Europe

The Contiki Experience: May 1994

The Contiki Experience?  Well, I guess firstly I should explain to all of you out there who aren't familiar with what Contiki is.  Basically, it's this tour company that runs tours for 18-35 year olds.  They have stuff all over the place.  If you want to find out more about them here's their website:  http://www.contiki.com/. 

Back on track...  I had always wanted to head over to Europe to do the backpacking/eurail thing like most other college aged people.  I was about 18 when I had decided that I would go.  I had diligently saved my money that summer in anticipation of my big trip.  Well, when it came down to booking the trip, I wasn't sure how I was going to do it.  Firstly, my trip to Europe was my first trip ever where I travelled alone...and to top that off, it was my first trip overseas.  I wanted to do the Eurail thing but I settled for a compromise.  I ended up taking a tour for 3 weeks and then spent about 2 weeks on my own afterwards.  I figured by the end of the 3 weeks, I would've gained enough confidence to go around on my own. 

Map of places I visited on the tour

Well, moving on...It was May 1994 when I did head over to Europe.  I hopped on a British Airways flight from Vancouver that was about 9 hours long.  It sure felt like an eternity though.  I just can't stand sitting in one spot for such a long time.   Also, I'm somone who can't sleep in anything that's moving so considering that the flight left Vancouver at about 8pm, I was dead tired upon arrival. We landed in at Heathrow (London) in the early afternoon.  I remember how shocked  I was at how big that place was.  I was thinking gees, this place is a good hundred times bigger than Vancouver's airport.  I was just blown away.  I had never seen so many 747's before in one spot in my life (and if you're wondering, I have taken a tour of the Boeing plant).  Going through customs was more of a challenge for me though.  I swear, those people there probably thought I was some terrorist or something.  I kept on getting stopped and questioned all over the place.  Everyone around me was just going along merrily while every few steps it seemed, someone would come up to me and start asking me some questions...

Anyway... I was glad to be there.  I hopped on the shuttle (Airbus) which took me straight to the hotel.  Side note: I had gotten this really cool package from Contiki.  It was something like for an extra $1, I received 3 nights hotel in London, airport transfer, and a sightseeing tour, not bad at all must I say.  Well, the hotel I stayed at was called the Royal National.  It's in the Bloomsbury area.  It's a large hotel with over 1000 rooms.  It's fairly centrally located.  Close to the tube etc... and the area felt pretty safe.  The hotel was clean but very very old.   I mean I guess that's normal for London though, as in everything is really really old.

This short web site is really going to get really long at the rate I'm going at so I think from this point onwards I'm just going to cut the chase and go straight to the point and talk briefly about each city/region.

Siesta Warning: I never knew exactly what Siesta until it actually affected me.  In most of the European countries save England and Germany, they have "Siesta."   Basically, everything just shuts down during the afternoon.  It's a real drag if you're short on time.  My advice is to hit the sites that require you to actually go into it, hit those in the morning.  In the afternoon, go to the places where you can just look from the outside.

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