Contiki - The Mornings After the Nights Before

In the weeks leading up to the beginning of my travels, I didnt think about Contiki too much. I was happy about Mainz, anxious about Busabout, excited about London and downright terrified of Brazil, but the simple idea of two weeks on a bus around the mediterranian coast with a bunch of other long-haired young people didnt raise any red flags. The whole affair therefore got relegated to the "play it by ear" pile, and it wasnt until I'd dropped my gear at the Cascina Palace Hotel in Rome that I took my brain off autopilot and started to wonder what was in store for me. For starters, there was an intense fire raging in the bushland across the road.

Fortunately, everything else in Rome is wrought from concrete and graffiti, so the blaze did nothing other than fill the foyer with a smokey haze. With Michelle still a few hours away, I set off with her old drinking buddy Kristy on the Contiki walking tour of the city. Thats the first difference I noticed between Contiki and Busabout actually, your day and night is planned out for you - You buy the ticket, you take the ride. At this stage of the journey my batteries were running a bit low, so I felt some kind of guilty relief that it wasnt down to me to decide how much fun I'd have.

Rome looked just the way I expected it to look, based on grade 9 Ancient History, a book about Pompeii Id read earlier that week and Michelles photos from her last visit. It didnt feel scary or dirty, but I think thats more to do with me getting over my gypsie paranoia than the town being a eutopian paradise. I was absolutely digging the free flowing fountains with drinkable water on every corner, still being fed by the same Aqueduct that Caesar had plugged into his foot-spa. I also saw a tiny gypsie guy with a giant sack of desiger handbags being chased through the streets by the Establishment, which was hilarious.

I had my first completely authentic italian pizza that night and it was pretty ordinary. Coupled with the infuriatingly relaxed Michael Barnes style table service and I'd say my dinner fell somewhere below average. At 11pm I got back to my room and was greeted by a tired looking Michelle, who had been travelling since 8am that morning. I'm sure she will explain how she managed to take 15 hours to get from Frankfurt to Rome on her blog (its just like one of those comedy of errors Bus stories she has that go on forever and involve a lot of timetables and running).

The next morning our group was assembled bright and early for another trip into the heart of the city. This is probably the best time to introduce The Group. There are 10 boys, 3 of which are single, in a group of 43. Do the maths on that one. We have a reasonable contingent of Aussies, and for the first time the majority of them are from Brisbane. The rest are American/Canadian plus two Brits, two Sith Ifrikens a Cypriot. We caught a local bus plus the Metro into the central tourist district and saw everything that had a column in a 15k radius. I was glad Mr Collins took our Ancient History class to see Gladiator all those years ago, because it really did help me appreciate the Colloseum in person (plus every conversation started with "So, did you see the movie about this?").

With the guided tour over, we found ourselves outside the Vatican. I felt tired, sweaty and blasphemous, so I was content to float through the complex on the river of tourists that follow the "This way to Sistine Chapel" signs without paying too much attention to what was around me. The Sistine Chapel was about as impressive as the pizza I'd had the night before, we even passed a group of backpackers further down the hall who were asking a security guard if theyd passed it yet. Back onto the streets of Rome, I caught a cab with some other guys on the tour to check out the Colloseum from the inside. Then, with aching feet and what may have been the early signs of heat stroke, I trekked back to the Hotel to prepare for the night out.

Our handsome tour guide Yannick (the saving grace for the 33 girls) suggested we meet at a bar for a big group drink-up. Unfortunately noone on the tour figured out where that particular bar was, but fortunately we all got lost in roughly the same place so we started the party there. I had a Long Island Ice Tea at the bar on the river, two more at a sports bar in town, and one more at a club near that, so I was well and truly off tap. This was Contiki after all, you can afford to get ripped and hand over EU15 of your girlfriends money to a gypsie vendor for a dodgy plastic megaphone (with record/playback) because there will always be people around to notice you've gone missing.

I dont recall getting home, and I dont recall answering the phone from bed the next morning when the tour guide called to ask why we weren't on the bus. Turns out Michelles phone ran out of batteries in the early morning, so the alarm she set didnt go off and we were 45 minutes late. The flurry of packing and running was one big painful blur, and unfortunately I had to sacrifice my new megaphone to save space. Luckily for us, our tour guide believed in never leaving anyone behind, probably because I hadnt paid him for the extras I'd booked in for yet.

Everyone else on the bus was nursing a wicked hangover as well, and I still felt pretty rough when we reached our day stop in a little Tuscan town whose name escapes me. I bought a 1.5l bottle of water and spent the next couple of hours sitting very still in a little secluded courtyard with some stray cats and a guy playing some acoustic guitar.

We hit Florence that afternoon and checked into a rough looking but extremely welcome Hotel on the towns outskirts. A nap would have been excellent, but as I was quickly learning, sleep is the realm of the bus and not the Hotel. we had a dinner booked that evening at some Italian restaurant, and after a really average spaghetti meal the bus dropped us at another bar. I wasnt in the mood for even a snifter of alcohol, but fortunately the live band was more than enough entertainment.

I say band, but really it was one guy. A bald guy in a grey shirt with a completely expressionless face and a candy-apple red electric guitar. He had a kareoke machine and a synthesiser, and together with his terribly off-key lyrics (which he had to read from the kareoke screen), he concocted a pretty good representation of some top 40 tracks. The fun part was that where most songs would enter the bridge, he'd unleash an utterly face-melting guitar solo for about a minute straight. That seemed to be the only part he took any pleasure in, its like he told the boss he'd play for free if he could do his own solos.

Anyway we all had a bit of a dance and headed back to the Hotel at about midnight, with instructions to be up again at 7 for the bus ride back into town. We spent the day doing another walking tour of the city, then some more random wandering and shopping. There isnt a whole lot to say about Florence, its just another picturesque Italian town filled with the same souvenir t-shirts and fake Gucci luggage as you see everywhere else.

I was a little bored with the tourist side of things at this point, there was too much rushing around to really take anything in other than the location of the nearest McDonalds or ATM. Fortunately the night life was still excellent. Michelle borrowed Kristys hair straightener that afternoon and gave both of our manes some attention. By the time she was finished the only thing about me that was curved was my apparent sexual orientation. So with my epic hair equipped and a few hastily concocted vodkas under my belt I headed out with the group to a beutiful restaurant in the hills around Florence. The whole place was shut down for our group, with free cocktails on arrival followed by a host of weird yet tasty entrees. Our entertainment for the evening was another nerdy white guy with a synthesiser, only this time he was armed with a piano and sounded like Meatloaf would if english was his third language. The main course was brought out in style, with dimmed lighting, sparklers and a stirling rendition of the Star Wars theme by our now borderline psychotic pianist. There on the plate was a very significant portion of pig. A delicious pig. Alongside it we got glasses of wine that at first I thought was whiskey, then our tour guide brought out a mean little yellow bottle of some liquor brewed by monks. The alcohol rating was 90%, and it tasted exactly the way disinfectant smells. I was lucky enough to spill some on my chin, so I wont have to shave there for a while.

With my mouth still burning, we left the restaurant for a really excellent club that I remember only as a building full of mirrors and some pumping music. I danced like it was friday night at The Family 6 years ago and had the best night out I've had in ages. I had switched from Long Islands back to good old Vodka, so I woke up the next morning with next to no hangover and was bright eyed and bushy tailed for our trip to La Spezia.

The bus ride to La Spezia was quite uneventful, we were there in a couple of hours (after stopping by in Pisa for the obligatory tourist photos. La Spezia wasnt our actual destination for the day, it was just where we'd be staying the night. We got off the bus and got straight on a train which started heading down the Italian coastline. It wasnt until I caught my first glimpse of the vast blue ocean that I realised why we were in Italy. The beautiful coastlines and crystal clear water had never entered my imagination until that moment and I suddenly remembered that I was having a holiday on the mediterranian coast and that was a good thing. We carried on for a few more kilometers of beautiful scenery before we got to Cinque Terre.

I believe Cinque Terre is italian for "No Fat Chicks". It is a tiny little beach town, little more than a train station and some gift shops, set against the most beautiful coastline Ive ever seen. The beach is made of rocks and umbrellas, and there is about 3 feet of shallow water before you drop off into the deep blue. Everyone is absolutely beautiful, even the old ladies looked like they could cook a pretty mean lasagne. A lot of the beautiful people were also naked.

As the whole beach experience had caught my by surprise, I was still wearing my Nikes and looking like a total square. I bought a pair of 3 euro sandals outside the train station and joined Kristy, Michelle and Dani in a little waterfront cafe that was rapidly becoming a Contiki hangover ward. I had possibly the best pizza of my entire trip and then, in a blatant disregard for personal safety, went swimming straight away.

For all that Cinque Terre is beautiful, the beach is hard work. First, there is no sand, only smooth rocks and pebbles that have been baking in the sun all day. You have to gingerly pick your way around the mass of umbrellas and towels and naked chicks while little kids run past you with the hardened feet of a sherpa. Then you jump in and sink because you havent been swimming in years and there are swells coming in and you cant touch the bottom. Then you try and get out and fall over a whole lot because you cant get a decent foothold in the pebbles and the waves are knocking you over, all while trying to look cool in front of Italys finest. That said, it was a welcome respite from the mediterranian heat and the salt sculpted my hair into an epic fro. We headed back to La Spezia that afternoon, then the following morning we set off for Nice.

Nice was basically the Gold Coast to Cinque Terre's Sunshine Coast. It was a little bigger, a little ritzier, a little cheesier, but still had the same beautiful beaches and equally beautiful people. It was also in France, which ruined my July resolution to avoid the french. The bus ride from La Spezia was pretty painful so we resolved to do very little that afternoon. The evenings drinking excursion started off at a very authentic Irish pub, manned entirely by Australians. The vibe was good and the drinks were a reasonable price, unfortunately the smoking ban hasnt really caught on in France so we were coughing up lungs left right and center. At halftime we relocated to an extremely cool and edgy and hip nightclub called "Liqwid" (its edgyness was clearly evident in the deliberate misspelling of the name). Unfortunately the club SUCKED in capitals, with a 10 euro covercharge, some highschool kid manning the bar trying to serve 50+ people, ridiculous drink prices and a pretty crummy dancefloor. The vibe died slowly over the next hour or so, even when our tour manager bought us shots that tasted like Colgate.

The next morning the girls and I had a McDonalds breakfast hangover special, which will go down in history as the worst McDonalds experience ever for reasons that cant be reproduced in print. We considered a jaunt down to Cannes for a swim, just to say we'd jaunted somewhere, but by the time we got to the train station it was 1pm and it would have been a waste of time travelling that far. Instead we cabbed it back to the perfectly good Nice beach and swam for a few hours, then tanned.

That night we went on an excursion to Monaco for another booked dinner, and a visit to the casino. Being that I'm $20 up on the Treasury Casino here, and didnt want to risk losing my perfect record in a foreign land, I just hung around the carpark with some of the others and watched the cashed up Italians in their gridlocked sportscars (for the record, Ferarris sound absolutely gutless at idle). The rest of the group only had an hour to spend in the casino (long enough to lose EU200 apparently) before the bus took us back to Nice for the last time.

The next day we set out for (and arrived at) Avignon. Unfortunately our Contiki tour had the annoying habit of dropping us off for sightseeing before dropping us off at the Hotel. So a bunch of sweaty, irritable and sore people pile out of a bus into a very pretty town and spend the whole time lying around and eating everything in sight. This is why I cant give you all much of a description of these places, other than the comparitive quality and price of their local margherita pizzas and diet cokes. There isnt much to add about the Hotel experience either, other than that I ate a lot of free breadrolls and shared a table with a girl named Toulla, who reminded me of the character on Fat Pizza of the same name so I laughed a lot.

The following morning we set off for Barcelona. We had reached the final four days of our tour and I was ready to spend them with the good people of Spain. Unfortunately, not only was Barcelona not technically part of Spain, but 99% of the people we came across were even ruder than the french. It probably didnt help that it was hot as hell and the frantic pace of the tour was starting to take its toll. Cabin Fever had been setting in as various groups cliqued up and people were getting irritable at each other. To combat this, Michelle and I decided to take another night off from organised activities and crashed early (11pm or thereabouts).

We picked the right time for it too, because the hotel in Barcelona was the nicest of all our accomodation. The room was like the interior of a giant Aston Martin, or a rich mans stationary set. In fact everything in Barcelona was nice, because very little of it pre-dates the Olympics. The trams and shiny and new, the buildings are crazy and modern, even the homeless people were sleeping on brightly coloured cardboard. The following day Michelle and I did a Fat Tyre bike tour, which was fun as always. We got a brief history of Catalunya and a few hours riding through sunny and deserted city streets, as the whole place was in the grip of a public holiday. We went to the beach for lunch and I washed down my pizza with sangria.

That evening we had a flaminco show/dinner booked for the group. The show was excellent, but the food was a little too gourmet for my taste. I put away a record 7 breadrolls, thanks in part to the constant supply coming from the gluten-intolerant chick sitting across from me. The plan for the rest of the night was to go with the group to a massive street party in Old Town. As we were doing things european style, we didnt leave the hotel until about 11pm, and for some reason we chose a 90 minute Metro ride over a 15 minute taxi trip. By the time we got there everyone had lost whatever buzz theyd left the hotel with, and found themselves overdressed and jammed into a scrum of sweaty revellers and packed out bars. Kristy, Dani, Michelle and I quickly decided to write off the evening (and in fact Barcelona altogether) and save our partying for the last two nights in Madrid. I also bid farewell to my brown Cotton On polo, which has featuring in neary evening nightclub photo of my whole tour. It had gone ratty as hell and was reeking from the cigarette smoke in Florence still. May it rest (and possibly be laundered) in peace in the ritziest closet its ever seen.

Being that Madrid is 8 hours away from Barcelona in the middle of nowhere, I camped out in the carpark that morning to reserve the only seats on the bus that give me decent legroom. With my bags in place, my feet up and some breadrolls Michelle salvaged from the free breakfast, I was all set for the last haul. Our "morning song" played for the last time and we set off across the spanish desert. Thanks to the wonderful EU driving laws, we were never on the bus for more than 2 hours, so the drive wasnt actually that painful. At the halfway point we stopped at a little town which featured a cathedral that the ancient spanish must have converted from an airline hangar. After a few oohs and aahs we continued on to our final destination.

Madrid was and is a cool place to be. Its big, its clean and the Spanish seemed a lot nicer than the Catalunyans. Everyone was amped up and ready for a couple of huge nights on the town. Michelle and I splashed out on a 12 euro bottle of Smirnoff and a few hours later we were at a trendy little cocktail bar drinking mojitos. The spanish make cocktails the same way as the germans, 50% liquor, 40% ice, 5% mixer and 5% straws. Each drink weighed in at 9 euros or thereabouts, but I only needed 4. Well actually I only needed 3, the fourth one sealed my fate for the evening and Michelle had to take me home. I passed up on that mornings excursion to the Valley of the Fallen (along with 90% of the other guys) and slept in till noon. I went for a quick stroll through central Madrid, then bought the kind of shirt you would only wear in a foreign land in preparation for the last night out.

Kristy and Dani gathered in our room after our final group dinner for a few warm-ups, and we converted the last of the smirnoff into the biggest and baddest roadie ever constructed. The destination for the evening was a superclub called Captial. It was 7 stories tall and manned by large guys with large suits and large frowns. The passport check was like security clearance at Baghdad airport, with big burly men staring you down from all corners, one exorbitant entry fee later I was in.

The club didnt really kick off until about 2am. We spent the quieter hours on the top level, it was this massive open air terrace with lounge chairs and lounge music. The drinks system worked with tickets you bought from little vending machines around the bar. You push the button marked "Combinados", then put in a 10 euro note. Then it asks you for more money, so you put in some more and it spits out a barcoded voucher for one spirit + mixer. You give the voucher to the smoking hot chick behind the bar, and she pours you whatever retarded combination of liquids you can make her understand in spanish, then you sit down and try to wipe that "I've just paid AU$20 for a drink" look off your face.

I headed down to the hip-hop level at around 2:30, as I had a date with some hispanic girls who wanted some dance lessons and photo ops (seriously). Seeing that the floor was packed out, I continued down to the main floor on level one and got into some techno. You could really see where all your drink money was going to, as at any given moment the air would be filled with bubbles or confetti or streamers until you couldnt see the floor. At the peak of every dance track these 4 huge air ducts would blast the floor with smoke, completely blinding and deafening you within seconds and sending all the crap on the floor flying into the air again. You seriously needed to have your wits about you, it was like dancing on the high seas during a maelstrom or something. Anyway it was the second of the two really good nights out during the tour, and we headed home around 5. What was left of that day we spent sleeping, eating our own special hangover cureall meals and visiting an art gallery.

How was Contiki? Contiki was fun I guess, but not as fun as Busabout. The joy I felt about not having to plan my travels was quickly replaced by irritation at the schedule I was on. Plus travelling with the same people day in, day out was breeding a whole pile of highschool-esque drama that was really lame to see. Fortunately Michelle is the best room-mate ever and I was free to kick back and watch from the sidelines.

Right at this moment Im on Michelles laptop in Madrid Airport. Our flight doesnt leave until midnight, and weve spent at least 6 hours in the meantime trying to confirm and pay for tickets that will get us from Sao Paulo to Rio. The Internet is a failure.