Guess where i'm going in June

hi all,

big news to announce. news has already leaked to a few so we might as well tell everyone.

Callan and I are going to the WORLD CUP in Germany!

we got second round offers for the camping tour and found out only 2 weeks ago.

its a 2 week organized tour that includes all 3 australia pool matches, 2 of the games are class 1 tickets (including brazil!). apart from the games, we sightsee germany and some of austria. click on the link if you want to see our itinery http://www.ffatravel.com.au/package.php?id=8

we got flights direct to frankfurt for £47 with lufthansa (which is a bargain) on the way there. the tour finishes on friday morn so we have booked a train to Zurich, accomm for 2 nights and our flight home sun night with britich airways. so we'll check out switzerland, maybe do a bikeride or something. who knows

so that's it, i can't wait to go.

in london, nothing much to say. went to a bbq and a party on the weekend. i am looking into going to wales next weekend (we have monday off) but am not sure yet.

see ya

Weekend in London

boinos dias,

a quick update of what i did on the weekend. friday night i went out for a few drinks with callan, natasha, james (another from contiki) and a few of their friends. nothing much to note other than we almost witnessed an all out brawl that flowed onto the streets. bummer. i did catch the wrong bus though so i did what my drunken self thought was the logical step, call for directions. so i called kirsten in australia at 130 am for directions. pretty funny actually, but also an expensive call.

sat, i met callan and a few guys from his work and watched the FA cup final. it was a ripper of a game, none of this boring 0-0 draw that i associate soccer with. 3-3 drawl that ended with a penalty shootout with harry kewel's team, liverpool, winning. there were some rather emotional people at the pub. that night went we met up with callan's bro in some nice looking suburb for dinner and a few drinks. got talking to these spanish girls who unfortunately were rather young (17, 19 & 21) but extremely gorgeous.

sunday i took myself to the imperial war museum.

its really cool. out the front are these 2 massive 15 inch guns built in ww1 and used in d-day in ww2 as well. they can shoot an 800kg shell 29km!

inside was tanks and stuff and loads of cool exhibits that kept me entertained for hours. this is a russian T-35 tank that was the best tank in ww2. egypt used this actual tank aginst the israelies (until they captured it) in 1972 and was by no means considered obsolete even then.

and thats my weekend

these contiki posts take forever to write. i might have to shorten them a bit, but i'll still post lots of pics, thats easy

cya

Contiki - Day 5 - Nice and Day 6 - Pisa/Florence

Day 5

Today was a free day in Nice, meaning we could do whatever you wanted. Somehow my roommate and I got up at 930am, most didn’t get up till noon. I spent most of the day walking around lost due to my lazyness at reading the map that was in my backpack. The only worthwhile thing to do in Nice is go to the beach, the citry itself was pretty ordinary looking and generally dodgy. I did hire roller blades and attempted to skate along the esplanade, that was pretty cool except I kept stacking it. That’s about all that’s worth writing about Nice that day but the night was better. We had an included dinner in the hotel that was shithouse and began a trand for all the included dinners for the rest of the tour. Anyway about 10 of us still had the stamina to head out, so we went to this place called Wayne’s Bar. The bar was full of big timber picnic tables all lined up in 3 rows and we were packed in like sardines. It was really hard to move around, and even harder to talk with anyone who wasn’t beside you. Then the band started. After about the third song everyone all of a sudden everyone went nuts and jumped on the tables, everyone. We then spent the next 5 hours singing and dancing like maniacs standing on tables. Very cool. Crashed at 330am.


Day 6
Headed to Florence via Pisa. The scenery was amazing, beautiful mansions sprinkled amongst fog covered mountains and gorgeous coastlines.

Pisa was pretty shit, I’m glad we only stopped there for a few hours. From what I saw, it’s a big ugly suburban looking town full of graffiti. But the tower itself was pretty good. The pics say it all.



Checked into our hotel and headed for dinner. As our tour guide said described it dinner was like being at a big fat Greek wedding Italian style. Lots of food, dancing and plenty of wine.

We all danced to the traditional Italian songs (conga lines, human arches etc) and had a good laugh. After dinner was the space electronica disco. 2 levels, upstairs was the dance floor which was full of 16yo Italians, so I spent most of the night downstairs chatting with people from another Contiki tour. After a few long island iced teas we headed home and crashed at about 230am.

Contiki - Day 4 Nice

Day 4

Headed to Nice. Nice is famous for its beaches. Compared to Aus standards they wouldn’t even be called a beach. The beach is made from big dark pebbles and there’s no waves.

But the reason you go to Nice is not what the beach looks like, but who’s on the beach and more to the point, what they are wearing (a piece of string usually - guys included). Unfortunately, it was April and the temp was barely 20, so no one was on the beach at all. We arrived in the arvo, and headed for dinner in the tiny country of Monaco to begin what was the best night of the tour. Dinner included all the wine you can drink, so we got our money’s worth.

After downing 8 glassess of red and white, I was ready for a big night. After dinner we checked out the famous casino’s. There are 2 right next to each other, one is the famous but expensive one, the other was cheaper. I went to the cheaper one as I wanted to actually bet and 25€ as a minimum bet more than I wanted to spend. Anyway I lost 42€ on craps but I had fun. On the way out we checked out the carpark for the expensive casino. A jag was the cheapest car there, it was loaded with Ferrari’s, Rolls and Bentley’s.

And then we headed back to Nice. By this time everyone was pretty well smashed and mucking around, I found this pink belt and decided to wear it all night (I still have it) but the best was when a guy and girl from the tour decided they liked each other’s clothes so much they swapped and this was inside the bar we were in! So we were in this smokey Irish bar with a band playing upstairs. They were selling Corona’s for 3€ so I stuck to them (2 at a time though). Curtis, a guy on the tour (who coincidentally went to the same high school as me) was talking with this group of 5 American girls. All of us single guys soon took notice and began inching our way over, then practically all at once we pounced! The tour guide though it was hilarious. In the end they had to go to another place, just as Jeremey was at the bar paying for 5 beers for them. He drowned his sorrows by drinking them all in quick succession. Eventually I went upstairs to check out the band. They were pretty good, playing all these covers. There was a few of us moshing up the front, having a riot of a time.

The singer was getting us all to sing into the mike, but when it came my turn, nothing came out. I had lost my voice at the start of the trip and by then it was completely gone, a little embarrassing but funny too. Anyway, it was a great atmosphere at the pub, 45 out of the 48 on our tour were out, everyone was having a blast, even these 2 Chinese girls who sculled their pints as the pub closed at 3am. About 25 of us were still charging so we headed to a nightclub around the corner. We were all dancing around, I got grabbed by a few girls on account of the belt, then 2 of us started talking with 3 local French girls. We got them a drink then discovered the were 16! Turns out the legal drinking age in Europe is 16, I pretty well freaked and walked out of that situation. Eventually we clamoured home via a taxi, chatted for a bit at the hotel and finally crashed at 6.30am. That was a cool night.

London on the weekend

Hi all,

Now that ive settled in, it was time to begin sightseeing London. So on sat, callan, Natasha (a girl from my contiki tour who has just moved to London as well) and myself went to see the Tower of London. It was pretty good, cost £15 but that included a guided tour from one of the famous ‘beefeaters.’ The tower is basically a fortress with a few buildings inside including the white tower. it was first built in the early 1100's with many additions built over the years

this was taken on my new mobile phone. it takes pretty good photos, but still no way near as good as my digital camera. the grass used to be a moat filled with water but they filled it during the time of queen victoria
after the tour we had lunch in an Italian restaurant in the city and then met peta at a house party. It was pretty cool, talked to a few people, drank quite a lot and caught the night bus home at about 2ish. Today (Sunday) I went for a walk through Battersea park, which is only 3 blocks away. Its pretty cool, there’s walking and cycling paths, lakes, sporting ovals and gardens full of chirping birds. Tonight I went to the movies with my 2 housemates, had a few pints of guiness at the local and am about to go to bed. Not sure what I’ll do next weekend, some more sightseeing im sure.
Bye for now

Contiki - Day 3 - Lyon

continuing the diary...

Day 3

We departed Paris and headed to Lyon. On the way, we stopped at a town called Avingyon. In the 1400’s there was a bit of turmoil in Rome so the Catholic Church relocated to this town. 5 popes lived here until eventually returning back to Rome.



The town was pretty cool, and there is a famous bridge there. While walking around, we stumbled upon a student protest, the French love protests, but we had no idea what they were protesting about. Then we visited a French chalet located in a vineyard that is run by Contiki. It located in a hilly area and so the views were spectacular.



We did a bit of a wine tour, tasted a few reds (I bought a red and a white) had a look around and departed. We arrived to Lyon in the arvo, got changed and were dropped off in the old city to find our own dinner. France is renowned for it’s food, and the best city to eat French food is Lyon. So I was on a mission, I wanted to try frogs legs and snails, as did many of us. Eventually we found a restaurant that had a set 4 course meal with snails as entrée and frogs legs as the main, crème Brule for dessert, done. This dinner was the best of the trip, the quality was great, the food was fantastic as was the 2 bottles of wine. The frogs legs was just like eating tiny chicken wings but the novelty made up for it. Dinner took 2 ½ hours to complete, but it was a well spent 50 Euros. After dinner we went to an Irish/American pub for a few beers but took it pretty easy. Crashed at 130 am.