On May 18th, 2000 I flew to London. Two days later began a 49 day tour of Europe that has convinced me that a life without travel is just sitting around. In just under two months I experienced history, art, culture, drinking games, a duty free meca, a movie at the Cannes Film Festival, 4 days of sailing, a Turkish WW1 tunnel, a belly dance show, a Grande Bazaar, a mock wedding, a torture museum, a Dracula party, paragliding, white water rafting, canyon jumping, a glacier, a sex show, and the chance to meet some really great people from all over the world.
On the way I took some photos that I hope will bring back memories for the rest of my life.
On the tour I made some notes and eventually when I came home I took the time to type up my adventures and make a scrap book full of stories and pictures from the trip. Its been almost 4 years since the trip and, since I've been stuck at home with a broken collar bone, I took the time to clean up my stories and get them ready to put up on the web.
I left Toronto on May 8th 2000 at 10:55 p.m. on British Airways flight 98L and managed to sleep through the majority of the 7 hour flight to London / Heathrow. I arrived in London at 11:00 a.m. on May 9th and took the underground to Earl’s Court, the district in London where the majority of hostels and bed-and-breakfast places are located. This is also the location of TopDeck headquarters and the starting point of the tour. I booked myself into a bed-and-breakfast right next to the Top Deck tour office for 27 quid for the night. After settling in I decided to explore London. I spent the afternoon at the Tower of London. This is a fortress right in the heart of London that was built in the 10th century by William the Conqueror. It’s and. I took a tour run by one of the Yeomen Guards, a.k.a. a Beefeater, and saw the British Crown Jewels, as well as a special exhibition of the Domesday Book, an inventory of the entire kingdom, for tax purposes, begun by William the Conqueror to take stock of the lands he conquered. After the Tower I walked around the City of London district, the main business and financial area of London. It was getting late and so I headed back to Earl’s Court to try and sleep off what was a very long day.
I took the tube across town to the Museum of London and spent the entire day there, from a few minutes after it opened until they had to kick me out at closing time. The British Museum has to be the best museum in the world. I first spent some time in the Near East and Assyrian galleries and then went through the massive collection of sculptures and artifacts from Egypt, including the Rosetta Stone. The Egyptian gallery was like a giant warehouse full of massive statues, entire temples, and other monuments taken from their original locations in Egypt. Later I saw the Greek galleries which house the Elgin Marbles, taken by the Brits right off the sides of the Parthenon in Athens. The exhibits were excellently laid out with lots of written explanation as well as 3D graphics and multimedia displays to show how the marbles fit in to the architecture of the acropolis. The next stop was a lecture by an archeologist in the Ancient Levant galleries, where he advanced a theory that connected the Hyksos who invaded Egypt with ancient Canaan, and the expulsion of the Hyksos with the Exodus story from the Bible and the beginnings of Judaism. I also saw a volunteer lecture on Britain under Roman rule and wandered the early European galleries where they had perfectly preserved artifacts from so many pre-Roman Celtic cultures that I had never even known existed.
After leaving the museum, having explored only half of it, I walked through the heart of London and saw Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace. Outside the palace I met an older guy who stopped to talk to me because he saw the Canadian flag pins on my pack. He told me that he was a palace guard who just got off work. On his way home he showed me a couple of war memorials with Canadian flags on them and told me how proud I should be of Canada’s contribution during the two world wars. I asked him questions about his job and found out that he was stationed inside the palace, so he didn’t have to wear the outfit that the young guys who stand out front wear. He’d been in the military, in the royal guards, for 35 years. On his way home he pointed me to a good place to get dinner and told me I should go explore Chelsea, a trendy district of the city where I ended up wandering for almost three hours without a map trying to find a tube station to take me home. I returned to my hotel tired and ready to sleep.
I met the tour group at 6:00 a.m. at TopDeck headquarters. We loaded a shuttle bus and drove to Dover. There we caught a 2-hour ferry to Calais, France. This was our first opportunity to get to know each other and you could already see that the group would mesh well. After meeting everyone we boarded our tour bus and drove 3 hours to Paris. In Paris we stayed in cabins on a campsite. After setting up our things we had a tour of the city by bus, to oriented us to the major sites. We stopped at the Arch de Triumph and Church of Sacre Coeur, on a hill from which we got a great view of the Paris skyline. The church was in the Montmartre area, an artistic quarter of Paris with lots of nice shops and cafes. We then headed back to the campsite where we had our first night of partying. We tried to keep it light this time as we had a long day ahead of us.
I started out with a large group and we walked to Notre Dame Cathedral. Some people began to split off as we walked around the smaller streets of old Paris and soaked up the atmosphere and tasted French pastries. About 5 of us ended up walking to the Louvre. Since we arrived in mid afternoon we decided to wait until 3:00 when the price of admission decreased. So we lounged in the Tuleries Garden just watching people go by and enjoying the great sunny day. At 3:00 we went in to the Louvre and did a quick run through of the most interesting things, including the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, the Egyptian collection, which was a little hard to appreciate as we couldn’t read the explanations in French, and finally the galleries of large French paintings. We left the Louvre just before closing and met up with the whole group for an optional cruise along the Seine River. It started to rain at this point but we still sat outside under the drizzle and enjoyed a few bottles of wine. That night we had our first serious party including drinking games, lots of red wine and plenty of chatting with the girls on the Contiki tours that were staying in the same camp site.
This was a driving day on which we did the 10-hour drive through France to Avignon. On the bus ride we each had to step up to the mic and introduce ourselves. It was hard for those of us who were up late partying as we were feeling a little under the weather. The Red/Orange/Green traffic light system was used to indicate our relationship status. Green indicated you were available, Red that you’re in a serious relationship (either on the trip or back home) and Orange was if you had a possible relationship or weren’t sure.
There were 22 people on the tour:
- Me, (Green) from Toronto, Canada but born in Russia. I was a student, having just finished a bachelor in Computer Science and Math, and was going on to do a PhD at the University of North Carolina in Computer Graphics.
- Steve, (Green) a Canadian who was born in South Africa and currently lives in Vancouver. He was my tent partner for the tour. He’s a student and plans to study and travel for the next 15 years, as he makes his way through university and then medical school at his own pace.
- Roland, (Green) a Canadian from Vancouver. He’s almost finished a degree in kinesiology and biology. He’s good at sports and works with special needs kids.
- Dustin, (Green) a Canadian from Calgary. He worked for the last year in Wales as a bar tender. He was a really cool, laid back sort of guy.
- Ryan, (Green) also from Calgary. He and Dustin had been friends since they were kids. He had been studying philosophy and english in Wales for the last year. Ryan was really outgoing forward and outspoken. He brought a guitar and he played and sang often.
- Mike, (Green) from New Zealand. He was a lieutenant in the army, doing electronics and communication, and was probably one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. This was the guy who introduced phrases like “on the spit”, “screaming eagle” and “fat man bead”.
- Hiromi (Green) from Japan. She was a dress pattern maker who was trying to improve her English.
- Deanne (Dee) (Red) from New Zealand. She’s a schoolteacher and engaged to a guy back home. Dee was the most consistent party person on the tour.
- Luan (Green) from Australia. He was an accountant who’d been working in the U.K. for the last year.
- Amy, (Green) from Australia. She won the plane fair for the trip in a contest in Cosmo.
- Belinda (Bee), (Green) from New Zealand. She is a dental assistant who’s been working in the U.K. for the last year.
- Ross & Bronwyn (Red) from New Zealand. A long time couple who were not married, but should have been. These guys were lots of fun.
- James & Lisa (Red) from New Zealand. They’d been married since they were teenagers. James had the worst luck I’d ever seen and the list of accidents he had on the trip was pretty impressive. He burned his hand with molten plastic, stepped on a sea urchin and was stabbed in the foot by syringe needle that someone left lying on the beach.
- Peter & Jayne (Red) from Australia. These two are married and both have a great sarcastic wit.
- Catherine (green) from Australia. A nanny who had been working in London for the last year.
- Jun (Green) from Korea. Jun lived and studied in Vancouver. He became famous for his yells and noises, which were his only mode of communication with the rest of us for the majority of the trip.
- Jacqui, (Green) from Australia. Jacqui told us that she was too old for the 18-35 year old tours run by Contiki. She loved travel and was having a good time so it was lucky for us that she was able to run on our tour with Top Deck.
- Bridget, (Orange) from New Zealand. She was an engineer and was pretty quiet. She didn’t come out to party much with the rest of us.
- Joanne, (Green) from Australia. I never really got to know her too well. She seemed nice and quiet.
We also had 3 staff members:
- Zak, the tour guide. Zak was an Australian whose accent and mispronunciation of European words were a constant joke for the rest of us on the trip.
- Kym, the cook. Originally from New Zealand she has traveled everywhere in the world. I think she said she hadn’t been home in 7 or 8 years. Her pack had so many patches on it that you couldn’t see the original material any more.
- Scott, the bus driver. He was also a born traveler whose job used to be working as an aircraft engineer.
After the introductions most of us tried to sleep on the long bus ride. In the middle of the day we had a stop for an hour at the Pont du Guard, an ancient Roman aqueduct. We arrived in Avignon in the evening, pitched tents and explored the town. Avignon is a mediaeval walled city, with plenty of old world atmosphere and charm. The main thing to see was the Palace of the Popes, built to house the Pope and his court for a short time in the 1400´s. That night we walked around town, talked to some other travelers and went to an Australian pub.
We drove from Avignon for 8 hours through southern France, which was beautiful! We stopped off at an amazing little town in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains called Meripeaux, where we got to see real French provincial architecture. It was like a town out of a fairy tale. From there we went on into the Pyrenees Mountains. The drive was beautiful. We headed on out of France into the Principality of Andorra, which is just a collection of villages in the mountains which were given autonomy by Charlemagne and later obtained protection from both a bishop in Spain and a prince in France who acted as co-princes the region. Although it has its own constitution Andorra is still a co-principality with official heads of state being that bishop in Spain and the French president. But it’s hard to see the history in Andorra due to the massive amount of development. It has recently become developed into a large number of ski resorts as well as a duty free Mecca, with no taxes for the citizens or the tons of France and Spanish visitors who drive up to buy gas, cigarettes and alcohol really cheap. Our guide told us that they grew their own tobacco in Andorra even though it isn’t very good and no one smokes it. They grew the tobacco and then just burned it. The EU had some rules relating a country’s ability to sell cigarettes to how much tobacco they grew, and so Andorra went through the motions of growing tobacco in order to sell tons of cigarettes without the taxes that France or Spain, or other countries, change. It was a pretty good scam and I’m sure they made tons of cash doing undercutting everyone else on price.
We stayed in a really nice ski chalet, which was much nicer anything we were supposed to have, because the intended cheap hostel closed at the end of the ski season a few weeks before.
Our plans for Andorra included horseback riding and some mountain hiking, but the horseback riding was closed for the season and the trails didn’t look that interesting. There wasn’t much to do in Andorra in the summer, so we shopped. Andorra was one big duty free mall and we really had fun walking around and looking in the stores. Ryan and I each bought Spanish long swords at a great price, and I think everyone loaded up with at least 2 litres of alcohol, also at a great price. Roland took the prize for finding the cheapest booze, which was some “Blond House” whiskey that cost about $8.00 Canadian for a 2litre bottle. Andorra was a nice change of pace from history and culture.
It was a 5-hour drive from Andorra into the Catalunya region in Northern Spain to the city of Barcelona. We arrived in mid afternoon and toured the city by bus. We stopped at the Temple Expiatiora de la Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral built by the architect Antoni Gaudi. The cathedral was very strange looking, mixing both gothic and a modern “melted ice cream” style. We then went to our campsite about 30 minutes away from the city where we learned to set up our tents for the first time. After that we spent a great afternoon swimming in the Mediterranean Sea and lounging on the beach. We spent the evening playing volleyball on the beach and bravely doing some more swimming even though we noticed that there were lots of small stinging jellyfish that floated on the surface of the water.
There are lots of sights in Barcelona, but me and a few
other people decided to spend most of our time wandering the narrow cobblestone
streets of the gothic quarter and soaking up Spanish atmosphere. On the way we
stopped at a nice old cathedral, the Olympic stadium and the Columbus monument.
We then went to the Picasso Museum. That was very interesting. What surprised me
the most was that at the age of 14 Picasso had a huge amount of technical skill.
His realistic paintings and sketches were incredible. This gave me much more
respect for his later more abstract, almost childlike work. By the end of his
life his work had degenerated into countless quickly drawn cartoons of naked
women. I guess in his nineties that’s what the man wanted to draw, and so they
had enough sketches of crazily proportioned naked ladies to fill the entire top
floor of the museum. We then took a long walk across the city to the Castell de
Montjuic, the government palace for the Catalan region. We took the subway back
to the main street, called La Ramblas and just enjoyed watching the Spanish
people walk by. That night after dinner we had a sangria party. The staff put
together a garbage bag full of sangria with floating fruit. We had a nice night
socializing as a group and playing the “I Never” game. Some of the results of
the game were so memorable that they made it onto the trip shirt design. This
night ended with the just the boys having a bonfire on the beach, talking about
life after everyone else had gone to sleep.
This was a long driving day. The only saving grace was the beautiful scenery as we passed from Spain to France between the mountains and the sea. We stopped at a French perfumery for a guided tour and to buy some gifts to take home. Then it was off to the campsite in Antibes, a small town close to Nice, Cannes and Monaco. The campsite was off of a rural highway in the forest away from everything. We spent the evening in the campsite pool and had a relatively quiet night.
We started the day off by driving into Cannes. The
International Film Festival was running so we mingled with the crowds. A strange
German lady offered Cathy two free tickets to a film. The two of us ended up
going. It was cool just to say that we saw a movie in Cannes. The movie was from
Iran and it was boring, very slow, and pointless. After the movie we caught up
with the rest of the gang on the beach. We swam, sunbathed and looked at the
scenery. It was a nude beach so yes there was quite a bit or interesting
scenery. By mid afternoon we met our bus and were whisked back to the campsite
to get dressed up in the most presentable clothing we had. We were then dropped
off in Nice to walk around and have dinner. A bunch of us looked for a nice
restaurant but found that it was too early in the day and everything fancy was
not open yet. We settled for a café/bar with a patio. After dinner we drove into
Monaco. The drive was beautiful and we stopped for a group photo on the cliffs
overlooking the sea. In Monaco we went to the town of Monte Carlo. There we went
first to the very posh Grand Casino. This place had a huge cover charge and far
too many Ferrari’s parked outside. A group of us went down the street to one of
the smaller casinos and started to gamble. I started with 200 francs or about
$50 Canadian. It was my first time really gambling and I decided to play
roulette since it had a classier feel than slot machines. If I was going to
gamble in Monte Carlo I wanted to feel like I debonair high roller. I picked an
empty table and sat down. The minimum bet for the outside of the table was 100
francs. I put all of my money down at once, with100 francs on odd and 100 on
black. So if either an odd number or a black number came up I would get my money
back. If a black odd number came up I would double my money. If an even red
number came up I would lose everything. I broke even a few times, but soon
started to win. Within a half an hour I had 1200 francs, or about $300 Canadian,
and was now surrounded by a small crowd of people. At this point I felt like a
high roller. This didn’t last. In another half hour I lost repeatedly and was
down to my original 200 francs. I decided to give it one more go and lost that
too. On the bus on the way back to the campsite they played the song “The
Gambler” by Kenny Rogers and everybody looked in my direction when he sang that
part about how you got to “know when to walk away, and know when to run”.
Back at the campsite everybody went off to bed except for
Bee, Steve, Roland and me. The four of us were restless and started walking
around the campground at 12:30 a.m. We soon discovered that the entire place was
asleep and there was nothing to do. In the distance we could sometimes faintly
hear the deep base beat of a party, so we left the campground and started down
the rural 2-lane highway surrounded by forest with just my small flashlight to
light our way. Someone made the comment that walking down an empty road in the
forest at 1am was probably a bad idea. This was how horror movies start. Soon we
saw a car turn off onto a dirt road leading off into the woods away from the
highway. The music seemed to come from that direction so we followed. It after
about half a kilometer we saw through the trees a large mansion with all the
lights on. The music was coming from there. Between the mansion and the road we
were on was a deep ravine with tree and other thick vegetation. Roland and I
decide to cross the ravine. As we head down the slope we realize that it was
very steep and the ground is covered with dry bamboo stalks that broke away as
we stepped on them. It was almost impossible to keep our balance and we had to
desperately grab at the dry bamboo to keep from falling. It was just our luck
that all of the other bushes were covered in either huge thorns or burrs. It
took us almost a half hour to get to the bottom or the ravine, cross the small
creek and climb up the other side. We came to the top all covered in mud and
scratches. At that point we saw a huge wire fence in front of us. It must have
bee 20 feet high and looked very high security. Roland started to climb the
fence and ended up ripping a large hole in it at about our chest height. We both
climbed through and realized that we were in a tennis court not in some high
security area. We yelled back to the others, who were smart enough not to joint
us on our climb through the thorns and infiltration of the tennis court, and
told them where we were. They went back to the road and took the sensible way
in. Roland and I, all covered in scratches and burrs, walked up to the mansion
and saw a parking lot full of cars. The place appeared to be a country club, and
it looked like a huge party was going on. After building up a bit of courage we
decided to go in and crash the party. We walked up the stairs to the main floor
and noticed that people were looking at us. Nobody stopped us or said anything
to us. We took turns cleaning up our scratches and dirt in the bathroom and then
started to explore the mansion. The party took up two floors, with a bar and
food on the first floor and a DJ and dancing on the second floor. On the second
floor Roland and I stayed for a while watching as couples Mambo to calypso and
reggae music. Downstairs we met up with Bee and Steve and took stock of our our
situation. We were at a party with lots of people, an open bar and free food. We
wanted to stay and crash the party but we stood out… just a little. You see,
everybody at the party spoke French and everyone at the party was black. For all
we knew everyone at t he party was related. We were three white people and an
Asian guy, and none of us spoke any French at all. It was a little tough for us
to blend in. At first we were nervous, and so we sat near the wall and whispered
to each other, making jokes about how crazy the situation was, what would happen
if we were caught, and trying to come up with stories explaining how we were
invited there. But soon we realized that nobody seemed to care that we were
there, so we stayed and started to make ourselves at home. We started ordering
drinks at the bar. Later people came up to us and encouraged us to grab some of
the curry stew and soup that was laid out for everyone. At least that’s what we
thought they were saying. We were there till 3:00 a.m. enjoying the free drinks
and food. Reluctantly we decided to leave and went back to the campground for a
good nights sleep.
This was a travel day. We spent the long bus ride coming up with designs for the trip T-shirt. In the end 3 designs were liked equally by the group, so we decided to merge them into one design for the shirt. My design was one of the chosen and I ended up drawing up the final picture for the back of the shirt. There were no stops of interest until we came to the campground just across the canal from the city of Venice. The campground was called “Fusina” and had to be the best party campground in all of Europe. On the day we arrived 3 Contiki tours, 2 BusAbout tours and 1 other TopDeck tour came in as well. Having other tour busses at a campground was always a bonus, because unlike our tour, most tours were populated largely by single women between 18 and 24 years old. It makes sense that a lot of single girls took tours as it was a safer way to travel than on your own. Our tour was an exception, with more couples than usual, probably because at 49 days it was a little to long for the casual traveler. We pitched our tents and started up a game of soccer to pass the afternoon. It was Canadians against everyone else, and of course we kicked their asses. After dinner we all went over to the Fusina Bar. Within minutes, we were chatting and playing drinking games with a bunch of girls from one of the Contiki tours. That night turned into a crazy party, with people dancing on the tables, guys getting their shirts pulled off by the women and of course tons of flirting. To see evidence of this look at the web site www.fusinabar.com, where the owner of the bar has an archive of photos of the parties that happen every night. The night ended with a lot of anticipation and a lot of disappointment. To explain this I would have to you tell the chaperone story.
We started off in the morning with a walking tour of the
city that took in the Academia Bridge, Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square) and
the Bridge of Sighs. The Bridge of Sighs is actually a small tunnel between the
prison and the royal palace that was walked by condemned prisoners, from which
they could see their last view of the city before execution. Later the group
went out for a demonstration of Venetian glass blowing and a demonstration of
traditional lace making. After that we were on our own. I walked back to Piazza
San Marco and checked out the San Marco Basilica, which was said to contain the
body of St. Mark, patron saint of Venice, which was smuggled by the Venetians
out of Alexandria with a shipment of pickled pork. Upstairs there was a museum
that contained the original bronze horse statues stolen from the Hippodrome in
Constantinople when it was sacked during the 10th crusade. Over lunch
in San Marco square we met a group of Croatian girls on holyday. They have my
address and were eager to write, I assume to practice their English. From there
Luan and I went across to the Rialto Bridge, with its tons of shops, and walked
around the city on the other side of the Grande Canal. This was rather
difficult. Venice is a hard city to navigate just by direction due to its maze
of small pedestrian streets, which often curve, end in dead ends, or end at
canals with no bridges across them. We finally met the group again and shared a
bottle of wine on a traditional gondola ride through the canals. After that it
was back to the campground for a prepared meal in the restaurant during which
the trip T-shirts were given out and the mock wedding was announced. The plan
was to have a mock wedding in Rome for Ross & Bronwyn, one of the couples on the
trip who had been together for a long time but were not married. We all received
invitations to the wedding and roles to play, as either relatives or friends of
the bride or groom. After dinner it was a continuation of the previous night’s
party. That night it rained down hard. But there were still places that were
dry, like the bar, the shower complex, and eventually my tent.
This was another driving day with little to see in the dull Italian countryside. We drove from Venice to Florence. On the way, we stopped at Pisa to see the Campo dei Miracoli, the religious complex built during Pisa’s “Golden Age” in the 12th and 13th centuries. This is of course the home of the leaning tower, which was a bit of a disappointment. It looked exactly as I expected it to, except for the metal cables and crane holding it up. The base of the tower was a plain construction site, as restoration work was being done for the next few years. The work also prevented us from climbing the tower as visitors used to be able to do. The real highlights of the area are the cathedral and baptistery buildings. The cathedral was huge, with a very open feel, and it was decorated in interesting artwork and mosaics. The baptistery is a large circular building containing the baptizing pool in a vast open space in the middle several stories high. An incredible thing happened just as I was about to leave the baptistery. The security guard from the entrance closed the outer doors so that no one could enter or leave and walked to the center of the building. He yelled for silence until everyone was quiet. Then he began to sing. He had an incredible tenor voice, which he used to sing arpeggios slowly one after another. The notes were sustained by the acoustics of the building so that at least three notes resonated at any time and combined to form a chord. The piece was simple but the sound of the chords resonating in a single voice was awesomed. After the song was done we all stood there in silence. The guard straightened his uniform and went back to his post at the door.
In the afternoon we pulled into the Florence campground a half hour drive out of the city. The campground was very posh with several large swimming pools, trendy shops and a few bars. All of the facilities on the campground used debit cards that you put money on in advance. It was hard to keep track of the money you spent. The other problem was that the majority of the other campers were older people there with their families, so the bars were very much dead. So instead of partying the people on our tour enjoyed the pool and had a quiet night to ourselves.
The free day in Florence was very busy. We were dropped off
in the morning about 10 minutes walk from the center of town. Luan and I headed
off together to the Duomo Cathedral. With its vast interior and breathtaking
design, it was as impressive as the last time that I saw it. We explored the
cathedral thoroughly and then moved on to the Museum Nazionale del Bargello,
which houses a pretty good collection of sculptures from the Renaissance,
including a few by Michelangelo. From there we went over to the Academia
Gallery to see the sculpture of David as well as some unfinished works by
Michelangelo. This gallery also had some interesting middle age icons as well as
some Roman era busts and sculptures. By this time it was getting late in the
day, so we rushed back to the Uffizi Gallery, the most famous gallery in Italy.
When we arrived we were totally disappointed to find that the lineup looked to
be several hours long, and we only had 2 and a half hours before the bus came to
pick us up. But luck was on our side when we spotted a group of people from our
tour right at the front of the line. Apparently Hiromi was waiting over two
hours to get to that spot. So we jumped in line with them and were in the
gallery within a half hour. We did a quick run-through of the gallery seeing the
most famous works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo and Botticelli.
We were out of the gallery with a half hour to spare before the bus pick-up.
This was good because Luan and I still wanted to make a quick run to the Santa
Croce church. There we saw the tombs of Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante and
Machiavelli. After a few quick pictures we had to run to meet the bus for the
ride back to camp. Back at camp we had a restaurant dinner of traditional
Italian pizza and ended the evening off with the bachelor and bachelorette
parties, or as the Aussies called them the stag and the hen party, for the
upcoming wedding.
We drove from Florence to Rome. The drive was relatively short. We arrived in Rome in the middle of the afternoon and set ourselves up at the camp. We were staying in cabins at a campground that was a good hour away from Rome. The benefit of this was that the camp had a nice pool that we enjoyed for the rest of afternoon. In the evening we made our way into Rome by bus, rural train and then subway. Once in the city we went on a long walking tour to orient ourselves to the major sights like the Vatican City, Piazza Navona, where we had a nice dinner in a small café, the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Trevi fountain, and Spanish Steps. Our last stop was the Church of the Immaculate Conception, the home of the Capuchin Monks. In the cellar of the church a group of monks from the 18th century had set up a series of displays showing the mortality of man. These involved the bones of over 4000 of their brethren, which they exhumed and used to decorate the walls of the crypts. It had to be one of the most grotesque and bizarre things that I had ever seen.
On this day we had a chance to see the sights of Rome in more detail. A group of us walked around the Vatican City. In St Peter’s Basilica we saw a religious procession and listened to a mass. From there we went on to the Vatican Museum where we saw the Sistine Chapel, which I was happy to finally see without scaffolding. This took the better part of the morning and afternoon. We then went off to the Coliseum. After walking around inside for an hour we decided to split up. I really wanted to go out to see the catacombs, about a half hour bus ride south of the city. Everybody else wanted to go to the Roman forum, which I saw in detail the last time I was in Rome. So, following my guidebook, I went off alone in search of the bus for the catacombs. After searching around the Coliseum area bus stops and finally asking someone, I learned that my guide book was out of date and the bus that I was looking for no longer came by the Coliseum. I was about to take another bus on a roundabout route to the catacombs when I met a group of American tourists. They were also asking about the bus to the catacombs. The four of us decided to split a cab to the Catacombs of San Callisto. The catacombs were very interesting. Our guided tour took us through parts of the over 4 miles of tunnel, dug in 4 levels beneath the surface and filled with the graves of early Christians. We saw the resting places of the 2nd century Popes of Rome and several early Christian mosaics on the more elaborate tombs. Once the tour was over, I realized that I had only 30 minutes to get back across Rome, catch the rural train and meet the bus back to camp. There was no way I could make it, so I had to make my own way back to camp. What followed was a two and a half hour adventure on every imaginable transit vehicle in Rome. First a bus and subway ride across town, with a little wandering around and asking directions when I got lost. Then it was a ride on the rural train that connects to the subway at the north end of Rome. After a few stops the conductor asked me for a ticket and informed me, all in Italian and broken English, that the subway ticket I was using was no longer valid. So I paid him 5000 of my last 6000 lira for a new ticket and he started hassling me because my 2000 lira note was slightly ripped at one corner. Finally after some arguing he went away and I finish the train ride to a small town outside the city. From there I needed to call the campground and have someone pick me up. Before I could do that I had to search for a bank machine, then for a place to buy a phone card, then for a phone. All this searching was done in an empty little town that had closed down for the evening. Finally I worked it all out, called th campground, and was picked up by a driver who took me back to my friends on the tour after almost 3 hours of travel on my own. I was already late for the mock wedding. I was sad that I missed the ceremony but at least there was still some food left from the buffet dinner and I was able to take part in the remaining festivities.
This was another driving day. We went from Rome to Sorrento, a small town in the south of Italy. Sorrento is very touristy and has plenty of bars and pubs. The main points of interest in Sorrento are the ruins of Pompeii, the nearby Isle of Capri and the amazing scenery of the cliffs around the Bay of Naples. In the afternoon we stopped to explore Pompeii. We had a guided tour run by a very chubby and amusing tour guide name Fofo. Pompeii was as interesting this time as the last time I was there. We looked at several houses of both rich and poor residents, marveling as usual about the Roman preoccupation with sex, Priapus and his unit being a prime example. They had plaster casts made from the hollows in the volcanic ash left by the bodies of the victims of the eruption. It was crazy to make out the faces, clothing and hair of people who had died so long ago. After Pompeii we went into Sorrento and up to our hilltop campground. After setting up, we had a swim in the pool and relaxed for the evening. Later that night we went down to a pub in town called the Merry Monk, and enjoyed and evening of dancing and partying.
On this day the few of us who wanted to explore the Isle of Capri had an early start. After a 6:00 a.m. breakfast we met the boat that would be taking us on our cruise of the island. As we approached the island we had an amazing view of the huge cliffs rising right out of the sea. The first stop that we made on the Isle of Capri was at the Blue Grotto. This is a cave that you can only enter by rowboat in low tide. Inside the low entrance the cave forms a large dome into which the sunlight reflects blue light off the cave walls and the water. It was expensive, touristy and not really worth it. We then rounded the island, stopping at some pretty cave formations along the shore. We were dropped off at the small town of Marina Piccolo and had the day to explore the island. Cathy, Luan and I took a bus up to the town of Anacapri. We spent the day walking the narrow streets and soaking up atmosphere. Unfortunately the map I bought was drawn with some artistic license so we spent a portion of the day lost in the twisted maze of streets only wide enough to accommodate a pedestrian or a speeding mo-ped. Near the end of the day we took a chair lift up to the highest point of the island from which there were exceptional views down the cliffs to the sea. We took a cab back to Marina Piccolo and enjoyed the boat ride back to camp. That night after dinner, we had another wild night at the campsite. Ryan, Dustin and Roland bought a 5-litre bottle of red wine, and I had some Isle of Capri Lemon Liqueur, a specialty of the island. We played a drinking game called 3-man for a while. The night ended on a grotesque note as Ryan, Mike and Roland decided to put the empty wine bottle to use and left a little present outside the cook tent of the visiting Contiki tour. Unfortunately Zak and Kim caught wind of the plan and fearing serious repercussions for TopDeck moved the bottle before it was discovered.
From Sorrento we drove across Italy to Brindisi, a pretty
dull port town. From there we caught an overnight ferry to the island of Corfu
on the northwest side of Greece.
In the morning we disembarked from the ferry on Corfu and rode our tour bus across the island to the eastern shore. We stopped at a campground in the town of Ipsos to have lunch and pack our daypacks with the things we would need for sailing. Since I would be living on a boat for the next four nights, I packed my small knapsack with two T-shorts, a bathing suit, a pair of shorts and changes of socks and underwear. Earlier we had been divided into five crews for the sail boats. Cara 1 had the crew with Pete our flotilla leader as skipper and Cara 5 was our boat. The idea was to spread the experienced sailors among the five boats. Unfortunately it didn’t work out this way. Our boat, dubbed the Titanic, or the guy boat, had a crew of myself, Steve, Jun, Ryan and Roland. Ryan was our skipper. He claimed to have some sailing experience, but in fact he had only been sailing once before as a kid. Roland was our first mate, and his best sailing experience was on a canoe. During the afternoon our skipper and first mate were trained on the working of the sails and the use of the radio. Together Ryan and Roland were supposed to teach the rest of us. We moved our things and the breakfast and lunch food onto the boat that afternoon. The boats were 25-foot sailboats, with a small kitchen and bathroom below, and enough room to sleep 5 or 6 people. They had a radio and a motor that we could us when there was no wind. We started off from Ipsos using our motor. On the way we learned how to control the boat and work the sails. Pretty soon we were working well as a team, getting the main sail and jib up and down. We tried to practice tacking but found it difficult with the lack of wind. Mainly we were enjoying the sun, working on our tans and sipping our drinks on the deck. That day, we crossed the channel between Corfu and the mainland of Greece to the small of Sayiadha. We pulled in there at about 6:00 p.m. Once in town we chose our dinner entrees and main courses from one of the local tavernas. After a nice dinner of swordfish steak, I was off to the local pub for the evening. At night we settled into our boats to sleep amid the gentle rocking of the waves in the harbor. That night the cough that I had since Brindisi turned into a fever. After some Tylenol and a good night sleep, the fever broke and I was left with a lingering cough for the rest of the sailing trip.
On this day we had our first chance to experience the realities of sailing. The day started off amazingly with bright sunshine and a smooth sea. We had breakfast on the boat, after me and Jun cooked up some French toast, and made our way south along the coast. We had several swimming stops and a lunch stop in the amazingly clean blue water of the Mediterranean Sea. In between the stops if it was hot and we were moving we still could take swims by jumping out the back of the boat with a towrope. We were taking turns manning the rudder, sun tanning, sipping drinks and swimming when the wind picked up. We were told on radio to put out the mainsail and then the jib. Following these instructions, we were soon moving along quite quickly under power of the wind. It was great to sail without the noise of the engine. By late afternoon it really picked up. Ryan, the skipper was out on the towrope and I was manning the rudder when a strong wind hit us. We started moving very fast and the boat started to keel over on its left side from the power of the wind in our sails. This keeling was supposed to happen, but not as much as our boat was doing. We were crashing through the waves with our boat almost at 90 degrees to the water. I had to yell to Roland and Steve to move to the right side of the boat to weight it down as rudder was starting to come out of the water and I couldn’t steer. We were told that these boats could not be flipped over, but at times we were seriously worried that ours might be the first. When we hit some waves the boat would lean so far over that the tip of the mast was touching the water. Ryan was still out the back of the boat and he didn’t have the strength to pull himself in against the force of the water. Finally we all had to help pull him in. Roland decided to take a picture of our boat on this crazy angle and planted himself in the cabinway trying to steady his camera. With Roland in the way and the noise of the waves we couldn’t hear Pete screaming at us over the radio to let out our mainsail. Then a crazy thing happened. The nose of our boat went down into the waves and the whole boat was spun around in a 360. The boat, which had been ready to flip over on its left side, instantly rolled over and dunked its rights side into the waves. As this happened, those of us who were leaning out the right side of the boat desperately trying to weigh it down almost went into the water. Before the sails could switch sides we were going forward again. At this point Steve finally heard the radio message and we let out the mainsail. This stabilized the boat dramatically and soon we were sailing straight and steady.
We pulled into harbor in Mourtos and after another restaurant dinner we walked around the town. It was a bigger town than the previous night’s stop and had several bars and shops. We settled into one of the bars for the evening and told our sailing story to the rest of the group. They confirmed that for a while it did look like our boat was going to tip over, and the 360 maneuver looked as crazy impressive from outside the boat as it did to us on the inside. We all had a good laugh, as our boat, Cara 5, had lived up to its reputation. What did they expect putting five guys with no sailing experience and plenty of alcohol on a boat?
We sailed back across the channel to the island of Corfu. There was very little wind during the day. The day was so lazy that Ryan, Roland and I decided to work on a whole body tan. Wearing strategically placed socks we each found separate areas of the deck to lay ourselves out. I think that our Canadian winter white bodies must have shone like beacons in the sun. Despite the lack of wind Pete tried to organize a race between our five boats in the afternoon. It didn’t work out so well. Tensions were rising on our boat as people were getting frustrated and Roland was feeling sick. Half way through the race we turned off our radio and just sailed in silence, each in his own little world. That night things picked up. After dinner at a taverna we were treated to a show of traditional Greek dancing by the owners of the place. Soon we all joined in and had great time learning Greek dancing. It was quite a party. One of the men from the town demonstrated a fire dance, where he danced and lit lighter fuel on the ground. At the end of the night we learned the table dance. This required a sturdy wooden table with four legs. The dance involved taking the table in your teeth by the corner and dancing with it held only by your jaw. A few of us got to try it. It was tough on the teeth but fun.
We sailed north along the shore of Corfu, towards Ipsos and the end of the sailing trip. It was a nice relaxing end to the sailing as the wind was too rough for sails and we relied on the motor to take us back. Once we came into town it was already evening and we had dinner in a taverna. That night we had a small party in a local pub to celebrate the end of our sailing trip.
This was a free day on the Island of Corfu. The group split
up, with some people renting scooters and motoring around the island and others
trying out the parasailing and other water sports. I relaxed for the morning and
went on a horseback ride in the afternoon. It was great. I really got to see the
countryside and talk to Sally the trail leader. She was British and had lived on
the island for over twelve 12 years. She told us a lot about the countryside
around us and about Greek culture in general. For example, I learned that the
Greek people have no cultural appreciation for horses. Very few of them learn to
ride and the prevailing view is that horses are used for work, like machines. On
our trail ride, we met children and Sally encouraged them to come up and pet the
horses. You could see how scared the kids were. She explained that this was the
first time in her twelve years here that the kids actually approached the
animals. Other than Sally, there were only two of us on the trail ride, Luan and
myself. Luan had never been on a horse before. At first I was a little worried
because on most trail rides you ride at the level of the least experienced
rider. So although I’ve ridden since I was five, I was expecting that we would
spend our time just walking around with maybe a few trots. But I was pleasantly
surprised. Luan’s mount was a small, very docile, little pony that was easy to
control. So with Sally in front, Luan in the middle and me at the end on a perky
mare, we tried first a few trots and then some canters. By the end we had done
at least five good canters through the countryside. Being at the end I could
hold my horse back until the other two had a good head start and then let her go
with a burst of speed to catch up. After the ride we had a snack back at Sally’s
ranch among all of the stray animals that she had saved. That night we all went
bar hopping around Ipsos. The town had many pubs along the beach and the place
was full of tourists. We all had a good time before going off to bed.
Today was a major travel day. We took a ferry from Corfu to mainland Greece, a drive through Greece and another ferry across to the Peloponese. On the way we stopped at the Corinth Canal, which separates the Peloponese from the mainland. There really wasn’t that much to see. It was just a canal. We pulled into the campground on the outskirts of Athens and spent the evening relaxing around the pool.
This was our free day in Athens. We started off with a driving tour that that took us past the old 1894 Olympic stadium. From there, we went to the National War Monument and saw the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I went off with a few others to the National Archeological Museum, one of the few sites in the city that I missed the last time I was here. This museum was quite exceptional. Their classical Greek and Roman artifacts were mediocre at best, especially compared the British Museum and the Louvre, but their collection of Mycenaean artifacts was astounding. They had so many interesting pieces, including the famous “Mask of Agamemnon”, and in all of them were in such an amazing state of preservation. After that the group of us wandered the Plaka Market area towards the Acropolis. Of course, we went up to see the Parthenon, and the museums of the Acropolis. Even though I’ve been there before, I went along because its just one of those things you have to do as a tourist in Athens. By the time we were done exploring we had just enough time to get back to the bus for the ride back to camp. After dinner, we had our most ambitious party of the tour. You see, we were losing seven people from our group because they were getting off in Athens. Our 49 day tour could be broken up into two half tours, going from London to Athens back again. Some people chose to do half the tour and then travel on their own or stay in Greece. Others were adding an extra tour through Egypt and would catch the second half of our Continental Crossover with the next group in a couple of weeks. So to say goodbye to Ryan, Dustin, Cathy, Bridgett, Ross and Bronwyn we really hit the stuff hard. We played 3-man for hours and as new rules got added to the game it evolved to include nipple tweaking and tequila shots. This would be the last time we would play 3-man on the trip.
This game requires two dice, a table full of people, and a full drink in front of each person. Each person has a turn rolling the dice. On certain dice rolls people have to take gulps from their drinks. You keep rolling the dice until you roll something that does not cause someone to drink. Then it’s the next person’s turn.
The various dice rolls mean different things:
If you roll a 7 then the person to your left drinks.
If you roll an 11 then the person to your right drinks.
If you roll a 10 it’s a sociable and everybody drinks.
On any roll of doubles the person who rolled gets to doll out that many drinks. For example if you roll a double 4’s then you must assign 4 drinks to the other people at the table. They can all go to one person or they can be split up, as you like.
The name of the game comes from the following rule:
If you are the 3-Man then on anybody’s roll, if a three
comes up on any dice then you have to drink, once for every 3. This means that
the 3-Man drinks a lot. There is only one 3-Man in the game at any time.
You become 3-Man in one of two ways:
You either roll a 2 and a 1 on your two dice.
You roll three doubles in the same turn.
The final rule makes the game really fun.
If you roll a double 6, then not only do you get to dole out 6 drinks, you have to add a rule to the game. Some examples of rules that were added to game are:
All drinks must be taken with the left hand. If you forget to do this at any time then you drink.
Nobody can say any word starting with the letter D. If you forget to do this at any time then you drink.
On a certain roll everybody must perform some action, like putting a finger on their nose, and the last one who does it has to drink.
On a certain roll everybody gets to tweak the nipple of the person to their right.
On a certain roll the person must take a shot of tequila.
On this day 7 new people joined our tour for the trip back to London.
We welcomed:
- Dean & Erin (Red) from New Zealand. This was a nice boyfriend and girlfriend couple that, while not being too wild, was quite a lot of fun.
- Max & Jules (Red) from New Zealand. A married couple, of which Max was the most outspoken. He was a former body builder and male stripper.
- Mic, (Green) from Australia. He hasn’t been working in years, and lived off of his investments. He was a pretty funny guy who told tons of corny jokes.
- Paul (Green) from Australia. Paul was a very nice guy, who became the third member of the exploration team, with me and Hiromi, that stuck together through much of the rest of the tour.
- Omar (Green) from Mexico. He was a very nice quiet guy, who was easy to get along with. He came on the tour to meet a nice Czech girl.
We packed up early and drove north to the region around Meteora, the site of the amazing cliff top monasteries. There were around 30 monasteries build on tall outcrops overlooking shear cliffs. They were constructed in the 14th century on the sites where hermits had lived since the 11th century. These monasteries were so secluded that the only way up to many of then was by using a basket lowered down the side of the cliff on a rope. Now many have stairways cut into the rock for tourist access. We arrived in the afternoon, and after quickly setting up our tents at the campsite, we visited the largest of the monasteries called the Great Meteoron. To get there we had to take a winding rode up through the mountains. Once we arrived we had some time to explore the monastery, seeing the beautifully decorated Greek Orthodox chapel and the Spartan living areas that the monks used to use. The inside of the monastery really didn’t compare with its beautiful surroundings. After we had explored the area the group was heading back to the campground. While everybody else took the bus I decided to walk down on my own. What followed was an amazing 2 hours as I walked along the sheer cliffs and then down through the valley, following goat paths and sometimes making my own way across the rocks. I took some great pictures and even did some rock climbing up to an eroded mini-cave in the cliff side. It was nice to have some time to myself. I returned to camp in time for dinner and spent the evening with the gang around the pool.
This was another major driving day. We drove up to Kavalla, a town in Macedonia, northern Greece. Kavalla was just a rest stop for the night and we didn’t see anything while we were there. But we pitched out tents on a campsite right on the beach and enjoyed a nice evening of swimming in the Mediterranean. That night we had another Sangria party.
We drove from Greece into Turkey. This was our first
encounter with a difficult border crossing as we were now outside the E.U. At
the boarder with Turkey the officials decided that Canadians suddenly needed to
buy a visa to enter the country. I had checked before I the trip started and I
was sure that we didn’t need a visa, but how do you argue with a border official
when his friends have machine guns. So I had to pay $45 U.S. to get into Turkey.
I never found out whether the whole thing was just a scam pulled by the guards
at the border to grab our money or an official policy change by the Turkish
government. I just paid the money. Soon we were in Turkey and driving to the
Gallipoli Peninsula. We stopped at the small town of Eceabat where we were
staying in a hotel right in the center of town. The town was tiny and the people
were very friendly, trying to talk to us even though they spoke no English and
we spoke no Turkish. Steve and I sat down for a nice cup of apple tea in one of
the local shops. Later Roland and I went to a barbershop. I got a haircut and a
shave, while Roland got just the shave. It was incredible. After the haircut I
had my first cutthroat shave with a straight razor. The guy shaved me twice,
rubbed my face with various creams and some aftershave, and finally brushed my
ears with a flaming stick to remove ear fuzz. The Turkish shave is heck of a lot
of pampering. And it all cost about 1,300,000 Turkish lira, or about $4
Canadian. The crazy thing was that Roland’s shave was done by a kid who couldn’t
have been more that 8. That night we had dinner in a local restaurant and then
settled down to watch a video of the movie Gallipoli, starring Mel Gibson, to
get a feel for some of the history surrounding the areas. After the movie a
bunch of us went over to the Vegemite Bar just outside town. This place was
great. It had a real trashy feel to it, with neon spray paint all over the
walls, and tons of black light. The great thing was that the place also had an
eastern flavor to it. The music was the best we had heard in Europe. They played
great heavy industrial, rock and dance music. The pool table was free. When we
weren’t using either of those we were sitting around a hubbly-bubbly, which was
a giant bong like in “Alice in Wonderland”, smoking apple tobacco. We stayed
there all night even though we were really the only people dancing and having a
good time. You see in Turkey, it being a Muslim country, you almost never saw
women out after dark. Other than us, the only people out late at night were the
Turkish men sitting around talking and drinking in the club or in cafés on the
streets. The few locals in the club with us were young Turkish guys who would
stand in a circle and teach each other dance moves. Clubs just don’t make a lot
of sense without the girls.
We packed our things in the morning and set off for a bus tour of the Gallipoli World War 1 battlefields. The Gallipoli campaign lasted 9 months and was fought mainly by ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) troops. Around 66,000 Allied troops, and around 80,000 Turks died in what was to be a totally pointless campaign. The place is another example of the senselessness of the war. Thousands of Australians and New Zealanders were killed because they were ordered, by the British, out of their trenches to charge the Turkish machine guns. Our tour guide for the trip was a small Turk who called himself “Bad Man” because he said that everything he talked about was bad news. We never found out his real name. The bus took us to the beaches where the Allied troops landed by mistake and had to fight their way up tall bluffs, and then to various war memorial and cemeteries. One amazing thing about the monuments in the area was the amount of respect that the Turkish people gave to the memories of the dead Allied troops who tried to invade their country. It showed nobility in the Turkish character that I thought was quite rare.
In the middle of the day we arrived at the reconstructed Allied and Turkish trenches and were given time to explore. There was a tunnel dug by the Turks during the war that was safe to explore for the first few meters. After I grabbed my flashlight from the bus Roland and I decided to look around inside the tunnel. After going in about 5 meters into the tunnel we saw that the ceiling dropped down to only 8 inches from the floor. We had to lay flat on our stomachs and push ourselves with our toes to get through. There were huge spiders on the walls to either side. Once we passed the narrow part the tunnel opened up again, but it was so dark that without the flashlight I couldn’t see a thing. The walls of the tunnel weren’t rock, but more like dirt or mud and would crumble under my hands. We kept going down the tunnel, and my anxiety kept building. I was really worried about a cave in that would leave us trapped down there. We must have gone over 100 meters down the tunnel before it came to a dead end. We went back and explored a branching tunnel that also came to a dead end. After that we went back the way we came. We emerged from the tunnel covered in dirt from head to foot. It was then that we noticed that we were alone. The tour bus had left without us. This is when we really started to panic. The bus was heading directly on to Istanbul after the tour of the battlefields and if we didn’t catch up to it we would be truly stuck. I had my wallet and some money but no passport, no change of clothes and no address for our hotel in Istanbul. Roland didn’t even have his money with him. If the bus went to Istanbul we had no chance of caching the rest of the tour. I started to imagine us stranded there in the empty rolling hills on the Gallipoli Peninsula with no way to catch up with the tour or even go home. So we started to run along the road as fast as we could hoping to catch our tour bus. We must have been running for more than a half hour without seeing another person anywhere. Then we saw a bus coming down the road. It wasn’t our bus, but it stopped for us and the driver spoke English. I asked if a bus could get to Istanbul without coming back down this road past us. The answer was “no”, and so we breathed a huge sigh of relief. From then on we walked calmly until we saw our own tour bus coming back down the road towards us. We were welcomed on as returning adventurers and settled down on the bus for a sandwich lunch and some serious rest.
From the Gallipoli we drove on to Istanbul. We arrived in the evening and settled into our hotel. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and took the evening to explore the surrounding area on our own. Hiromi and I ended up going into the Blue Mosque that night. In the dim light and the absence of tourists the place had a very quiet majesty. We split up and walked around the wide-open interior in silence, just soaking up the atmosphere. It was my first time inside a mosque and the presence of middle-eastern culture was very powerful. We returned to the hotel later that night and had a quiet night chatting in one of the rooms.
We started the day with a walking tour of the Old Town area. Istanbul is a huge city and this area would be the only part we would really get to explore. With a local guide we did a tour of the Blue Mosque. It had a completely different feel from the previous night. With the sun up you could see the exquisite stained glass windows. The Blue Mosque, or Sultanahmet Camii, is a huge mosque constructed in the 16th century. It is notable for its 6 minarets. This number was actually a mistake as it was the same number of minarets as in the great mosque in Mecca. The architect who built the Blue Mosque was forced to go to Mecca and add a minaret to make Mecca again the greatest mosque in the world. The Blue Mosque gets its name from the blue tiles used to decorate the inside. After the mosque we went to the Roman Cistern. This is an underground reservoir built by the Romans to provide the city, then Constantinople, with water during a siege. It was forgotten during the centuries of Muslim occupation and only discovered in the previous century. Inside the cistern there was a very creepy atmosphere, as the interior is dark and the space huge. The ceiling was supported by columns scavenged from pagan temples all over the empire. Two of the columns are even held up by massive statues of the head of the Titan, Medusa. After the cistern we went over to the Hippodrome, the ancient Roman square built in 200 A.D. In its center is an Egyptian obelisk and some other ancient monuments. This was also the location of the 4 bronze horses stolen by the Venetians. We then moved to Topkapi Palace, the royal residence of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Build in the 14th century, it had an opulent and distinctly eastern décor. Inside there were museums containing the crown jewels of the sultans, jeweled arms and armor, thrones, vases and many religious artifacts including the sword and bow of Mohammed, a walking stick supposedly belonging to Moses and several hairs and other relics from all kinds of Muslim prophets. After the palace we had a demonstration of traditional carpet weaving at a shop in the city.
For the rest of the day we had free time and a bunch of us went to the
Grand Bazaar. This is a huge market where you could buy everything from
souvenirs to clothes and jewelry. As soon as you come in the shopkeepers are
talking to you and trying to get you to buy something. One guy followed me a
whole block trying to show me the socks he was selling. The fun is in the people
you meet as you stop and talk to the shopkeepers and try to bargain with them
for things. We spent over half an hour talking to some of them, joking and
trading lines back and forth. They would say “I must feed my family” and I would
counter with “but I am a poor Canadian student, and I have no money” all in the
game to get a good price. It’s amazing how much you can knock off a price if you
work at it. Sometimes it is well over 75%. It was also a lot of fun to bargain
with millions of Turkish lira at a time. One million lira was worth less than
$4. We stopped for lunch in a great little kebab shop where the food was amazing
and so very cheap, before shopping for the rest of the day. My purchases
included an ornamental dagger, a Darbuka style Turkish
hand drum, some T-shirts and some silver rings.
In the evening we met up at the hotel and went to dinner and belly dance show. The show featured traditional dance groups from regions in Turkey and the surrounding countries, including a few guys from Georgia who threw knives. There were several belly dancers, but one in particular that was the highlight of the show. After the show we went back to the hotel and out to a pub for a bit of partying.
On this day I had a chance to explore the sights not covered in the previous day’s tour. My first stop was the Aya Sofia Museum. This was right across from the Blue Mosque and was build by the Romans as a church in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian. At the time it was the largest dome and the largest interior space in the world. This record held out until they build St.Peter’s in Rome. Later it was converted from a church to a mosque, and now it is a museum. The inside is magnificent. It’s absolutely massive and you can climb to midway up the dome to get a brilliant view of the place. Inside you can see Muslim geometric wall decorations over top of painted crosses and beside ancient Christian wall paintings. After exploring the Aya Sofia I went back towards Topkapi Palace to visit the Archeological Museum. This was a bit of a disappointment. Much of the building was closed for renovation, so I was unable to see any of the relics of Ancient Troy. The galleries that were open displayed a decent Byzantine collection and some amazing sarcophaguses from the Greek period. After that it was back to the hotel where I met the tour group again. We all went over to a Turkish bathhouse for a full bath and massage. This was a real cultural experience. I stripped down, and wearing only a cloth, went into this huge round room with a massive round marble slab in its middle. I then had to lie down on the slab until a masseuse was ready for me, all the while enjoying the steam in the room. Then the masseuse scrubbed me down with a rough cloth, washed my arms, chest and back and gave me a massage. My massage involved all kings of limb twisting and stretching. Since we were all in the same room I could see how some of the bigger guys were even stepped on by their masseuses. To complete the experience I went next door for another cutthroat shave and walked away feeling really clean and pampered. After that it was back to the Grande Bazaar to walk around and enjoy the atmosphere. I met up with Mike, Dee and Bee for dinner. After dinner we went to a light and music show at the Blue Mosque and then hit a pub for the night.
This was a really rough day. First it was a long border crossing out of Turkey, and into our first former Soviet country, Bulgaria. Then it was a very long day with over 9 hours of driving on very lousy, bumpy roads. When we pulled into the hotel in some small town for the night about nine people, including myself, were feeling really sick. The Bulgarian food didn’t help at all. That night I was feeling terrible. It must have been a combination of the last meal in Turkey and the bus ride, but it put me right out of commission for the night. Some other people went down to the hotel bar and told me later that there was a crowd of Russian tourists down there asking around if anybody spoke Russian. Well, I guess I missed out on an opportunity to socialize but what can you do? It’s Murphy’s Law.
We had another long driving day through Bulgaria followed by a long border crossing into Romania. In Istanbul I had already gotten a Romanian visa for $45 U.S. so at least there were no surprises at the border. We drove into Bucharest, the capital of Romania, by early evening and quickly set ourselves up in the hotel. We picked up a local guide and went on a bus tour of the city. The tour was rather boring as there is little to see in the city that wasn’t built in the last few decades by the Communists. We saw the starting point of the 1989 revolution and various other government buildings. We were dropped off for dinner in the heart of the city, and after a quick and cheap meal at the local McDonald’s we went by one of the main squares in town to watch a EuroCup soccer game between Romania and Germany. The game was showing on a huge jumbotron and the entire square was crowded with screaming fans waving flags and wearing soccer jerseys. The atmosphere was electric and we stayed for a while and watched the game. Later the group I was with went over to the Sydney Bar, an Australian pub in the middle of the city, and had a few drinks. By late evening I caught our bus back to the hotel although many of our tour stayed at the bar. I was still feeling sick from the previous day and decided to take it easy.
We had a full day to explore the city. It started off with a tour of the People’s Palace, or the Palace of Parliament. This is a huge building started in the 1980’s by the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, which was not yet completed when he was executed in 1989. It is the third largest building in the world and the second largest administrative building after the Pentagon. Inside it was very opulent. It was clear that its construction had drained an untold amount of resources from the already poor Romanian people. One story that the tour guide told us about the extravagance of Ceausescu was that when the palace was being constructed they were also building an apartment block down the main boulevard several miles away. Because the balcony of the palace faced down this street Ceausescu wanted the apartment block to look just right so he would have a nice view from his balcony. He had a full-scale wooden façade of the apartment building built. This façade was moved into place and he stood from his balcony in the palace and gave them orders over the phone like “a little to the left, a little to the right” until he was happy with how it looked. The next day the façade was torn down and burned. It must have been some kind of hell living in a country ruled by an egomaniac dictator like that.
After the tour of the palace we were dropped off in the center of town. Luan, Hiromi, Jun and I took off for the Curtae Veche, the Old Court where Vlad the Impaler built his citadel in the 15th century. We wandered through the old streets of the city until we found the place. There was nothing at all to see. All that was left of the palace were a few broken columns and even those were fenced off. There was no apparent access to the site or the museum that was supposed to be underneath. The area was full of gypsies and beggars and the atmosphere was a bit disturbing.
Outside the Curtae Veche a man approached us and started offering us to exchange money on the black market. We told him to screw off and went into an old eastern orthodox church nearby to look around. When we came out the man came up to us again and started offering the same thing. At that point three big guys came up and flashed these ID cards. They said that they were police and asked to see our passports. When I tried to read one of the guy’s ID card he pulled it away. At that point I realized that they probably weren’t cops. But there was not much I could do. I didn’t want to start a fight, especially as Luan is a pretty small guy, Jun didn’t speak English so he didn’t know what was going on, and Hiromi is a small Japanese girl, so these guys could easily have mugged us if they wanted to. And in all honesty I didn’t put a lot of faith in the legal system in Romania. These guys could have even been corrupt cops for all I knew. Anyway, after I lied and said that I didn’t have my passport they started telling us that the guy who was bugging us earlier about exchanging money was a known criminal who dealt in counterfeit. They said that they needed to check all our money for counterfeit. They were really pressing me and Luan since the other two didn’t understand what was going on because of language difficulties. I took out my wallet and showed the guy my Romanian money. He made to grab it to get a closer look, but I pulled it away and told him that he could look if he wanted but the money was not leaving my hand. The guy didn’t push his luck, but started asking if I had any U.S. dollars, to which I lied again and answered “no”, or if I had any hidden cocaine. After a while the guy who was talking to me backed off and all three “cops” pretended to arrest the original counterfeit dealer. I managed to get out of the situation with all of my money. Luan did not. He handed over his wallet to one of the “cops”. The guy counted his money, put the money back in Luan’s wallet and put the wallet back in Luan’s pocket. When we went around the corner and Luan checked his wallet he was short about 600 Romanian lei, or about $60, and some Czech money as well. The guys must have palmed his cash right before his eyes.
After the episode at the Curtae Veche we walked to the National History Museum. Another disappointment was that the museum was closed on that day. So we walked around town some more without any real objective. I bought myself a nice silver ring with a piece of amber in it. We met the bus and drove back to the hotel to have dinner at the hotel restaurant. After dinner we stayed in the hotel, playing cards, watching soccer on T.V. and relaxing. It was a pretty quiet night.
We drove up through Romania, crossed the Carpathian Mountains and entered the Transylvania region. Our first stop was Bran Castle and we arrived there in the mid afternoon. This castle, built in the 14th century, was billed as Dracula’s Castle. Vlad Dracula, or Vlad the Impaler, who was the basis of the Dracula legend, may have visited it for a short time on his way to exile in Hungary, although historical evidence of this is not conclusive. The castle was set on a hilltop and was used as a Royal Residence in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The interior mostly dates from that time. But recently it was remodeled into a museum of medieval furniture to better reflect its supposed legendary past. The whole thing was a bit of a scam made to take advantage of people’s fascination with Dracula. The castle was still fun to wander through. We had a good time jumping over the velvet ropes when nobody was looking and posing for pictures on some of the rugs and furniture. But all in all it was more hype than substance. In the area around the castle there were many booths where peasants sold all kinds of crafts and souvenirs for very cheap prices. That was where I picked up a pair of handmade, heavy wool sweaters for my parents at a cost of $7 U.S. each. After the castle we rode the bus to the nearby town of Brasov. Our accommodations for the night were in a dormitory style hostel with plenty of old style atmosphere. We had a great meal in their restaurant. That night was the Top Deck Dracula Dress-Up Party. We all made costumes out of whatever material we could find. Mine was a toilette paper mummy outfit that came apart very quickly. The night was spent taking pictures, dancing and partying.
This was another long travel day through the northern part
of Romania. Here we could see the rural lifestyle everywhere. Horses and buggies
were a common sight on the roads and workers in the fields could be seen using
hand scythes. On the way we stopped at the little town of Sighisoara. It was a
beautiful medieval town with plenty to see, including a Cathedral, a Clock Tower
with a museum inside and a wonderful view from the top, a museum of Armaments,
and the house that was the birthplace of Vlad Dracula but was now just a
restaurant. We explored the town in the afternoon before setting off to a
campground outside Cluj Napoca for the night. The campsite was in the rolling
hills with nothing at all around us. We had a pretty quiet night of talking
around the gas lanterns.
We drove across the last difficult border of the trip into Hungary. As soon as we crossed the border you could see that Hungary was a much more affluent and modern place than Romania even though it also was a former eastern block country. We had a reasonably long drive into Budapest followed by a brief bus tour of the city. We were held up by traffic and so we just had time to see the Fisherman’s Bastion and St. Matyas’ Church with its statue of St. Stephen out front. This St. Stephen was the one who unified the Magyar tribes to become the first king of a united Hungary around the year 1000. He was also the one who had this region first converted to Catholicism. After the tour we took the bus to our campground and relaxed for the rest of the evening.
We took public transit into the city and broke into what was to be the usual team of me, Paul, and Hiromi, to explore the city. Our first stop was the castle district where we saw Buda Palace and the Budapest History Museum. The museum was very poorly set up and we ended up getting lost under the old parts of the palace. The experience tired us out and made us all want to avoid any more museums for the rest of the day. From the palace district we went down and found an Internet cafe. Later, we walked through the city and enjoyed the day. We ended up on Margaret Island, which is an island on the Danube in the north side of the city. The island has a big park and some nice gardens as well as a performance theatre. On the island we met a group of others from our tour. They were off to the opera. Paul, Hiromi and I decided to take it easy, so we got a couple bottles of red wine and relaxed. We ended up spending the evening on the island and watching a folk dance show. The first part of the show included children’s dance troupes from Hungary, Greece, Georgia, Mexico and Taiwan. After that, they had 5 professional groups from Budapest do an hour and a half long show that traced the history of the last century in dance. For the final number, when the dancers came down the isle, we joined them on stage. It was really fun. We didn’t really care that the 3 of us were the only members of the audience up there on stage. We’d had a lot of wine by that point. On the way back we met a crowd of local kids celebrating a girl’s 19th birthday. We ended up joining them at the dance club on the island. We had a great night. Later we took a cab back to the campground for some well-deserved rest.
This was mostly a travel day. We drove through Hungary into Austria and arrived in Vienna at 1:30p.m. Then we had a driving tour around the city. Our bus took us on the ring road, or Schubertring, around the city past the Opera House, the Royal Palace of the Hapsburgs Emperors, and many of the other sights of Vienna. We were dropped off outside the Opera House and given only two hours to explore the city. Hiromi and I walked down to the Stephansdom, or St. Stephan’s Cathedral, and then on the Royal Palace. There we quickly ran through the Museum fur Volkerkunde, an amazing museum of anthropology that had exceptional artifacts from the indigenous cultures of North America, South America, Africa, Asia and Australia and New Zealand. After that, we took the bus to the campsite and set up our tents. On the way out of Vienna we stopped at the Friedrich Fischer Schnapps Museum, where we saw a demonstration on making true Austrian Schnapps and Liqueur. We also had a chance to sample their entire product line. That night, we went to the Prada Amusement Park where I almost threw up on a ride called Space Shot. The ride was like the DropZone ride in Canada’s Wonderland. People are strapped into seats around a really bug tower, shot at high speed up the tower, and then allowed to fall down and bounce up and down like a yo-yo until they came to a stop. The operator ran the ride as many times as he liked for each group that was strapped in. Usually it was about 5 runs, but he sent our group up 6 times, because a few of us looked like we were going to throw up, and the rest of our tour who were standing around the base of the ride, were screaming at him to keep us going until we did. The rest of the night was spent wandering around the park and going on roller coasters and other rides. We returned exhausted to the campground and settled in for the night.
We left in the morning and drove across the border into the
Czech Republic. We were again in an eastern block country, but like Hungary, it
was much more affluent and prosperous than either Bulgaria or Romania. We
arrived in Prague in the afternoon. As soon as we came in, we did a nice long
walking tour of the city. We started the tour in the Castle District where we
saw Hradcany Castle. We walked through the area to St. Vitus’ Cathedral and then
down the Golden Way to the famous Charles Bridge. Charles Bridge was built in
the 14th century and is lined with statues of saints. From there we
walked in to the center of town and Staromestke Nam, which was Prague’s main
marketplace in the 11th century. There we saw the Old Town Hall,
Staromestska Radnice, with its old astronomical clock that shows the sun
revolving around the earth. Also in the square there was the Jan Hus Monument,
and the gothic Tyn Church. From there we walked into the Wenceslas Square, with
its long avenue that looks onto the National Museum. After the square we rode
public transit back to the campground for dinner. That night, after we set up
camp, a bunch of us went over to the go-cart track beside the campground to
race. We had a great night in the bar at the campground.
We started out in the morning and took public transit into the city. The usual team of Hiromi, Paul and I started at the Castle District where we explored the churches in detail and then went into the Old Palace Museum. From there we went down the Golden Way, the avenue where all of the tradesman and craftspeople used to live. On the way, I pulled the others into a doorway that had a suit of medieval armor in front of it. We were completely amazed. Inside was a three-floor gallery full of coats of armor, weapons, and clothing from the middle ages. Even better, the exhibit was completely free. At the very top of the gallery there was a small shop that sold authentic weapons and armor. Inside I had a chance to shoot a real crossbow. After that we went down and looked around Charles Bridge and climbed up the tower at its end. From there we moved on to the Museum of Medieval Torture. This was a great museum with a display for almost every torture device ever used in European history. Each display had an excellent description of the implement of torture and engravings from the middle ages showing each device’s use. Later we went over to the Staromestke Nam and down to the museum below the Old Town Hall. Here they used the old crypt beneath the town hall as a museum in which each room showed a different period in Prague's history from the Paleozoic era to the present. After that we went to the Powder Tower, a large gothic tower that was used to store gunpowder during the Renaissance, and climbed to its top. We next went to the old Jewish Quarter of Prague. We arrived just in time to see several of the synagogues and museums before closing. We first saw the Pinkas Synagogue, a 16th century synagogue which had the names of all 80,000 Jews from Prague and the surrounding regions killed in the holocaust. We saw the displays on traditional European Jewish culture and history in the Spanish Synagogue, the Maisel Synagogue, and Klausen Synagogue, before we finished with the Old Jewish Cemetery. This cemetery was established in the early 15th century, and used until 1787. Due to the restrictions of the times this was the only space provided for Jewish burial, so the cemetery is crowded with over 12,000 headstones almost on top of each other. The number of people buried there is unknown, but far greater than the number of headstones, as people were buried in layers, one atop the other, to conserve space. From there it was back to the Old Town Hall to have dinner and pick up some souvenirs. I bought my last medieval sword at a shop there. Later we met with the rest of our tour group. We went pub hopping and drank the cheap 50-cent beer. Me, Steve, Roland, Bee and Dee ended up at a pretty cool nightclub until late and took a cab back to the campground at the end of the night.
This was another travel day. We traveled back into Austria and drove up into the Alps. We passed small towns and villages until we came to the town of Kirchberg. We were now out of the history and culture part of the tour and into the outdoor adventure portion. In the small town of Kirchberg we pulled into Club Habitat, a 400 year Old Chalet. We got ourselves settled and had a nice dinner in the restaurant. After dinner we saw a video on the adventure activities available for the next day. These included Glacier Skiing, Paragliding, Hiking, Mountain Biking and Canyon Jumping. We all had to choose what we wanted to do. We also received a demonstration of the drinks served at the bar, for the next night’s party. I had to be the one who demonstrated the "nipple suction". We ended up staying in the restaurant/bar area for the night and having a little bit of a party before bed.
A group of us had planned to leave early in the morning to go Canyon Jumping. Unfortunately the rain from the past night made this impossible. Luckily all was not lost. The organizers at Club Habitat went to work for us and reorganized our day. We ended up having free time until mid afternoon, which we spent at a nice recreational lake in the hills. We also had a chance to see an annual parade and festival commemorating a Tyrolean victory over the Swiss in the Thirty Years War. After that we went off to Kitzbuhel, the next town over, so that Paul and I could go paragliding. We took a cable car up a huge mountain and met the paragliding crew. Paul and I each went tandem with an instructor. It was incredible. We set up the parachute on the side of a hill and started to run. Just as we ran off the edge of a cliff the chute filled with air and we were flying. My instructor and I circled high above the town in the thermals for a half hour before we landed. After that wonderful experience Paul and I rejoined the larger group that came to watch us fly and headed over to go canyon jumping. It was safer in the afternoon than in the morning as the water level had come down after the rains. Canyon jumping was one of the most frightening things I've ever done. We dressed in full wetsuits, with helmets, life jackets and special slippers, and then drove up to the canyon jumping park with our guides. First we had to walk our route on a boardwalk that followed a small mountain stream through some amazingly narrow gorges walled by steep cliffs. Once we had gone far enough, we entered the river. At first it was easy, just knee deep water which we walked or floated down, sometimes sliding over large rocks. The only difficulty at that point was the bitter cold of the water that we could feel on our bare hands and even through the wet suits. But things soon became far more interesting. We hit larger rapids, which we floated along in our life jackets. We would also climb up onto large rocks or the boardwalk and jump down into small pools between the cliff walls. The last jump was 9 meters down from the boardwalk between sheer cliff walls into a tiny pool a few feet across. The guide would say “Aim for the place where the place where waterfall hits the water. It should be deep enough there”. It was very frightening, but such and adrenaline rush.
That night after dinner we had a 60's and 70's dress up party using the chest of old clothes provided by the Chalet. We took the official group picture in full regalia. I'm the 70's pimp on the far left. The night was spent partying like crazy.
In the morning we packed our things and hit the road. Just outside Kirchberg we stopped for White Water Rafting. It was great. It was pouring rain and the water was cold and running very high. The power of the river was immense and we played all kinds of games on the raft between the huge rapids. Needless to say everyone on our raft ended up in the water. After rafting we drove through the Austrian and then Swiss Alps just taking in the amazing scenery. We finally came to the small town of Lauterbrunnen. It was absolutely beautiful. The town was at an altitude of about 1400m in a valley between two huge sheer cliffs. The word Lauterbrunnen means "land of the waterfalls" and it certainly lived up to its name. On both sides of the valley there were several thin waterfalls dropping down from the cliffs to the land below. It was very damp, cool and misty as the cloud line was only a few hundred meters above us. We set up our tents and enjoyed the mountain air on a quiet night on the campsite. You could just get glimpses of the snow-capped mountains as the sun went down.
The usual team of me, Paul and Hiromi, along with some others took the optional trip up the Jungfrau railway to the Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe at an altitude of 3680m. Up there we were above the clouds and all we could see were the mountains and glacial snow above the cloud line. It was really amazing. Paul, Hiromi and I went out onto the glacier. The air at that altitude was making me giddy and I was all over the place running around and climbing over the hills of snow. We ate our packed lunch and went to see the Ice Palace. The Ice Palace was a series of hallways cut right out of the glacier. The three of us walked around the hallways made of ice and saw some amazing ice sculptures. We hung around up there on the mountain until 11:30 before heading back down on the railway. We got off of the train at the town just before Lauterbrunnen, which was called Wengen. From there we walked the few kilometers down through the mountains back to our campsite. I stopped in town to shop for a Swiss Army knife. That night we had a small party at the bar in the campground, playing foosball, and the stump game where you have to drive a nail into the stump in the corner of the bar using the strange tools provided.
This was another long driving day. We packed up our camp in the morning and drove through the Alps into Germany. We came to the Rhine Valley and the small town of St. Goar. Here we stayed with Herman the Mad German who ran a campground and hostel. We arrived just in time for dinner and the wine tasting party afterwards.
In the morning we caught an hour and a half long cruise along the Rhine Valley. The Rhine Valley had the highest density of medieval castles in all of Europe, and we passed quite a few of them on the cruise. One bizarre sight was a church built into the back of a beer hall. You have to pass through the bar to get into the church. The preacher actually serves the beer out front. After the cruise we drove across the border into the Netherlands. We traveled to Amsterdam, stopping on the way to see a cheese and clog making demonstration. In Amsterdam we set up camp outside the city and then went off to the red light district where we saw a sex show. It was rather interesting. Since we were a large group, members of our tour were called on stage during the audience participation portions. Dee was on stage for the male stripper, and Roland was on for the female stripper. Omar, Mike, Steve and I were brought up for the Banana Lady. The last act was a rather bored looking couple. That night a bunch of us stayed in the city to check out some of the cafes and nightspots.
The group was dropped off at Dam Square in the center of town and most of us took off for Anne Frank's house. This was a great museum with artifacts and displays that really hit home with the tragedy of the holocaust. After that the usual exploration team went back to the main street and walked into one of the city’s many Sex Museums. The museum was pretty stupid with lots of old photos that are supposed to be pornography from the 1800's and early 1900's. It all looked a little fake and overdone. After that we went all the way down to the south of the city to see the Modern Art Museum. There are quite a few excellent museums in Amsterdam but the Modern Art Gallery was Hiromi’s pick. She was given the choice after she had to put up with the sex museum. The gallery was quite good. As usual in such museums some work was typical crappy “no skill required” modern art and some was very interesting. We then wandered around the old town and the red light district before being picked up to go back to the campsite. Back at the camp we had our last dinner as a group. This was a big celebration with certificates and prizes handed out. Then we partied all night at the campground pub. There were a few other tours at the same campground, some just starting out, and some also on their last lefts. So needless to say things were pretty happening.
In the morning we said goodbye to Steve and Mic who were staying in Amsterdam. Then we loaded our stuff onto our new bus, since our old bus was being repaired for several small problems that developed on out trip, and set off. We spent the entire day driving back through Holland, Belgium and France. We arrived at the port of Calais and took the ferry back to Dover, England. We then drove to Top Deck headquarters in London. Hiromi, Omar and I found us a three-person room in a small hotel in Earl’s Court before meeting up with the rest of the group at a pub for a last drink together. It was goodbyes and hugs for the rest of the night as people went their separate ways. By late evening only a few of us were left and we had dinner in a fish and chip shop before Omar, Hiromi and I left the others to settle in to a quiet night watching the EuroCup soccer semi-final game between Portugal and France. We went to bed pretty early.
The three of us woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel. I said goodbye and left around 9:00 a.m. to catch the tube over to Heathrow. I made it there by 10:00a.m. and had enough time to get a box for my long sword and check my luggage before the 11:55 flight. The flight was uneventful, although I had trouble sleeping at what felt like mid afternoon, but was early morning in Toronto. Arrival at Pearson International Airport started on a high note as I made it quickly through customs, but soon turned for the worse. There was a thunderstorm and this shut down airport operations. I waited for two hours to claim my luggage and had to put up with huge annoying crowds on the way out. Thankfully, the customs officials didn’t search my bags so all of my medieval souvenirs made it through just fine. There was tons of traffic on the highway back to the city, so the cab ride took forever. When I got home I realized that I didn’t have a key for my house and had to wait until my parents came home to let me in. We had a nice family dinner and I went to bed early, a victim of serious jetlag.