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Goodbye Paris, Contiki. Hello London.
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Leaving Paris today... :(
I think 16 days may be long enough though - or at least it is when you are sick!
We were su7pposed to leave the hotel at 7.45, but some people had a big night last n8ight and when we still hadn't left by 8.15 - kirsten declared we were just going to leave anyway - then they sprinted out the door. It just meant we ended up missing 3 ferries, and almost the 4th one!
I don't feel much better today though, my throat is killing me.
We dropped Jess off (from Washington DC) this morning at Paris Airport. Goodbye Jess :( !
Such a lovely girl - she's doing psychology in the states.
We stopped off in the morning at Vimmy Ridge to have a look a the war memorial and remnants from the bombing in the trench fighting there with the Canadians in WW1 - it was apparently the turnaround point in the war which stopped the advance into the UK. Go the allies! - but the bomb devastation was gruesome on the hills, i have never seen anything like it! Got to wander through some trenches though and pop up in the parapets etc. Kind of cool.
We got back on the bus and raced off to our ferry at calais - by this time i was starving. I didn't have much money left, but decided to scrape together for a meal on the ferry - british meat pie (pastry on top of a bowl or stewed meat - not an aussie pie, but still good!) with peas and chips. A bit expensive, but i decided to just splurge now and not eat dinner! - I had a lot to do in london that night anyway.
The ferry over to dover was a lot less calm than the one from dover - everyone was feeling a bit seasick when we got off and was glad to get off!
Saw the white cliffs again - though it was still foggy so i didn't get a decent photo this time either. Oh well, i'll just have to come back!
The ride to london was uneventful. We got our tipping envelopes for Kirsten and Johnnie and our review/questionnaries for our contiki trip. I had a bit of dilemma in that i had almost run out of money - but still needed to give them a tip as they get absolutely shocking wages (i think it was 60AUD a day??) and they made our trip absolutely fantastic - it really was the trip of a lifetime! I tipped them all i had left 10 pounds each. The brochure recommended 2 euro a day per person - but if i didn't that i'd be have negative 30euros! So maybe not...
Got to london, gave everyone a hug and promised we would all visit everyone's countries (apparently i'm going to perth., korea and washington dc!). Everyone was meeting at the pub at the royal national hotel that night for one last drink - but i couldn't afford to stay there and was on the other side of town - so i had to skip that unfortunately!
Walked to the youth hostel from there - smart hyde park view just on the side of hyde park. I wasn't that impressed with this hostel - the astor hyde park is much better, and costs less i think!
Got to the hostel and spent a grand total of 4 hours on the internet updating all my emails and enrollments and blogs and what not.
So there we have it... good bye contiki... for now?
I would highly recommend contiki to anyone - the winter tours are still fantastic (though i don't really have a summer one to compare it to!). And don't ever worry about travelling alone - there were only about 5 pairs of people who knew each other! that means there was a grand total of a bit less than 40 people who were alone! and i don't know if it was just our tour - but they were all australian. It was a bit like we were in australian territory travelling around europe.
The hotels are really good too - i was very happy with them. The breakfasts aren't that great - but thats because most of them only do breakfast because contiki asks for it. But you still get your morning feed of bread , jam, cereal, juice and tea/coffee and maybe croissants, yoghurt, fruit etc etc. So its not too bad. The dinners were a bit of fun. Loved the german/austrian/swiss food - basically a variation on meat and potatoes each day. it's amazing what versatile things they can do with two types of food!
tried chocolate from just about every country. Now that was a chocolate conoisseur's experience! What a variation....
Oh and JEss and daniella - i bought a kanopper!
Toodeloo.
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