London
From Paris we flew over to London, sad to depart but content knowing we would be back soon enough. In London
we stayed with a friend of ours from Sydney who, although flatting with four others, somehow had two spare beds
for us to use while we were there. To be honest I found London a little disappointing. We did most of the main
tourist attractions, leaving a few knowing that we would be back for at least a week at the end of our trip, but I think
the lack of added flair that comes from being in a city where you cannot understand a word people are saying like
Paris made it a little less exciting. We also had one particularly tiring day where our tour guide for our stay (the girl
from Sydney we were staying with, Anna) misread her maps app on her phone as us being 15 minutes’ walk from
London Bridge. It turned out we were about 15 minutes’ drive from the bridge, which we discovered after our three
hour walk there. That said, London was still very fun and it was kind of cool going past all the monopoly streets on
the tube, but arguably the most exciting part of London for us was that it was where our tour started.
I had previously told Chris I was starting to get a bit worried about our tour; although we had both loved our last
one, that was only two weeks and as much as I loved our little group, spending 6 or 7 weeks with them I'm sure
would have gotten tiresome, and now we were faced with 45 days of the same people. Throw in the fact that before
we had left Sydney some of our perhaps more realistic mates had been saying we were insane doing a 45 day tour,
kindly pointing out that we would be stuck on a bus for 45 days with the same people, and that we would hate it.
We had what we assumed would be a brief greet and meet the night before our tour kicked off, but in fact all that
happened was our tour manager and coach driver were introduced to us, then they said good night and see you at
6am the next morning, which was a bit frustrating considering it had taken about an hour and a half for us to get to
the meeting. The next morning we got up nice and early to allow us to get to our departure point before the bus
actually departed, so we naturally spent most of the first few hours of the tour ready to fall asleep. But once we
actually got going on our bus, that changed completely, with everyone being keen to meet each other and find their
new friends for the next 45 days. As such our bus/ferry trip over to France seemed to go a lot faster than I'm sure it
actually did, and already we could tell that there were going to be some great friendships made on this tour.
Paris
Contiki – 45 day Europe Tour
Paris in itself was even better than our previous visit. Having already knocked off a lot of the smaller things to do the
first go round, we were free to more or less do whatever we liked. The first day there we spent with four or five
others walking up and down the famous Champs Elysees, opting mainly to look as opposed to buy on one of, if not
the world’s most exclusive shopping strips. After discovering the average meal available on the street would put us
back about twenty euros, we decided to get a take away baguette, ticking that off the “must eat” list of international
cuisines, and promptly decided the footpath was wide enough for pedestrians to accommodate seven twentysomething year olds having a picnic in the middle of it. This highly authentic Parisian lunch was followed by some
slightly pricey but nonetheless delicious macaroons from a place called Laduree, which we later discovered actually
produced what was deemed to be the best macaroons in the world. Our shopping trip continued on throughout the
afternoon, leading onto a group dinner at a restaurant near our hotel, and an amazing trip to the Eiffel tower.
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