could just have easily had a lot of fun in fifteen days or even ten. By the third or fourth day you were already forming really strong bonds with people, and by day ten everyone knew everyone else really well.

Secondly,

It's not all about drugs, sex, booze and rock and roll. It's just mostly about booze. We drank almost every night, however there were still plenty of people who didn't drink or come out who had just as much fun as the rest of us. There was no pressure to drink, and I personally took several days off because of alcohol related dying.

Thirdly,

It doesn't matter if you go with a friend, a partner, or by yourself – everybody is there to have a good time and by the end of it everyone is just one big happy family, regardless of how they started out. There were several people on our trip who had partners not on the Contiki, and they had no worries staying loyal and just enjoying themselves as much as everybody else.

Fourthly,

You cannot see everything – it is a huge rush in some places (Paris, Rome, Berlin) to see all the major icons and attractions, and if you do manage to see everything, chances are you aren't able to do all the extra little things such as climbing all the towers to the cathedrals or going on guided tours. Even if you manage to start strong and see most of everything, by the end of the trip the alcohol and fatigue will hit you, and you'll find yourself not feeling as young as you did on day one.

Fifthly and lastly,

Have a place to stay when you finish so that you can go into hibernation for the next few weeks to recover.

Among those five valuable lessons is the other lesson I learnt of packing. There were things I took and never used and then there were things I left behind which I wished I hadn't:

Here are a list of things I wish I had brought with me but I didn't:

   1. A neck cushion for the long coach rides – I woke up too many

       times with a sore neck!

2. Noise cancelling headphones for the long coach rides – My iPod only plays from one ear, so it meant I had to half put up with people talking or the coach music rather than what I wanted to listen to!
3. Sunglasses – most of the places we went to were overcast because of winter, however there were times on the coach when the sun made it very difficult to sleep, even though we had curtains!
4. More movies/videos on my phone and tablet – although most of the coach rides were spent hungover and sleeping, for those times when this wasn't the case it was nice to relax and watch some movies. Our tour manager put movies on usually once a day, but when you have three legs in your journey, that means two of them are entertainment free!
5. A good camera – I only had my phone, and by the end of the trip it felt as though I was taking the same photo over and over again. It would have been nice to be able to change settings and actually zoom in from far away without it looking blurry!

Here are a list of things I wish I hadn't brought with me but I did:

1. A towel – we stayed at hotels where there were fresh towels everyday, so all mine did was take up space!
2. Soap – same reason!
3. A big ass laundry bag with a bunch of tablets and gels which I never looked at let alone used. - Chemists are reasonably priced throughout Europe and chances are someone on the coach will have the drugs you want if you are in desperate need.
4. Shorts – I only brought them because I was told that some of the hotels might have heated pools... they did not.

I can only come up with four unnecessary things I brought with me because I packed like a boss.

For those of you interested, we were able to do washing twice on the trip. Once in Prague and once in Nice I think it was. I got away with only doing it in Nice, and then literally ran out of clothes on the last day. Not one piece of clothing was clean.... delightful.

So there we go, these are a few general things about my Contiki. I will have more entries over the next few days which will give you a more in-depth perspective into what it is I actually did on the trip, as well as including some sexy pictures of myself standing in front of buildings.

Until then,

Au revoir, ciao, arrivederci, nashledanou, tot ziens, lebewohl and adios!