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
1. A neck cushion for the long coach rides – I woke up too many
times with a
sore neck!
- 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!
- 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!
- 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!
- 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:
- A towel – we stayed at hotels where there were fresh towels everyday, so all mine did was take up space!
- Soap – same reason!
- 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.
- 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!
