European Vacation

These tours can either rock or suck depending on the people you’re with. And that includes the tour guide and the bus driver. Luckily the people on our trip became friends rather quickly, which allowed everyone to have a smashing good time. I’ve mentioned a few names in my posts but I’d like to introduce the rest of the crew now. Tracey just so happened to take a thousand pictures (surprise) on cabaret night so everyone is looking their best. Which is good because then no one who sees this will hate me for showing their “bad side” or whatever other excuse they use for being ugly. So here we go, in no particular order. Except if you see me in the picture then it’s in whatever order makes me the best. Oh and plan on Tracey being in 95% of these. It’s her camera after all. Anyone who didn’t make the cut on Cabaret night will be added from the archives. And it won’t be pretty! Muahahahaha! Just kidding. (AU = Australia; NZ = New Zealand; CAN = Canada; SA = South Africa) Antonio The Dri...

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 ...

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...