Contiki Tour

A whirlwind tour of Europe in 16 days. At first I was really worried about this tour – worried that I’d be the oldest on the trip and that the non-stop partying would be too much, but it’s been a fantastic time and after months of solitude, it has been awesome hanging out with the same group of people for 16 days. Even though there weren’t many of us in the over-30 club (most of the tour was aged between 20 and 25) there was a really great mix of people and I made a whole lot of great new friends that I will hopefully stay in touch with and see in the next few months as they continue their travels. Before the tour I was also a bit worried about having to share a room the whole time, but I was lucky that I got along well with my roommate (Simon) and it added to the tour having to get to know someone so well. We had a fantastic tour manager (Paul) and bus driver (Ben) who made the whole trip easy and memorable and fun for all of us.

So, a brief summary of the tour with pics!…

Day 1 – London to Amsterdam. Crossed the Channel, bad weather, long bus ride, boat cruise through canals of Amsterdam – not much scenery taken in, just a lot of drinking, a bit of time in the red light district… interesting…

Day 2 – Free Day in Amsterdam. Cheese and Clogs in the morning (pic). Windmill. Diamonds. Anne Frank Museum. Van Gogh Museum. FeBo for lunch (weird deep fried things that you get from a wall of storage cabinets by inserting coins! See pic) Dinner. Sex Show. Things I really didn’t need to see…

Day 3 – Amsterdam to St Goar via Cologne. Cologne Cathedral – incredible (pic). Climbed all the stops to the top of the spire – awesome view (and not too out of breath!) End of Fashion CD playing in German CD store! Cuckoo clocks and beer steins in St Goar. Wine Tasting. Lots of German Beer… and Jagermeister…

Day 4 – St Goar to Lucerne. Cable car to top of Mt Pilatus. A bit cold. Sacher Torte at top. Into Lucerne – such a beautiful city – in my top 3 cities so far. Night out on the town – more beer and a disco in the casino.

Day 5 – Free Day in Lucerne (pic above). Lion Monument (pic above). Shopping for watches and chocolate… yum… Fondue lunch. Wagner museum. Natacha concert – German (Swiss) pop music really is hilarious… and not always in that good way

Day 6 – Lucerne to Innsbruck via Liechtenstein. Not much swinging in Liechtenstein on a Sunday (and not convinced that there’s much on other days either). Innsbruck still pretty. Swarovski showroom. Climbed the tower. Christmas market. Schnapps tasting… more beer.

Day 7 – Innsbruck to Venice (pics below). Glass blowing demonstration. Gondola ride (pic). Prada store. New ties. Pretty masks. St Marks – breathtaking (pic). Bad dinner. Lots of wine to make up for it. Beautiful photos – something about the light that is really different and beautiful here. Schnapps after dinner…

Day 8 – Venice to Rome. Immediately annoyed by big crowds and constant threat of pickpockets and street vendors. Dirty. Major sights cool, but not sure they make up for the stress of walking the streets. Lots of wine over dinner and funny attempts at holding camera still for night photos of Colliseum. Gross hotel… TV missing, everyone’s plumbing audible through our bathroom…

Day 9 – Free Day in Rome. Vatican. A bit rushed unfortunately. Saw Pope in St Peter’s Square! Raining. Great pizza. Failed attempt to get into St Peter’s – some special thing for Italians only that I don’t look Italian enough for… Climbed to top of dome – spectacular views. Sightseeing whirlwind – lots of walking. St Peter’s in Chains – kinda disappointing (not sure what I was expecting though). Capuzin monks bone sculptures – very weird and macabre. Castel St Angelo – really cool – very difficult not to sing arias from Tosca from the top.

Day 10 – Rome to Florence. Uffizi museum – incredible Renaissance art. Beautiful city, so much less frantic than Rome. Walk through other major sights. Definitely want to come back. Hotel looks a little like a jail… Tuscan dinner and Space disco. Played a few songs at the dinner – nice to play some Aussie stuff (Khe Sanh! Yeah!) Too much red wine again. But it was the Long Island Ice Teas that really did me in.

Day 11 – Florence to Nice. Worst hangover ever. Leaning tower of Pisa – too hard to care when feeling so ill. Stopped at Fragonards perfume factory – what sort of sick torture is this – great perfumes but not on a hangover… tour guide got us lost on way to dinner (first time at this restaurant) In pub after dinner, but not much drinking…

Day 12 – Free Day in Nice. Sleep in. Laundromat. Exciting! Matisse Museum closed. L. Wander streets a bit. Wish I had walked down to the beach. Dinner in Monaco – what an incredible place… need to find a Monacan to marry or something. Great dinner – champagne this time (well, we were in France!) Visit to Casino. Head out on the town back in Nice, but nothing very exciting.

Day 13 – Nice to Lyon. Stop in Avignon. Not much going on again (another Sunday!) but would be really interesting place to explore with more time (an hour and a half is not enough to see the Pope’s Palace – or to walk on the famous bridge – especially after the slow service to get some lunch filled most of that time!) Walking tour of Lyon. Hurt leg on a stupidly placed low pole – the scar will remind me... Meet up with Karen Reilly and Pierre-Yves for dinner to celebrate her birthday! Awesome dinner and great to catch up.

Day 14 – Lyon to Paris. Stop at Chateau (boring). Straight to Louvre (Venus de Milo in pic). 2 hours is far from enough. Run into Stephen Judd (ex Australian Boys Choir!). Louvre – wow! Night tour of Paris. Up Eifell Tower at night. (pic - sigh) – in love with this city already – but it feels kinda sad to not be in love here…

Day 15 – Free Day in Paris. Musee d’Orsay – incredible Impressionist art collection. St Suplice church (for a Da Vinci Code fix). Hilarious sign saying how made up the book is, especially regarding the “Rose Line” that is in the church. Notre Dame. Try contemporary art museum, but it’s closed (grrr…) Paris Opera House (pic above of chandelier)– very difficult not to be plagued by tunes from Phantom of the Opera… probably the biggest rip off of the whole tour (7 Euro entry!!), but it is a spectacular building… walk up Champs Elysee – Benetton have the suit I’ve been looking for for months but not in my size (grrr). MOULIN ROUGE!!!! (pic below - do i look excited?) Amazing night! A once in a lifetime experience and a lot of fun. Hilarious dancing – and plenty of red wine and champagne to celebrate our last night of tour. Party into the wee hours of the morning knowing tomorrow’s bus ride is going to hurt.

Day 16 – Paris to London. Farewell to my roommate in the morning (he’s staying in Paris a few days). Farewells along the way. Ferry strike almost ruins the amazingly good time we made to get to Calais. Get into London at 2.30pm and start saying goodbyes.


As you can see, it was a crazy 16 days, but I had an absolute ball and, despite my age, I partied just as hard as anyone would expect from a Contiki guy. I’m really looking forward to seeing some of the gang again in Dresden for our Orphan’s Christmas and I am going to do everything I can to stay in touch with all the friends I made.

The last thing that made me really happy was that our day song (which got played every day on the bus) was “We Built This City On Rock & Roll” by Starship… who cares if it came out the year a lot of the people on tour were born – the 80s ROCK!!!