A continuation of my European adventures sounded like a good idea so I thought I'd provide a brief overview of everywhere I went before actually creating some more posts about it. It's a bit of a roadmap of sorts I guess.
After my time in London on my own, which has already been discussed (although I could go on), I joined a Contiki tour called the European Experience. It was an interesting way to see Europe for the first time. I kind of went in to it thinking of it as a 'taster of Europe' for me. There's so many places that I had wanted to go to and the easiest way was to join a tour which went to a lot of them. My tour visited the following:
- Paris, France
- Beaujolais Wine Region, France
- French Riviera (Antibes & Monaco)
- Florence, Italy
- Rome, Italy (& the Vatican City)
- Venice, Italy
- Hopfgarten, Austrian Tyrol
- Dachau, Germany
- Munich, Germany
- Vaduz, Liechtenstein
- Lucerne, Switzerland
- Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
- Rhine Valley (St. Goar), Germany
- Heidelberg, Germany
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I don't know that I would do a Contiki tour again. It wasn't bad but there were elements of it which weren't as nice as travelling at your own pace. I would've preferred to spend some more time in some of the places I visited to see a few more things, but as a taster trip of Europe it was pretty good.
So the basic information: I spent 20 days travelling around Europe with 39 other Australians, an American, a Swiss, a Scottish bus driver and a tour manager from Basque. In such close quarters I can say that anyone thinking about a tour should take note: you will get sick. It's not a question of will I or won't I. It's a question of how sick and for how long. I ended up being sick for three and a half weeks of my four week holiday despite the fact that I was taking antibiotics and looking after myself. I think I drew the short straw on that front!
Having said that though you take the bad with the good and my holiday ended up being pretty fantastic I would say. I took 1260 photos over four weeks, spent a fair chunk of money (although not as much as I expected!) and have many great memories. I don't think I'll ever enjoy the song "Papa Americano" again, but I will always love "I'm Glad You Came" by The Wanted and Contiki will be to blame. Or, more accurately, Gari (my tour manager) is to blame since he chose both our wake-up song and our day song.
So, the foreseeable future of this blog includes lots of talk of Europe, and that's why!
