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...

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... W...

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 t...

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...

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...

Oh dear... 5 hours on the bus... 15 hours on a ferry... Then we will be in Greece. This will definitely be a very very long day - and that's only if the ferry isn't delayed. We had a very early start this morning with bags on the bus  at 6am  and brekkie at 630. With a long drive ahead of us we began our journey to the ports. I've never been on a proper cruise ship before so I was pretty excited.  We had a toilet stop and were informed that the ferry was running about 4 hours late, oh dear. But Noddy said we could find a great beach and just chill for a couple of hours - rather than waiting at the ports. I am feeling really really unwell today, light headed, dizzy, headaches, fever... Not a good sign. It also made the bus ride pretty unbearable.  But we made it to a beach resort type of place and it was WAY to hot to be by the water. There was a bunch of shops with tables and chairs so we just sat and talked and had gelato. Alysha and I bought Turkish towels for the ...

Waking up in Rome, such a surreal thing, travelling somewhere so different, I always find myself thinking, 'wow'. 16 days in, still sick, still a very sore tailbone (I do have fears it might be cracked or a severely bruised bone), but still trying to do my very best every day to have a great time.  We had another early start today and most of us had chosen to do the Vatican City tour, we had a local guide take us through the Musee Vaticani and through some different galleries, into the Sistine Chapel and through to St Peters Basilica. There was little to no air conditioning throughout the entirety of the tour, so we all walked out dripping with sweat. But for me it was worth it, I love the history surrounding this place and all that comes with it - it was just as exciting for me now as it was 7 years ago.  I don't think I will ever be able to express how beautiful St Peters Basilica is so ill just put some of the photos below. Amazing. Truly a place of God. After the tour h...

Another day another dollar - oh wait...I don't have to go to work today. Haha. We have another drive day today to get to Rome - our last stop in Italy before getting into Greece and the Greek Islands. It was about 4-5 hours from Florence to Rome and we had an early lunch stop at a little town called Orvieto.  It was a beautiful little town except for one fact - it was on the absolute top of a mountain - making it very had to take over in war and times of unrest. Noddy told us that the last person to conquer Orvieto was Julius Caesar - she also told us that they were famous for their porchetta panini's (wild boar rolls)... We had to try one. Being a town on a giant cliff face we had to catch a strangle little train/carriage thing from the bottom to the top. We then had a very steep walk up to the town centre - Orvieto also had a Duomo that looked like a liquorice all-sort on one side.  We had some free time so some of the group went to do a tour of the underground tunnels of th...