All Finished

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Here I am back in London :-(
The tour is all over and I miss it horribly. My tour manager was the coolest woman, and I made really good friends with her. It is so weird to think that I'm pretty much never going to see those people again :-(
I've been hanging out with a Kiwi I met on tour named Lisa shes cool and is over here with a visa so I'm helping her look for a job and get settled.
I have just booked a 3 day tour around Scotland for before I head off to Denmark. So I'm off to Edinburgh on Sunday, although haven't booked aflight yet so I better get around to that!?
Anyway now to

MYKONOS (a Greek Island):Ohhh 3 days in a luxury resort on a Greek Island, not too bad if I say so myself.
After a 5 hour ferry ride there we arrived it was awesome. All the houses are white (insulation reasons) with either red, blue or green windows or doors. Which is a religion thing, something like, Red for the sky, blue for the water and green for plants or something like that. I'm sure I have it completely backwards. However not such a tropical paradise landscape, more like a barren waste land of rocks and dirt. We forget that hot weather means no plants sometimes. Anyway the rooms were breezy, the beach was across the road and a pool on offer with a bar if you were lazy. Teh first day a group and I hired quad bikes and rode around all day exploring the island and getting lost. I almost killed myself though coming down a very steep hill. That night off to the town with the Contiki people to drink lots and dance on lots of tables,etc. Everyone was doing it!!!!!
Next day was my quiet day I went to the beach, ate lunch, and then we headed off to the bar at Paradise beach!!!!! Paradise beach is a beach cover in sun lounges, for the nude sunbakers and lined with bars for us party people. These bars are actually on the beach, the bar is surrounded with a floor but the tables are on the sand. It was a very fun night of more table dancing which included the professionals who did it only in Bikinis, and I am very happy to report that despite they're very flat stomachs and perfect bodies, those girls had Celulite!!!!!!!! Yay. All the girls were very happy with that fact. However I ended the night escorting a very drunk friend home, with her blood on my hands from her grazed knee, however I got off luckier than the guy opposite me who was carrying a drunk girl who had passed out and lost control of ALL bodily functions, so you can imagine what he had on him as well as the smell on the bus!!!!!!! He informed me later though that he had two showers and was feeling much cleaner.
Next day we were off again this time on a fast ferry only taking 3 hours to return to Athens, however not leaving us feeling the best. At the end of this ferry ride we had to say goodbye to our Mexican traveller. Her travel agent had not told her that she needed visas for Albania and Croatia so she had to leave, and instead of meeting us ahead she decided to fly home because it would be too expensive, and she was very afraid of traveling on her own.

GREECE: I was starting to feel really, really sick at this point. Which was the best timing because we had three straight days of 12 hours on the bus. We traveled all day to Preveza, in northern Greece, where we stayed in a hotel that seemed to look and feel fairly similar to a certain hotel in a movie named the Shining!!!!!!!!

ALBANIA: The lowest point of the entire trip. this was the first year that contiki has traveled through this country, usually they go around, however now they actually enter, the trash capital of the world. Let me give you a mental image. Lets think, a povety stricken country, beautiful waterways, and mountains, now think those beautiful mountains and waterways being what you can only describe as rubbish dumps where people literally walk to the top of an embankment and will tip there entire rubbish bin down the side. Now think run down old cars, carts being pulled by Donkeys and children drinking from the waterways that are also rubbish tips. We stayed at a 5 star resort on the beach. The sheets were grey, there were dead bugs in the beds, the tap water can only be discribed as sea water and the maintanence of a leaky roof involves mopping the floor. We were not very amused, and I was still rather sick so not the best time.

CROATIA: We now enter Croatia, a paradise compared to Albania. I am very very sick by now though so my tour manager actually tries to get a doctor to make a house call to our hostel, but cannot get anyone.

DUBROVNIK: The first night was hard for me because everyone went out to the town and I had to stay back by myself because I was sick and try to dry my bag because something on the bus leaked all over it, and clean the shampoo out of my toiletries because it has exploded. My family got some very detailed text messages aboout how I felt that night and it's almost funny now.
The next day we went to Dubrovnik and even with how I was feeling I have to say it was my favourite place of the entire trip. Our tour manager took us to a little cafe/bar that sat on the rocks that jut out of the city walls. The photos explain better, but it was a spectacular moment. I tried to find a doctor but the dodgy building the surgery was in detered me a lot, so I just got more antibiotics and hoped for the best. In this small town was where I had the best ice cream of my entire life, now some of you may not be aware that I am lactose intolerant (I can give you a story about Spain) so ice cream and gelato was a sore loss for me, especially since it was the only dessert offered at 99% of the places we ate!!! However in Dubrovnik I found an ice cream shop with a guy who spoke English very well, and the majority of their ice creams had no Dairy. Needless to say I ate two lots, and it was soooooo good even people who ate ice cream at all the places said it was the best.

SPLIT: This was a quick stop over to the second largest city in Croatia, again with a walled old city in the middle. Nice ruins, good shopping. However two of my friends were spat on in the market by some freak vendor, who refused to sell them sunglasses beacause they had looked at them, left to look at others then returned to buy the first ones, however he felt that them not buying them first was so disrespectful he refused to sell them to the girls and spat at them as they walked away!!!!! FREAK!!!

ZADAR: A one night stop over. We looked through the city, again a walled ruins on the sea front. With a church that aparently has the Virgin Mary's midwife buried there, although I didn't think Mary had a midwife, and this woman was burid there in 900AD meaning 900 years after the birth!?!? I don't get it either. In this city the boys of our tour conveniently found that BB guns were on sale and very cheap so many were purchased along wiht lots of amo.
Back at the Hostel we found that we were sharing with 200 14 year olds on a sports camp. YAY!! It was very funny though to see them attempt to follow us to the local bar and be sent away. I went to bed early this night, therefore missing a very funny moment where a member of our group was bitch slapped by a Croatian speaking security guard!? A highlight for many.

VIENNA: On the way to Vienna, we drove through Slovenia, whilst playing a jumbled story game. I won't go into detail however, I ended up volunteering to read the jumbled stories out to the crowd and therefore giving people a very strong memory to remember me by. A good hint might be that the majority of the group was aged between 20-25.
Anyway we got to Vienna, looked around a castle, ate dinner and found an Aussie pub!!!!
the next day we were only given a few hours to search the city, but apparently even in one of the biggest capital Cities in the world, Sunday trading doesn't exist!!! So we went to the park and wondered. Then however we headed off to the local Schnaps Museum. Here I tasted a golden schnaps, a strawberry cream schnaps oh and Absinth!!!!! Needless to say we were only allowed a small amount each, but I have photos.
Then we visited the summer palace of the Hapsburgh family. This was stunning, I'm beginning to be less amazed by these palaces and just more jealous now. Then we went off into the middle of no where to a restaurant where I had my favourite night so far. There was lots of fun and games and a little music, I have photos for the over 18s.

MUNICH: OKTOBERFEST!!!!!!!!!!!! We were only there for one night but a girl managed to have herself hospitalised with excessive alcohol consumption (3 1L beer steins in 1.5 hours it not such a good idea for someone who is only just 18 and never drunk beer before!!!!) and we were forced to leave one guy behind, however he managed to contact us with the sad story that it was his birthday, he had been robbed of his wallet, camera, shoes, oktoberfest hat, sunglasses and belt, his pants wee ripped all the way up and was stranded in a city he didn't know, had no idea where he slept (though he was dry after a night of heavy rain) and needed some help. Our tour manager was able to contact other tours who leant him money and got him a train to the town where we went next.
I however forced myself to drink an entire 1L stein, it took me about an hour, with help. And had an awesome night wondering the carnival and eating chocolate covered strawberries on a stick. Although I missed seeing Paris Hilton, who apparently swanned her way around whilst people chased her for photos.
I need a break now this has taken about an hour. I am going to post this and come back later to finish it.
Love you all
Rox

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Comments

[the best person eva, chelsea]

guess what i just went to rome, i know what you mean it was really awesome i loved it. Now we are in Venice and i love that too. I dont think we are going to make it to Croatia so i think we will be going to Naples, Pompei and then back up to Florence and Pisa. so that sounds just as good. sorryt about the weather but ours is great i still need sun bloc on. ill send you an email soon but im just about out of time. have a realy good time in scotland you will love it, but maybe not the weather. catch you later have fun xoxox