I haven’t written much about the people on our tour or what I think of contiki so far. I wanted to give it some time to settle in before I wrote about it, plus it takes awhile to meet everyone.
We have 51 people on our bus so it is a full bus load. They are mostly Australians with about 8 Canadians, a couple of kiwis, a Latin American and 4 girls from the phillipines. The phillipine girls have made no effort with anyone on the bus though so aside from them being a massive pain when they “seat steal”, I am not even considering them in this post. Of the Aussie contingent we have quite a few “country folk” which is nice and also a pretty good spread from all over the place (WA to Adelaide to Tasmania to NSW to Darwin etc). I think the split between girls/guys is pretty even although there may be a few more boys.
Our tour has more couples than I expected, we have about ten so it is almost half the group. A few of them are married as well which I didn’t expect – it is a really cheap way to see Europe though so it shouldn’t really be a surprise. The single people are mostly “party animals” and they like to party hard. There is quite a bit of *ahem* bed sharing going on from what I can tell and obviously the more people drink the more that happens! I don’t know if it is an age difference or an attitude difference but I don’t have anything in common with most of the singles…that said, we have made great friends with two girls traveling together from Adelaide and a few of the couples as well.
I think most of the singles on contiki have the goal of “get written off and party hard” but my goal was always just to explore Europe and I am definitely doing that! I am happy not to be hungover on bus trips haha, although tonight I drank a bottle of wine and sang along to John Farnham on the bus (shhh don’t tell anyone).
As for my opinion on contiki? Well so far…
1) if you don’t like drunk people this is not the place for you. I’m hardly drinking at all and I still find myself in a lot of awkward situations with really drunk people in the group, it would have to be a daily occurrence. It’s a pain in the butt. Especially when they don’t remember speaking to you at all the next day. As long as you make a few friends with similar interests though you’ll be fine.
2) they need to provide more info….we have run into a few problems where we have really clear details on what we are doing that day but no idea about the day after. It makes planning for us harder, especially those of us who want to explore and see the sights.
3) the included meals are hit and miss, as are the hotels. Some have been great and some are truly atrocious. If you have allergies it can be really hard as well.
4) some of the “optional” activities have been fantastic – the walking tour in Berlin, the dinner in Venice, the river cruise in Prague and the bike tour in Munich (which we didn’t do but have heard rave reviews about) to name a few. A few have been really crap though – our gondola ride today was a bit disheartening (not to mention expensive) and as I mentioned, a few of the optional dinners (especially Amsterdam) have been pretty average. That seems pretty hit and miss as well! Maybe do some research if you are on a really tight budget.
5) finally, my absolute worst thing about contiki has to be the hours and hours spent on a damn bus! Three hours between stops is TOO LONG and so is 45mins to wander around at each stop.
I could also have a whine about people who steal other peoples seats….RAH!
Mel's Travel Blog 