Sitting in Valencia, we were trying to work out the best way to spend our last couple of weeks in Europe. We still wanted to go to Italy, Germany and Portugal but the number of combinations, transport options, prices, hotels etc that we looked at started driving us crazy. Then we came up with the idea of looking into a Contiki. This idea re-energised us, especially after the brilliant experience we had on Contiki in America.

We decided that our main focus would be getting to Italy and Germany which meant that Portugal was now pocketed and saved for another trip to Europe. Only a little bit of searching, and some comparisons to Top Deck Tours, brought up the perfect tour for us - Road to Rome. A two week tour from Paris to Rome that went everywhere in Italy that we wanted to see (Venice, Florence, Rome) and also passed through Switzerland, Austria and Munich. But the best part of this would be that if we got on the tour, we wouldn't have to worry about organizing any more transport or accommodation. It would be two weeks of letting Contiki think for us and we'd get to enjoy the spoils. The 20% Discovery Card discount that we could get was also pretty handy.

In true Mlungu Trek fashion, at the last minute we managed to get ourselves the last two seats on the bus for this Road to Rome tour and landed up finalizing the trip and payment on the day that the Contiki group left London - we met them the next day in Paris.

Our 48 person group was, once again, about 80% Aussie but it was ok cause by this stage of the trek we had already succumbed to the fact that Aussies are everywhere you travel and you eventually get used to them J The group was great and became the perfect travel buddies for us. We were probably just above the average age of the group and we were quite happy that the group wasn't made up of large numbers of 18 year olds.

Given the large distance that we were covering in two weeks, we spent quite a bit of time on the bus and only spent one to two nights in each place. This was ok though as most of the one-nighters were in smaller towns where one night was enough to get a feel for the place and the times worked out quite well as we still got an afternoon or morning in the town. What we did find though, especially compared to the American Contiki, was that we were constantly on the go with very little down time. This is probably because we're the types to try get as good a feel for the nightlife of a city as we do for the day life and tourist offerings. But the tour provided for everyone and if you weren't keen to go out at night, there was definitely no forcing or peer pressure and people that were on the tour to get the most out of the touristy stuff were able to do so. To give an idea of how on the go we were, on one particular tour day we had breakfast in Lucerne, lunch in Lichtenstein and dinner in Munich!

In the bigger cities, we generally stayed outside of the city centre but the hotel was accessible by reasonable taxi or public transport. An effort was made for the bus to do the outbound leg to the city centre and we just needed to make our own way back - it also helps when you're in a big group as its easier to fill up and split a taxi. There were a lot of included outings and meals but there were also quite a lot of optional things to do - again, a lot more than on the US tour. One thing that stood out as not great was that sometimes people who weren't doing some optional things would have to sit around waiting for the others to finish their activities.

It's difficult to go into massive detail about everywhere we went as we did so much in such a little space of time. We have put up all the places we stayed at in our "Where we stayed and how we got there" blog post (look under Johannesburg, 7 May 2011) and also all the pics from the tour which will help give more colour to the trip. Some of our main highlights though were: paragliding off the mountains in the little Austrian town of Hopfgarten, going up the alps in Switzerland, mad tour of seeing all major sites in Rome in one day, beer hall drinking in Munich, getting out and about in Florence and getting into the Med in Sorrento.

We nearly forgot! After a couple of days on tour, we found out that this tour was the first part of the Road to Athens tour. We managed to change a few dates and plans and decided to stay with the group all the way through Greece as well. This was a bit of a bonus for us as we didn't think we'd be able to get to Greece this time around. Some of the memorable moments from Greece were: George's boat, Toga party in Corfu, visit to the Acropolis and seeing the effects of the economic crisis in Athens.

Once again, Contiki didn't fail to impress and we definitely recommend it as a way to travel around easily and with minimal effort. The advantages of seeing a lot and meeting great people definitely outweighs the disadvantage of moving around so much.

Trek on…Brett and Darren

P.S. We promised a lot of our Contiki comrades that we'll mention them in the blog. Since we don't want to exclude anyone from this honour, nay, privilege, we thought we'd mention you all. So here goes:

Minuri Adasuriya; Lauren Alcorn; Bonnie Anderson; Laura Anderson; Kate Archondakis; Sophia Archondakis; Mathew Blinman; Amanda Boonstra; Rachael Borys; Hannah Brown; John Chapman; April Chivell; Shelly Clark; Rachel Cochran; Amanda Costa; Shannon Curley; Amy Cutler ; Chris Dimopoulos; Karly Eaton; Lara Elvin; Erin Epperson; Katarina Fetter; Linda Fu; Christian Echeverria Hayes; Robyn Holroyd; Sherri Holt; Casey Ioannou; Laurence Ioannou; Kevin; Chevonne Jacqueline; Michelle Johnson; Emma Jones; Dani Jovanovic; Andrea Kopper; Andrea Mastrantoni; Jack Mastrantoni; Olivia Michajlow; John Miller; Bree Murray; Ann-maree Nixon; Katie Olynyk; Amanda Parrish; Mike Ribic; Matilda Rice; Mike Santos; Kirsty Scriven; Toby Wang; Stevie-Jo Whitaker; Jenna White