From this moment on

Our last day in London - where has the time gone?? It seems like only yesterday we were packing our bags, getting on the planes, meeting out Topdeck family... It's all gone so fast!! I'll try not to get all emotional for all my blog readers out there - but it may be inevitable. I really am such a lucky person - I never thought I would be able to see the world once, let alone twice - and with one of my closest friends as well. Very lucky indeed.  Today we are off to visit the queen!! We want to see Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard. We caught the underground and walked across Green Park to where this massive golden and black gates were - then we saw it. Just like in all the movies we had seen and exactly how I imagined it... Buckingham Palace. The majesty and beauty of this building was like nothing I have seen. Plus the queen lives there! How cool is that?!  We were typical tourists and took lots of photos and then found the prime position to wait out the morning

Rain rain go away, come again - once we leave London!! PLEASE?? Woke up to another rainy day in London Town... Oh dear. Another day with our umbrellas struggling around, wet and cold, annoyed at the world and angry at all the people who bump us. Oh well - gals gotta do what a gals gotta do! We had two main things on our itinerary for the day - The London Bridge and The Tower of London. Anything else we could get done would be icing on top of or rainy cake! We still had a ticket to Madam Toussards that we had purchased on our first day in London - so we caught the underground out to see what all the fuss was about. Oh my sweet baby Jesus the lines... The lines went for miles and miles - never ending lines. It was pouring rain and we couldn't deal with waiting so we decided to leave. It just wasn't worth the wait for us. Until next time Madam Toussards.  To the London Bridge we went. We walked out of the station and a tour guide man asked us if we needed any help, I told him we w

Another early wake up - 630am this time, I have no idea why I keep waking up hours before my alarm goes off. I did my best to get back to sleep then decided it was time for Starbucks!! One of the great things about being in Europe... Starbucks EVERYWHERE!! How is it that one district can have 4 Starbucks and we can't even have 1 in Canberra? Just devo. After brekkie we headed down to the station meet Brendan & Roslyn, our tour guides for the day - how amazing are they?! I'm so stoked to have friends who have been living here in London for several months. They know soooooo much stuffs - hopefully I didn't bombard them with too many questions. We all got on the underground and headed to Camden Town to visit the Camden Markets - whoop so exciting! The Camden Markets were so quirky and fun and had soooo many different stalls and things to buy. Clothes, jewellery, food, drink, donuts, blankets, bags, leather goods - there was so much - mostly handmade things (or so they say)

So I think I am still on Greek time... I tried so very very hard to sleep in but I found myself awake at 530. Oh well... I tried to get back to sleep to no avail. I sneaked a peak through the window... Dark, grey and rain. CRAP. London has really put on a show for our first day. We headed out anyway and picked up a couple of umbrellas from a side street.  We went on a hunt to find where to collect our London Pass tickets from. With a little help from the concierge and my expert map reading skills we were on our way. We were walking past Leicester Square Station and found a shop that was selling cheap theatre tickets - so we made a spontaneous decision and bought some tickets to see Mamma Mia. Yayyyyyyy - we were very veryyyyyy excited, who doesn't love a bit of Abba!! It was about 10am by that stage and we were starving - so we found a corner diner and had a good English fry up brekkie. Just what the doctor ordered. Yum. We found the London pass kiosk and collected our tickets and

We woke up nice and early to head down to the foyer to wave or wonderful friends off on the next leg of their journey. It was soooo hard to say goodbye to the close friends we have made on this tour, we all shed some tears and hugs all round. We will definitely be seeing our crew of weirdos again!  We headed back to our room for a nap - we were lucky to have our rooms booked until midday, then we spent some time reps king our bags (to try to fit all the new shopping into our cases) it was a struggle but hey? We got there in the end. We had about 45 minutes until we had to check out of our room so we went on a hunt for food, out the door we found a puddle of blood with some bloody footprints - that was slightly concerning... But we found a little cafe round the corner that had some AMAZING cheese pies (a Greek savoured pastry). Yummmmmm! We got a cab with ALL of our bags to the airport and tried to get on the earlier flight to London - we were booked on a flight to leave at 730... We de

Oh my god... It's 515am... There is a drunk girl in our room!! Oh wait, it's just Megan! Haha we awoke to a very intoxicated Megan this morning - just arriving back from her second night out in Mykonos. Definitely not the best way to wake up - with stories of the drinks, the men, all of the inappropriateness! The girl knows how to make a hilarious entrance - god love her! Oh well, we had to be up and ready to go by 6am anyway.  I headed down after leaving Alysha to deal with Megan and waited for our group to have breakfast (warm hot dogs and cold eggs are not really my thing for brekkie). All of a sudden I was itchy, on my arm, on my legs, on my back, on my face - CRAP! I had just been eaten alive by mozzies. Dammit. Back on the bus and to the port we headed, on another fun filled 5 hour ferry - catch ya Mykonos, it's been unforgettable!  This ferry was owned by a different company than the one we travelled with on our first journey... This one SUCKED!!! There was no wifi,

Another day in paradise, Mykonos you beautiful place. I woke early with a coughing fit to find everyone was home and in bed - absolutely dead to the world. Once a couple of the girls woke up we headed down for some brekkie - the included brekkie was absolute shithouse so we ordered from the breakfast menu at the restaurant. Such a good life choice. Plus the view!  Noddy joined us for a chat and a coffee - Greek coffee is pretty different, very very strong - I was kind of in love with it. Delish. We headed back to the room and the girls had naps while I caught up some overdue blogging - even though without wifi I couldn't post anything. The camping ground did have wifi but it was so bad that you could only connect of you were standing right next to the bar and even then it dropped in and out. LAME!  When everyone was awake we changed into our swimmers and headed down to the beach at our back door. The beach was absolutely spectacular. For once it wasn't all pointy sharp rocks th

A 430am wake up call is not a fun thing... Not at all. But we did it - we woke up at 430 and had a very questionable breakfast, all so we could leave in time to catch a ferry to the party island of Mykonos!! Everyone was so pumped, looking forward to some sun, surf, great food, drinking, dancing and then doing it all again the next day.  We jumped on our bus and made the 45 minute drive to the port and jumped on our ferry. It wasn't anything too flash hot but we had aeroplane style seats that reclined, there were bars and cafes and self serve restaurants, oh and wifi. I found a nice spot on the floor and curled up for a two hour nap - definitely a good idea. #hobostyle The rest of the ferry involved a beer and a sausage roll for brekkie (a Greek sausage roll is a hot dog wrapped in pastry) and talking shit with fellow topdeckers, planning our day and a half in paradise. We finally arrived at the Mykonos port... Wow... It smelled really bad. My first impressions of Mykonos were hone

An early start and off to Athens today, the capital of Greece, where all the magic happens, where the gods were worshipped and things just worked - well back then it did. We had a nice 7am start to finish cleaning our boats before Dimitri came around to inspect them - while we waited for him we popped over to the little bakery to have a cheese roll - an amazingly delicious Greek pastry with feta cheese. I've said this before - Greek food is my absolute favourite!!  We passed our inspection with flying colours, as did the other boats, so we all piled back onto our trusty bus and started the long journey to Athens. It was about a 5-6 hour drive with a toilet stop and a stop at the Corinth Canal - a canal that many tried to create for hundreds and thousands of years but the rock was too solid to get through until the 1800's. It was pretty spectacular, especially with the blue Mediterranean waters flowing through the middle - a girl in our group decided to bungee jump off the bridg

Waking up on a ferry is a very surreal feeling... It was a very hot and very small cabin we were in and the boat was very softly humming. Weird! But at least we were closer to arriving in Greece - how exciting!! Our Topdeck tour is coming to its end and its very bittersweet, good, because I'm looking forward to getting home and sad, because I've been lucky to meet some amazing people. At least we had the three days of sailing together and partying in Mykonos to look forward to. We tried to have a little bit of brekkie on the ship before we disembarked but I wasn't feeling the best so I passed. Noddy gathered us all together and collected our keys and we made our way to the exit of the boat... Man! Greek people are pushy!! So pushy! We were all waiting for the same exit and everyone pushed past us. Hopeless. But we finally got out and looked over the beautiful coastlines of Greece. Wow. Just stunning. The ocean alone made the 15 hour ferry ride worth it. We had a short 20 mi