European Vacation

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Homeward Bound

JUST KIDDING! Today I made one of the more expensive mistakes in my life - I missed my flight home. Apparently Virgin Airlines is the most popular airline in the world and this week is the most popular travel week of all time because I can’t get another flight until the 28th. Unless… I book with another airline (Cost = 700GBP) or book an upgraded flight with this airline (Cost = 500GBP). Now if you remember from my first post, the USD sucks pretty hard over here. 500GBP will run me $815 USD but 700GBP will be $1,150 USD. So upgrading and staying with Virgin is cheaper, but not cheaper than $0 USD which is the price of not being late. So… I am flying Premium Economy on Monday and landing in Newark, NJ at 11pm. Now I have to take a train back to my hotel to see if I can get a Contiki discounted rate for another night. Then I’m coming back to the airport 12 hours early so I never do this again. And now for the fun part that comes after every disaster: Finding the silver lining! I get

London Part II

Well today was another long travel day but it was never meant to be part of the trip so it’s not really a concern. The trip technically ended in Paris but flying out of Paris was too expensive for most people. Contiki is based out of London so the coach has to come back here anyways and they offer a free ride to anyone else who does too. They should just say that the trip ends in London and bring everyone back with them but they don’t. I’m sure they have a good reason. We actually made good time and got to London at 3:15pm. We gained an hour when we left France so the total time travelled was around 7 hours with breaks for border-crossing and lunch. I upgraded my room to a single because it was my last night on the trip and I had been sharing my space enough these last few weeks. When I got to my room I had to fight the urge to immediately go to sleep and I met up with Team Canada (Tracey, Lisa, Laura, Jamie) for one of the famous double-decker bus tours of London instead. The bus ma

Paris

Had a hard time getting up today with all of the socializing last night but this is the last full day of sightseeing on our tour. I had plans of getting on the road at 8am to beat the crowds and see more but I woke up at 8am instead. No big deal. Our bus was driving everyone in at 9am anyways – I just wanted to take the train in early. We got dropped off at the Louvre but I figured I would do the Louvre at the end of the day because it’s gigantic and I didn’t want to spend all of my time there. My goals were this: Palais Garnier (Paris Opera), Arc de Triomphe , Napolean’s Tomb, Notre Dame, Louvre. I decided to walk everywhere today unless it rained because I wanted to see as much as I could. There is great architecture everywhere. On my way to the Opera House, something amazing happened: After throwing out yet another shitty espresso I had in my hand, I rushed inside, made out with the cashier and ordered a double. It was unbelievable. It also confirmed that French coffee is shit

Chateau to Paris

Dammit. This is what happens when I get behind. Ok on this day I think we took the Trolley to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Only some of us went though because most people didn't watch Mr. Rogers growing up and had no idea what that meant. I told you this was a young crew. We had a nice breakfast today with many pastries and breads. The French are way better at baking than they are at making coffee. If they can just find a way to caffeinate their croissants then I’ll probably move here. It was a pretty long driving day. We stopped twice on the way to Paris but none of the stops are worth mentioning or photographing so I’ll just skip right to the action… We got in around six and got settled before dinner at the hotel. Today was salad & quiche to start and chicken with gravy and vegetables (I think) and then lemon tart for dessert. It was one of the better meals we’ve had so I was throwing a lot of Merci’s around. Dominic told me to skip the R and just pronounce it “Meh – S

Nice to Chateau

Well we have to leave Nice today. And it’s supposed to be sunny and fantastic. Oh well. Adil had the great idea to go down and see the sunrise before we left since yesterday was kind of a bust. Sunrise was around 6am which isn’t that bad – it’s like a work day – but I was up until 2am so I was pretty tired. I thought about just staying in bed but I would have regretted it and I had plenty of time to sleep on the bus so I rallied and went downstairs. We got there probably 20 minutes early and discovered that our lookout point was actually a homeless person’s bedroom. She was just waking up though so she invited us in for some tea and biscuits. It was nice. As the sunrise got closer, we realized that there was a flaw in our plan: Nice is in a bit of a cove (as is evident in my pictures yesterday) and the sun’s path was not something we considered. I just assumed it was more southerly (sure why not) and over the water. Here I point out Nice on the map. There is no way the sun would make