CMSchism
Chris Matthews Joined: May 2nd 2007
Logged in: January 26th 2012
Logged in: January 26th 2012
Welcome to my Travel Blog. I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and never had much of an interest in travelling until recently. I saved my annual leave hours at work for over 2 years and saved as much money as I possibly could. I recieved my first passport when I was 23 and began to plan the trip of a lifetime.
I had done loads of research and decided to tour around America for 3 months with a company called Trek America, it was the longest tour they offered (64 days) and it totally changed my life. I met my English girlfriend on tour and made loads of lifetime friends, the trip was something I will never forget and it started my love for travelling.
Since then I have travelled to many other places around the world and have plans for much more travelling ahead. Currently I'm and living and working in London as a base to visit different places around Europe. I have now started a job at Tesco which promises overseas travel to countries in Central Europe. But now after 3 and a half years of living in Europe. I'm planning a return to Melbourne. This travel blog is a detailed story of my adventures so far and I will continue to add to it as I have time.
Return to Australia!
Travel Blog Posts
Foncaussade
To really experience France and visit as many places as possible in a short amount of time, Hannah and I organised a road trip across South-West France. And since Hannah and I had already been to many parts of the road trip we made sure to include a few places we’d never been. However before we hit the road we were meeting Hannah’s parents at their house in Bergerac for a few relaxing days in the beautiful French countryside. Our Ryanair flight from Stansted arrived into Bergerac midafternoon, we were met by lovely warm weather and Hannah’s dad waiting to pick us up from the airport. For my parents it was their first real experience of France, having only visited briefly while travelling through to Bruges a few weeks ago. We met Hannah’s mum at the ... read more
Bruges
My parents had made the long trip across the world for an extended holiday in Europe and for our first trip outside of the UK Hannah and I were taking them to Bruges for the day. It was still dark outside when we had to get up and get ready for the drive down to Dover to make our 8AM ferry crossing. We were at Dover port in good time and had a short wait before driving onto the ferry and setting of towards Calais. My parents were excited to be heading over to mainland Europe, they had never been anywhere besides Britain before. As we approached Calais we headed back down to the car and got ourselves ready for the hour and a half drive to Bruges. When we turned on the radio Mum was ... read more
Edinburgh
When East Coast Trains were offering first class tickets to Edinburgh for £25 each way, Hannah was right on it and booked us a weekend away in the Scottish city. What started off as a cheap weekend away quickly became far more expensive once it was time to book our accommodation. We couldn’t understand why almost every hotel in the city was completely booked and if there were any rooms left they were exceedingly expensive. We soon realised we were heading to Edinburgh during the largest arts festival on the planet, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And the typical Edinburgh weather was set to make it a cold, rainy and overcast couple of days. 06/08/2011 - On Saturday we got up at the crack of dawn, packed our stuff and made our way to Kings Cross Station ... read more
Dune du Pilat
This year our usual week long holiday out in the south of France was in mid-June, and we were joined by a couple of Hannah’s friends, Rebecca and Johnny. For most of the week we relaxed by the pool enjoying the incredibly hot weather however when the weather did turn for the worse we decided to hit the road towards Bordeaux. It was a decent drive, just over 2 hours until we finally reached the French city of Bordeaux. We parked the car and began wandering around exploring the city. Not really knowing what we all wanted to see or do while here we slowly made our way through the unusually quiet backstreets towards the Cathedral. I was expecting ‘just another Cathedral’ after having now seen so many before, but I was surprised to see a ... read more
Plitvice Lakes National Park
20/05/2011 – It was a totally spur of the moment type booking thanks to Ryanair once again offering ridiculously low fares. So Hannah and I purchased return flights to Rijeka in Croatia for only £20 each, bargain! Our airport parking was more expensive. We took a couple of days off work and were on our way for a long weekend in Croatia. Our flight arrived in the tiny airport on the island Krk, in northern Croatia, once we passed through immigration (a guy at a small desk) we picked up our hire car. It was going to be a stunning costal drive as we headed towards a city called Zadar, a 3 hour long drive. We stopped once to get some lunch but besides that spent the entire time driving, it wasn’t until late afternoon we ... read more
Cusco
Unfortunately despite out flight home not leaving until later this afternoon, we were told we had to checkout at 8:30AM. And after the exhausting week we’d had, you can imagine that no-one was particularly happy about it, but the hotel insisted we checked out by then. Hannah and I packed our gear and left anything we no longer needed with the charity and headed downstairs to meet the rest of the group. We had an emotional speech from George who had lost someone close to him to cancer and we were all praised for our fundraising efforts. The whole experience was one of the best of my life and I will never forget it. But it wasn’t over just yet, today we had half a day in Cusco to really explore it, especially since we didn’t ... read more
Machu Picchu
Today was going to be a day I would remember for the rest of my life, it was one of those, once in a lifetime experiences that fuels my love for travelling. Today we were visiting one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, Machu Picchu. I jumped out of bed to the sound of my alarm, thrilled about the day ahead. Hannah and I got ready and packed our bags once again to meet the rest of the group downstairs for breakfast. I was so excited about today I wasn’t hungry at all, I just wanted to get going to spend as much time as possible in Machu Picchu. We walked through the streets of Aguas Calientes to the bus stop where we had to split up to get the bus to the entrance ... read more
Ollantaytambo
At our highest campsite of the trip at 4250M above sea level it was by far one of the coldest nights I’ve ever experienced in my life, and spending it in a tent wasn’t really helping. One of the Charity Challenge crew woke me and Hannah up around 6AM offering us some cocoa tea, we were still freezing and as usual I woke with a cracking headache. We threw on our gear and struggled to open the tent’s zip, we actually found ice on the outside of our tent, it had frozen overnight, unbelievable. Everyone headed over to have breakfast in the food tent and when we found out it was bacon and eggs for breakfast we cheered. It was such a beautiful day outside that no sooner after breakfast came out the Charity Challenge crew ... read more
Lares Valley
I had a really bad night’s sleep overnight. My headache lasted all through the night, I felt quite dizzy and woke up more times than I can remember. My phone battery was dead so Hannah and I were woken by one of the crew offering us tea/coffee and of course cocoa tea which both myself and Hannah were grateful for. We got ourselves ready for what was going to be the toughest trek day of all, and I really wasn’t keen on walking today. My legs were sore from the last two days, I had hardly any sleep and my headache was getting worse as we went higher. We all ate pancakes for breakfast and filled our hydration packs before getting our gear ready as went left the campsite just after 6AM. Unluckily for us, the ... read more
Lares Valley
Another early start today as the horrible sound of my alarm woke me up at 6AM, it’s ok though my battery would probably die today. I sat up in my sleeping bag with an absolutely cracking headache, even after drinking water every time I woke during the night. We heard someone calling from outside the tent, it was one of the crew waking us up offering us tea and coffee before we had even left our tent, it was great. Unfortunately from here on in we had no way to wash ourselves besides using small bowls of warm water which was also brought to our tent door by the awesome Charity Challenge staff. By the time Hannah and I had gotten ready, breakfast was ready in the dining tent, today we had omelets. Afterwards the entire ... read more
I've Lived Here 
I've Been Here 
