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October 12th 2006

Published: October 12th 2006

OK so I didn't get a chance to finish it but now I have a little time. I have just arrived back in London from a flying visit to Scotland. But more about that later.
Where was I.......

AUSTRIAN TYROL: So we traveled back into Austria but now we're in the Alps. Before we arrive at the hostel we went white water rafting, it was so much fun!!!!! I bought a awesome photo of our group that was taken and in it I'm smiling brightly for the camera, completely ignoring the rapids while everyone else on the boat is in mid action shot with contorted faces it's hysterical. Then we settled back into the hostel and whilst we eat dinner Ben the guy who was left behind in Munich joined us so we all welcomed him into the room with a very loud version of Happy Birthday. The next day was big, we started off with a mountain bike ride up a mountain. OK so I'm fairly fit due to dancing however I had been siting on my bum for 5 weeks eating junk food and sleeping, so riding up a mountain was maybe not such a great idea but I did finish, with the sorest behind and a very strong appreciation for the riders in the Tour De France!? I will now avoid bikes for a few more years!!!!
Anyway in the afternoon there was an option of Paragliding, yeah sadly I declined for a couple of reason, mainly the fear of falling or dying but apparently it was fun. So I went up the highest mountain in the area. To get up this mountain you had to catch 3 chairlifts, the first a very modern Gondola, a big spacious cabin that takes you up fairly high, next is a two seater regular kind of chairlift, a little scarey but I survived, lasty was an absolutely terrifying single chair lift where you have to go up by yourself, very squashed in and the chair has a fit every 10 seconds shaking horribly and threatening to collapse. At the top though was a cafe, as there always seems to be????? And I had a lovely goulash soup before forcing myself to go back down the horrid lift in the freezing cold. The little town at the bottom of the mountain was the cutest and sweetest little place however for some reason the shops are only open like 4 hours of the day, something I could understand if there was three feet of snow covering the place but it was the middle of Autumn!!!!! We then watched a movie in the bar that night, a nice little change for us all. The next day on our way out we stopped at teh Swarovski Crystal Museum, I think someone may have been on something when the designed that lace but it was cool anyway.

SWITZERLAND: We drove through Lichtenstein and stopped in the city. We only had an hour and the line for the ATM due to the new currency was so long we barely had time to eat lunch. The castle had scaffolding, so pretty much the same as every other sight in Europe!!
Next we traveled all the way through to Lucerne, a very beautiful little city with a beautiful statue to the fallen Swiss guards of Louis XVI of france. And swiss army knives available on every street corner.
The campground where we stayed was so special, it was in a valley between mountains and had a waterfall coming down the cliff face behind us. Although the energy of the Contiki reps that ran this place was a little questionable!? They were really strange people.
Next day we traveled up Jung Frau a mountain covered in snow on top, named the top of Europe, due to the fact it is the highest restaurant, shop and postbox in Europe.
It was strangely hot up here and they had an ice palace inside the mountain, with husky dogs to pat and have a photo with. We all started to feel strangely sick up here due to the altitude so headed down after midday. Then a big night of UNO the best game in the word.

RHINE VALLEY: Back to Germany today and up all the way to the Rhine wine region. It took a while and some beautiful views but we drave most of the way across Germany. Tonight we went to a stein shop where they sell all kinds of beer steins, big small, fat, skinny, ceramic, handpainted, you name it they have it. With their speciality is there one off series of decorative steins with a piece of the Berlin Wall on top. Although the cheapest of the five series of these were 195 Euro, and for Australian dollars you pretty much double that!!!! About 4 people acually bought one though. Then there was a shop that sold authentic and again expensive cuckoo clocks and the original teddy bear, straight from the factory that first made the teddy bear, with a teddy of the original design costing around 125 Euro, and an average cuckoo clock costing 250-300 Euro. Needless to say I bought a key ring and a postcard from this shop.
Next we ran through the rain to a underground bunker where we did a wine tasting of their local reislings. All quite nice.

THE NETHERLANDS: We did another bike ride here, it poured with rain and my bike was zebra stripped so a odd experience.
Amsterdam was a huge culture shock for me, there are literally women standing in these windows lit up red selling themselves. I'm talking old, young, fat, skinny, ugly and beautiful. It freaked me out. Amsterdam is a perfect example of the wrongs of legalising even one drug, because the amount of weirdoes walking around talking to themselves and doing completely random things like walking down the street arms raised is more than i saw in all other European cities combined. A new experience but I had heaps of fun celebrating the end of our tour. I had to send home quite a lot of excess bagggage here, it's the cheapest place to do it from.

THE END: We are now at the end of my 36 day contiki tour. We had a fun day reminising, and handing out emails and phone numbers, while signing bits and bobs for each other. We returned to London settled in and all went to the pub for a night out.
It was hard and I miss everyone but I guess it had to end.

more to come soon
Love you all Rox

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