Venetian Trail - Topdeck

Day 41 – The Beginning of our Venetian trail Top Deck Tour:


Seeing as we hadn’t slept in like two days, we ended up waking at about 12:30pm. Got showered and dressed and had a late brekky and my auntie drove us to Hotel Beethoven in Fortebraschi – it turns out this is the neighbourhood where my grandfather grew up, so I was well chuffed, as my auntie showed me where he used to live when he was a kid. So we made it to the hotel where we were greeted by our tour guide and other tourists.


So we did go on this holiday with the intention of getting away from Australia lol but pretty much our ENTIRE tour group was from Melbourne and this is how small the world really is – of all the people to run into, Kim Neilson is on our Top Deck tour. We play soccer with Kim at Belwest, and she lives in my suburb. We were a little freaked out!! Lol.


Anyway - We caught the metro into Rome and did a walking tour – we enjoyed some gelato while strolling past the Spanish steps, the Trevi fountain, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Sentate and the Forum.


From there it was time to head back to the hotel and to dinner – we went to the local Osteria and had some good ol’ delicious Roman dishes. I was especially excited, as it was just like eating my mums cooking :)


Day 42:


We had a big day on the road – we commenced our drive up to Venice with a brief stopover in Verona; the home of Romeo and Juliet. It’s such a pretty town, we saw Juliet’s house and saw the famous wall where people pin love notes to each other, very cool. We then wandered around the streets and the markets etc before it was time to head back to the bus and continue our road trip to Venice.


Our hotel was in the newer part of Venice – we were to catch the bus into the main city the next day, so we all just showered and enjoyed another delicious dinner at a restaurant around the corner.


So after a long uncomfortable bus ride, we were so ready to lie on a normal surface free of seat dividers and seat belts, and passed straight out.


Day 42:


We caught the bus into Venice and were there by about 9am – we were really excited to go on a Gondola ride and explore the streets – so many small alleyways and boutiques hidden between the canals. It really is a beautiful city rich in art and history and culture. Part of Venetian tradition is lace making, so we were given a tour of a lace school. She explained how long it takes to become a master lace maker, and she proceeded to show us an awesome piece which apparently took 9 months to complete. When she asked the group at large if any of us knew what kind of stitch was used in the piece, Benji, a total bogan who has a knack for saying inappropriate but equally hilarious things rose to the occasion and answered the question by trying to make his English sound Italian and replied with “ it izza - harda ta doey stich” The entire group absolutely pissed themselves laughing for about ten minutes strait, even the lady had a small giggle, it was priceless.


So after that it was time for the much anticipated gondola ride. It lived up to all expectations and it was pretty cool. We got taken through the smaller canals and then onto the Grand canal – it’s a truly breath taking sight.


After our Gondola ride, we had the rest of the afternoon to explore, so Totti and I decided to wonder around. We ended up in the inner suburbs, winding in and out of narrow streets, looking through the tiny shops full of the beautiful masks and lost ourselves for a good few hrs. We found a little restaurant and enjoyed a nice pizza and free wifi and made our way back to Piazza S.Marco and up with the old bell tower. This is a must do – it only costs 8 euro and gives and an unimpeded 360 view of the entire city. Awesome.


By this stage we’d had a pretty big day. Oh I forgot to mention that the pigeons had an absolutely field day with Totti – it entertained me greatly :p But yes, so we had a big day and made our way back to the bus stop and onto the bus back to our Hotel.


After a nice dinner we all pretty much retired early – we were pooped and had to be up at bum crack to start another day on the road; destination Pag Island via the Postajana caves.



Day 43:


Yawn. Waking up early sucks. We struggled with our luggage back down the stairs and dragged ourselves into the bus and pretty much conked out for a couple of hrs. The drive into Slovenia was spectacular – the forests and fields reminded us of old fairy tales and lands of once upon a time. We arrived at the caves and did the train/walking tour through them. They were pretty amazing – and HUGE. It is only ever 8 degrees down there, the whole year round. I don’t really know what technical terms I can use, so I won’t, suffice it to say that it was a really awesome sight to see. At one stage we had a black out inside the cave and it was absolutely pitch black for about 2 minutes. A long time to stand in the dark. A little bit of wee came out lol. We made it out alive and headed back to the bus, not far till Croatia now :)


When crossing the border the bus was stopped and a soldier came on board. Everyone was immediately silent as we were told that they often come on board and may perform bag checks etc. All this guy wanted was two bottles of Coca Cola and he let us through without further question. LOL. Nice to know that border security is taken seriously in Europe haha.


And so off we went as we began driving the winding roads down the Croatian coastline. We had to catch a ferry over to Pag island and then continued our drive to the hotel. Everyone was keen to shower and get ready to go out and party. And party we did lol what a night. They took us to this beach lined with clubs of every description and ridiculously cheap and delicious drinks. That’s all I’ll say. We dazzled locals with our amazing dance moves and we proceeded to ghost anyone we could find. Everyone had a ball, it was a good night all round.


Day 44:


Needless to say it was struggle town all round today; bleary eyes and sore heads a-plenty. Stories of projectile vomit were circulating around the group, and incriminating photographic evidence of what may or may not have happened began to surface as everyone exchanged their hangover stories at breakfast. Most people had lazy days just hanging at the beach – we hired scooters with a couple of the other girls and rode around the island and then back to the beach from the night before. Everyone’s amnesia seemed to wear off as we started remembering what things actually looked like and what we’d done the night before. So we enjoyed a late lunch and went for a nice swim and rode back the hotel. Snooze time!




After lounging around for the rest of the afternoon we got dressed and walked to a nearby restaurant and enjoyed a laid back dinner followed by a walk along the pier checking out what the night markets had on offer. We decided that since we have been sleep deprived for the past few days, we were nannas and turned in early.



Day 45:




Much to Totti’s delight, I sat in cat shit at breakfast. I then swapped the soiled chair for a new one. Turns out the cat lost its bowels all over that chair too. So after being turned off my meal, and with a well fed Totti to remind me that I had just sat in poo, we made our way onto the bus and started our drive to Ljubljana, Slovenia. We arrived to a resort/ caravan style set up and were very excited at the prospect of free wifi and an awesome water park!!! So we got into our swimmers and disrupted the serenity of the pool area by doing first class bombs into the pool. Our tour group then went into the town square for dinner afterwhich we walked around ghosting people :p One of the girls on our tour, Steph, showcased her break dancing skills, or lack thereof, in the middle of a circle of people who were already watching some local dancers. Everyone literally wet their pants laughing. Recognise!




Our day just seemed to get better – too much energy to go to sleep.....what to do...what to do? Play on the playground in the dark and take action shots. Yup! Walk around like Idaho from house bunny. Yup!! Break into the water park with Stef, Filia and Totti only to get pushed into the pool. Yup! So our little night time adventure turned into a swim complete with hand stand competitions, watching the fart bubbles and spending 20 minutes trying to work out whether or not the strange shape was actually human. It turned out to be a turtle statue in the kids pool. Fail. :p Dripping wet and looking like drowned rats, we ninja’d back to our cabins, mighty proud of our efforts for the evening ;)



Day 46:




Grateful for the short drive this morning – we hopped on the bus and headed to Lake Bled, Slovenia. Literally a lake surrounded by alps and forest. We spent the first part of the morning with our toes in the lake, I took some photos of Totti being an exhibitionist, then modelling on the chair – only to realise that the rest of the tour group was watching us and pissing themselves laughing – “Get any good bum shots”?. LOL! So after our little photo shoot we took a row boat ride to the little island in the middle of the lake and walked around there for a while. Once back on land, we went to these things similar to what they have at Corin Forest back home. We had to take a ski lift to the top of the mountain – the view was awesome. Then we fanged it all the way down, good fun :)



So it was time to hop back on the bus and head for Salzburg, Austria – home to the world famous set of The Sound of Music. As with every bus trip, it’s mandatory for the bus drivers to stop, revive and survive every couple of hours. We usually have a couple of 15minute pee stops and then a half an hour lunch break – our tour guide Adam usually gives us a “be back at this time” lecture before we get off. A rule on our tour is the last person back on the bus has to wear this hideous annoying Jester hat (with effing bells) until the next stop. Without fail, every single stop Totti and I are always the last ones on the bus – hence the hat is always shared between us, FML. Well...on the way to Salzburg we were late getting on the bus (as usual and expected), however this time we were given a “talk” too by Adam – it was literally like being in the principal’s office and getting detention. From this point on, we have sweared we won’t be late on the bus – fingers crossed we can do it! Please prey for us – we would hate to be kicked off in Amsterdam!!


The drive into Salzburg provided us with beautiful scenery of the Austrian alps. Seriously, Mt Kozcuisko should be ashamed of itself – you got nothing! We arrived in Salzburg 1 hour behind schedule (sorry guys!) and checked into our hotel. A quick shower and change and we were off into town for a walking tour. We saw where parts of the Sound of Music was filmed, Mozart’s birthplace, the Salzburg castle etc etc!






Day 47:


We left Salzburg reasonably early and headed for Mathausen Concentration Camp. For those of you who arn’t aware – the Mathausen Concentration Camp was one of the largest concentration camps during WW2. The camp began as a working camp and later became a death camp. Inmates were forced to rise at 4:30am where they would attend role call which would generally last for about 3hrs, their breakfast where they were told to take 3 scoops of turnip soup – they were not given bowls only spoons – if they took anymore than 3 scoops, they were killed. They’d then be sent to the quarry where they worked for 12 – 15 hours until dinner where they were given 25g rice. The average inmate weighed around 42-48kg as a full grown man. Around 500,000 people were killed in the camp. The death stairs – the stairs leading from the quarry to the camp killed majority of the inmates. As thousands of malnutrition men tried to carry 20-30kg rocks up the stairs, often they would slip and fall and cause a avalanche of death.


When the camp became a death camp –upon arrival, inmates were told to take off all their clothes. They were then shaved of all their hair – the natzis used the hair to make blankets. They were handed a cake of soap and told they were to shower – they were led into bathrooms and locked in. In fact, they were tricked – the bathrooms were gas chambers and they were killed.


W e watched a 30 minute film which told the story of Mathausen. Some interesting, sombre moments and needless to say plenty of tears. We then had the opportunity to walk around the camp – it was huge. It was probably the size of the average college in Canberra. We walked through the barracks, the gas chamber, the crematorium and the shooting block. We also walked down the death stairs.

The camp has now been turned into a memorial and has plaques from those countries who lost men at the camp. It was a very moving place which held a lot of history – a sad start to the day.


We headed to maccas for some comfort food – we shall never complain about anything again. Definately won’t forget Mathausen. We watched Ice Age on the bus as we continued our journey to Prague.

Upon arriving in Prague, we quickly showered, had dinner at our hotel restaurant and off we went on our walking tour. The night took us to a couple of bars in Prague – filled with 12yr olds and sweat, we partied the night away. Absinth = Ass. That is all.



Day 48:




Day at leisure – we decided it was time to hit the shops as we are well over the same shitty clothes. We wandered the streets of Prague at our own pace, sipping on our coke and water. It was time to pee – oh hell no...not in Prague. It costs 5 cookies (Czech currency is called Kruna’s but we labelled them cookies, kuna-matatas, cronies, coronas and everything else besides their proper title) to use the facilities. 10 cookies broker, we decided it was time for lunch and stopped at a little cafe and enjoyed some free wifi. We trammed it back to our hotel and lazed for the rest of the afternoon.






We agreed to meet our tour buddies for dinner and spend the last of our Czech currency. We literally walked across the road to this cute but freaky pub which was filled with pictures of crazy cat ladies and skeletons. After enjoying a delicious schnitzel, we asked for the bill – 1000 cookies. Oh shit....we only had 750 between us. So after counting and then re-counting our money, we sent someone on a scavenger hunt to find more money – Steph is an awesome break dancer so we told her to go and busk so we could pay the bill and not be murdered by the freaky deaky Czech man. We were saved by Ange who gave us her last cookies – thanks Ange!






Ela updated her facebook status tonight...it read...”Hey Amsterdam – we’re here to fuck shit up”. Little did she know (because most of the time she has no idea) that we were actually going to Berlin. FAIL. Filia was quick to jump on Facebook and make a point of the fact that she is actually retarded – “but we are going to Berlin”. Massive embarrassment for Ela...again.






Day 49:






Today we headed to Berlin – we probably should have mentioned that as a sort of introduction to each major city, we play a movie on the bus that has something to do with our destination. On the way to Berlin, we watched “Beerfest” – for those who haven’t seen it, basically it’s just about this huge drinking competition in Germany, and a bunch of guys from the United States go and compete to win back their family brewery. This becomes relevant, we promise.


So after spending all day on the bus, we finally made it to our hotel (no air con + hot = sleeping on wet towels and in your undies people. Try it sometime). We only had time for a quick shower before dinner – this however turned into the most difficult showering experience to date; once Totti had finished, I made my way into the bathroom and ended up swimming to the sink. We didn’t actually have a showerhead – our shower was actually a bath with one of those hose things with a showerhead on the end. So anyway, I swam to the sink – I asked Totti if there was any particular reason she felt the need to flood our entire bathroom. Instead of pointing the hose towards the wall, it turns out she decided to shower with the hose pointing in the direction of the bathroom at large. Fail.




As we headed to dinner, the streets were already swarming with German soccer hooligans getting their pride on – trumpets, chanting, flags lots of face paint and cars with about ten people hanging out of them – it was pretty cool. Germany ended up winning and they celebrated well into the night.


At dinner Totti and I ordered a pork schnitzel (Yumo!!) and Filia and I decided to order a schteiner ( I have no idea if that’s the correct spelling, but it’s just what the Germans call this 1litre mug of beer) Inspired by the Beerfest film, Filia and I decided to have a sculling competition. Drunk before dinner anyone? So after downing one, we ordered another and went for round two. It was a pretty entertaining evening after that – we roamed around the streets of Berlin with a couple of the others from the tour group, for some reason I decided that steeling a fluffy orange dice from a street stall was a good idea.....as well as nicking flags from parked cars and using them to join in the German victory. The brick animals on the Zoo wall also became a hundred times for fascinating – they were three dimensional, therefore very interactive and interesting to touch when intoxicated. Filia also decided to jump into a nearby fountain – which upon inspection the next day turned out to be some war memorial. The dirty unimpressed looks from the previous night were suddenly explained :p) . And so we continued to wonder around – we ended up walking through a German fan zone with giant sprinklers and lots on interesting characters to talk to. We also decided to sing our own songs, as we had no idea what the Germans were chanting about. So the 80’s inspired much of the musical stylings for the evening, as well as the Backstreet Boys, Bon Jovi and the Spice Girls. I don’t think any of us can ever listen to those songs the same way again. So after passing by the life size lego giraffe outside lego land, and taking plenty of photos with him, we finally made it to our hotel and fell straight to sleep.


Day 50:






YAY, SLEEP IN!! All the keen beans opted to go on the walking tour this morning. We decided we’d rather sleep. I emerged tousle haired and puffy eyed, much to Totti’s amusement :p But we dressed, and decided that going to the Berlin Zoo would be an appropriate course of action for the day. Totti decided to get into the German spirit and started doing the Nazi salute and marched down the street. As hilarious as this was – it turns out that if anyone is caught doing this, or bearing the swastika symbol, they cop a ten year jail sentence. I think between the both of us we racked up a life sentence that day :s


So yay, the Berlin Zoo was amazing! It was a super hot day, so we strolled through the zoo happily licking icy poles in the shape of a hand pointing its index finger – delicious! We watched the monkeys and the giraffes, the elephants swimming in the pool, we saw polar bears and Zebras and all kinds of birds; one of which was about the size of a full grown man escaped out of its enclosure and decided to rampage through a crowd of people just as we were coming around the corner. I was in hysterics, the look of realisation on Totti’s face as she registered what she was seeing, then she took off in the opposite direction and did not return until the bird was back inside the enclosure :p how I laughed.




So after two more icy poles and a callipo, we finished waving at the animals and hailed a cab back to our hotel for some down time before our big night out – The Pub Crawl.

Since neither of us are big beer drinkers (yes, this may sound hypocritical after sculling 2 litres of beer) we decided to prepare some roadies to take with us – good old Vodka and vending machine coke. We were a little enthusiastic pouring our measures of vodka, so every time we took a sip of our drinks it literally burnt our face off. The group got driven into town on our tour bus, we sang and sipped our drinks and took photos of us. Photos of the bus. More photos of us. We then spotted a couple of helium balloons and decided that the wise thing to do would be to inhale them, and say things like “Nigga Please” and “Hola Miss Walker” – too funny. For some reason we decided that it was also a good idea for us to starting singing “MOVE, BITCH, GET OUT THA WAY” in our finest impersonation of Ludacris. Because our timing is impeccable as always, we sang this just as some stupid woman decided to walk out in front of our bus – we feel we did a good job that day, everyone was wetting themselves laughing.


We met up with our pub crawl guide – he administered us with a stamp and our free beer and we all hung around waiting for people to drink up before heading to our first destination. There were a couple of homeless guys we donated all our empty bottles to – I was even kind enough to leave him a swig of beer :p Totti politely asked if she could sit in his trolley purely for photographic entertainment – the photo looks as though she’s severely constipated and trying to go to the toilet in his basket. We were then joined by another tour group, whom harboured a man with the biggest ranga beard in existence – by this stage we were well on our way to being drunk, and Totti said (probably more audibly than intended) “It’s HAIRY FACE MAN” – he heard, obviously and retorted “And you shall be known as, small yummy thing”. So now that we were all on a first name basis, we stole his sun glasses and took really cool photos of ourselves.


We noted that on this particular evening, everyone was feeling rather athletic – because it’s what we do, we decided it would be a good idea to attempt heel clicking while in mid air – so then everyone jumped on the bandwagon – trying to do double and even triple heel clicks. When we got to the pub, there was a nice grassy area perfect for more athleticism displays and ghosting complete strangers. One guy caught on and turned around while Totti was in mid- ghost. Too funny!! So more heel click attempts resulted in split pants, revealing electric blue undies and the best photo ever! (go me) lol.




The bartenders sent our free shots, we did jager bombs and had a couple of rum and cokes, Totti almost got taken out by a leap frog attempt gone wrong, and it was time to move onto Pub #2. The night was filled with ridiculous photos and lots of drinking (yes, we are skipping the details, because we can’t remember them :p) we ended up at this beach club with fire twirlers and more drinks – and before we knew it, it was time to go home.




By this stage we’d worked up quite an appetite, after what felt like the LONGEST bus ride home in history, our entire tour group stopped home via a kebab stand (AMAZING) and we fed our faces while watching some poor bugger crash his push bike into a light post. So with kebabs in hand we all made our way to the hotel and turned in for the night.






Day 51:


FML, well eff our lives. Totti woke up to a half eaten kebab on her bed side table and I dragged myself into the shower. A super early start after a big night – needless to say it took us a while to get going. Much to our surprise (we say this because we are ALWAYS the last ones to be ready lol) we were the first downstairs and at breakfast.



The bus ride was rather entertaining, everyone exchanging stories and looking at each other’s cameras. Eventually we were all dropping off like flies, dozing off and trying to catch some desperately needed z’s.


It became long tedious bus ride – everyone was just keen to get off and walk around. We stopped briefly at a dairy farm where they made all these different kinds of cheeses – Totti was the first to raise her hand when the group was asked if anyone wanted to try some. Lol. She’s died and gone to cheese heaven twice now. They also made their own clogs, we got a demonstration on how to make them by the farm owner, there are now only 5 clog makers in all of Holland, and he was one of them. And so it was back on the bus – we’d almost made it to Amsterdam.


We made it to our very classy “Botel” a hotel that’s a boat, funnily enough. We thought it was funny, so we created an anthem “We at the ho-tel, bo-tel, holiday iiiiinnnn”. Anyone? No?.


We didn’t have much time to get ready (as usual) as our bus was banked up in traffic for quite a while, so we rushed onto the ferry that took us into the main city centre. As we got closer to the Red light district, things started to get...erm....interesting, for lack of a better word. We had all paid to go and see a sex show on our first night, and thank god we did it as a group!


Now...we both knew Amsterdam wasn’t for the faint hearted – and we had been warn that it was the capital of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll but HOLY SHIT it was NASTY. The sex show was made up of 5 acts. Some of you may want to skip this paragraph....The first act was a girl (prob only 19/20) out on stage dancing...well stripping really. She walked through the crowd and would lean over people and slap them in the face with her nasty breasts. She then proceeded to get one gentleman (from the other Topdeck Tour) on stage and lay him down on the stage. Next thing we know, she has a dildo up her hoo-ha – not a normal dildo, this one was a PEN. She wrote “bad boy” and drew a picture of a penis on this guys stomach. We were in hysterics but also grossed out....little did we know that it was going to get worse. The next act was a fattish lady who stripped and slapped boys with her boobs (seemed to be the running performance for the night).


The next act was the first lady and a feral man. The man (who was effing old and nasty) only had one boob...that’s right....just one! We watched them go at it for a good 10 minutes. Totti was completely disgusted because the guy kept on eyeing her off (we were in the front row) and everyone in our group kept giving her shit. It was REALLY foul! The next act required a volunteer – who better than Owen from our tour. He was sat on a seat on stage and a naked lady begun dancing around him. She then started pulling out this LONG bit of ribbon from her hoo-ha and putting it around him and all over his head. It was hilarious but SO nasty. Apparently he was told while on stage that the ribbon comes from a packet and is actually really clean...we beg to differ!


The last act was an oldish latino lady who was just dancing at first. She then asked people to come up on stage – there were about 7 people – 3 of whom were from our tour. She danced with them all....and then....oh my! LOL! She went into her bag of goodies and pulled out a BANANA. Fillia was up first – the lady put the nana in her hoo-ha and made Fillia take a bite. EW! Steph M was next – she had to eat the nana of the ladies boozy and Steph V got the easy task of eating the nana from the ladies belly. All in all...it was hilarious. Needless to say we all sanitised our hands when we left the bar!


We then enjoyed the finer things of Amsterdam....space cakes and joints!






Day 52:


Today we did our bike tour of Amsterdam. They do like their bikes, there are approximately 500,000 bikes in Amsterdam, 200,000 of which end up in the canals annually. There wasn’t anything specific to see – it was just a really fun and cruisy morning taking in the city and enjoying being in amongst the people. We stopped b y the ‘I Amsterdam’ sign and took some group photos etc.


After that we had to do some housekeeping, so we found a Laundromat and did our washing, finally! Something as simple as having clean undies goes such a long way when you’re travelling. We really should thank our mums more often for having fresh fluffy knickers ready for us all the time when we are at home :p


After that we were well hungry so we decided to go find some food and made our way to another one of Swenson’s Sweet Spots – a little store called Trunk. It’s got lots of little bracelets and leather goods, but more importantly we went for the bags – they make bags out of old shirts and different bits of clothes. Totti bought a cute checked Lacoste shirt/bag – which shall now be coined ‘Shag’.


As tonight is the last night with the tour group – we all paid to go on a canal cruise after our dinner at the Asian Palace. After that we made our way onto one of the bar boats and just spent the night taking photos and enjoying watching all the Netherlands supporters in the streets. Again we were lucky enough to be in the town of a winning team, however we were pooped and decided to go home via the yummiest soup kitchen, sweet potato soup anyone?


Ni night Amsterdam :)


Day 53:


FML. 7:30am departure from Amsterdam – we really hate mornings! Our destination...Belgium. We knew we were getting close when we stopped at a service station. On approaching the counter, we noticed the check-out chicks name....FRAU. We pissed ourselves laughing all the way back to the bus and were quick to spread the word about Frau!
Only a short drive and we were soon introduced to Brugge...yes that’s right...Dr Evil was a orphan boy from a 15yr old sex slave from Brugge – that’s where’s Daddy’s from. LOL. We were quoting him the whole time.
Brugge was really beautiful – the town square was full of markets with fresh fruit, cooked chickens and of course...WAFFLES! We decided we didn’t really need to see another church so we headed for the food. First stop, chicken. Second stop, chips with mayonnaise (a Belgian treat) and for dessert a massive Belgian waffle with whipped cream. We also bought some magical fresh strawberries. Ah....we had landed in food heaven.
We could barely walk back to the bus...so we rolled!
We caught the ferry from Calais to London and another bus ride took us into central London. We then said our farewells to our tour family and caught the tram to our hostel.


We’ve had an awesome 14 day trip – a big shout out to our awesome tour guide Adam who informed us that it we had popped his tour cherry...and to all our tour buddies – we will miss the laughs...stay in touch bitches!
Say hi to your farsha....FA-THER.


Ela & Kate xoxo