Written on December 17, 2006 at 4:16pm.

Well we're now making our way back on the M20 from Dover to London, having waved goodbye to the Continent from the decks of a ferry this afternoon. After the hilarity of a sign at the docks at Dover wishing us a "Ferry Merry Christmas" (ha!) we decided it was time to write up a list of one hundred random moments of hilarity from the trip.

Some have been discussed before, and some have escaped the website thus far. Ask us in person if you've got questions.

1. Matt showering naked (duh) with the Estonian Mafia
2. Cranky, bloody Cranky
3. Shopping for food
4. The Holy Grail is closed for renovations
5. Matt's shrunken jacket
6. Yoghurt? Milk?
7. Our pilgrimage to the The Church of the Assumption
8. Slovenian days as planned by "Pappa"
9. Shower screens
10. A Slovenian multi-course feast as prepared by Mamma
11. Condiment teats
12. Miming for "Do you have bike parking spaces?"
13. Presto buttons
14. Apparently limitless variations on hand soap dispensers
15. Awkward service-station toilet line-of-sight issues
16. Our tour of the Colosseum
17. Bumping into Lou and Sam on a spinning bridge
18. The spinning bridge
19. Slightly damp tents
20. Miming for towels
21. The French version of Deal or No Deal
22. Pedro's
23. Swimming in the Med
24. Girls leaving gifts on Si's hostel bed
25. Simon, Patron Saint of Shower Gels
26. Mot's hair growing more hilarious each and every day
27. Hostel breakfasts
28. The Vienna Laundry Party
29. Rescuing Canadians from the Czech Republic
30. Ex-Soviet now-hostel creepiness in Plzen, Czech Republic
31. Polish border guards. With guns.
32. Unmarked German Autobahn traffic police
33. AFL teams on pub crawls
34. The few Americans who reinforced their stereotypes
35. Every classical painting we ever made fun of
36. The Great Jacket Heist of Monaco
37. A soggy tent
38. The Stationmaster
39. Unconvincing breasts in classical art
40. Monaco's all-singing, all-dancing changing of the guard
41. The tent blowing away, with Matt in it
42. The Milkmaid
43. Being watched over by the Preem bear
44. Brown goo in a tube
45. Flagons
46. Swedish mechanics
47. The Poo-and-Review toilet
48. Italian motorways around Bologna
49. Throwing rocks at cans
50. Posnan's being completely full
51. Beer fridges by Norwegian rivers
52. Beer fridges by Barcelona's beaches
53. Street drinking (in most countries)
54. Belgian beer recommendations
55. Wheat in our frozen vegatables
56. The "EINE EURO!" woman on the train
57. Animated crosswalk men in Bilbao
58. Mot's fascination with funicular railways
59. Bears in a moat
60. Matt trying to check into the hostel at 8am
61. Snoring dude and his friend, Surly man
62. Spirit of Tasmania's new career
63. Matt's inability to remember the name of any place we stayed
64. Plopsaland, rounds one and two
65. Busking piano accordion quartet
66. Matt writing Simon a note in the dark
67. Ambiguous "horse burgers"
68. Our improv headlight deflectors
69. Walking down a dark, empty alleyway in Barcelona to the sound of El Mariachi music
70. The Hostel International overly-zealous stamping procedure
71. "A pair to wear, and a pair for spares"
72. The cry of "Who wants to drink some f-ing vodka?!"
73. The Adelaide Girls' re-enactment of flamenco dancing
74. Lou's socks
75. The wrong town in Slovenia
76. CandyUp
77. Matt's overexcitement about Kufola, and the inevitable gutting disappointment
78. Church bells ringing at 12:45 at night (that's 15 tolls)
79. The secret "head to the toilets and turn left" casino
80. Rain on the Cinque Terra
81. Petting zoos in Amsterdam
82. A variety of Google Maps-suggested wrong turns (including, but not limited to, one suggesting a left-turn off a 30m-high bridge and a deserted, dead-end country road in Germany)
83. Assembling a bike rack in the snow
84. Driving in Rome
85. Other people's haircuts in Spain
86. Tesco in the Czech Republic
87. Emergency choc milk
88. Every Australian-themed pub we saw
89. Stumbling for wireless internet in Koln
90. Si's never-ending Spot this Comic Sans quest
91. Matt's never-ending quest to identity the prime-number-ness of every. Damned. Number. Motorway numbers. Exit numbers. Room numbers. The list goes on.
92. Group photos in Bled, Slovenia
93. "Mot's oddly shaped head"
94. Mot's ability to break things
95. Pisa photos
96. Matt insisting we listen to The Bee's Chicken Payback every morning in the car
97. Driving past Hell
98. "The Bunnies"
99. Jodi's photos
100. Rewiring a van
101. Reattaching an exhaust using a butterknife
102. Ceiling-level powerpoints in Amsterdam cafés
103. Geek jokes with Sam
104. Matt blaming everything on the Currywurst
105. The menu at White Trash Fast Food
106. Evangelical couch-surfers
107. The senior-citizen tour of the Vatican Museum
108. The Saint Gerome vs. Saint Sebastian smackdown in Madrid (ding-ding!)
109. Rediscovering Sphinx
110. "Our Northern (English) Friends" in Prague
111. The constant cat-and-mouse game between street vendors and police in Rome
112. Cooking pasta on the balcony of a hotel room
113. Polish educational children's tv shows
114. Frasier revoiced in Czech
115. Matt's unerring ability to flood any bathroom
116. Mot receiving a job offer while in a field somewhere in Slovenia
117. Rock skipping with Mot "One Bounce" Wilmot
118. Explaining the name Mot to Americans ("Maaaart?")
119. Licking a waterfall in Slovenia
120. Our Pakistani kebab-shop friend in Madrid, shouting us free drinks
121. Frequenting a Spanish bar famous for a gangster shooting
122. Austrian border patrol people with a sense of humour
123. The omni-vend
124. "Being tucked-in by Mister Wilmot"
125. A shop filled with shiny things in Amsterdam
126. Being yelled at by French people
127. Matt wearing everything he owns to bed
128. Passenger-side tollbooth maneuvers
129. Bottle of Simon
130. The noise at the end of the Astronomical Clock in Prague (imagine a chicken being strangled with a party whistle in its mouth)
131. Steph
132. Feeling slightly underdressed at the Swing Orchestra in the Vienna Philharmonic hall
133. Pilsner Urqell's Beer World promotional video
134. Mot being mistaken for IT support at a hostel
135. Our many varied dormmates, bless each and every one of them, those we met and those we didn't
136. Gina: Hilarity member by-proxy.
137. Complimentary beers in Vienna
138. Driving past El Moron
139. The Prince of Biscuits
140. Si falling through a chair
141. Passing time on the ferry trip to Norway
142. Matt talking his way into a politician's office in Spain using a Google-translated printout
143. The omnipresent Zara, the Ness and Kate's fascination thereof
144. The creepy receptionist who-never-slept in Prague
145. Toilets that auto-deodorised with a vengence ("in places I'd rather not be unexpectedly de-odorised")
146. The parental sixth-sense when the van broke down
147. Every reception desk person who tried to keep our passports overnight (and never succeeded — good luck to you all!)
148. Listening in on phone calls to Judes (Hi Judes!)
149. People asking Matt what he does for a living
150. The never-ending battle between the glove-box and Simon's kneecaps and shins
151. Bimbo Sandwich trucks

But we still have an unpublished back-log of highly amusing anecdotes, photos and indeed videos. And since this website is our record of the trip, we will continue putting up a few bits and pieces whenever we get bored and want to re-live our adventures. To kick this off, I give you a Christmas photo from everyone's* favourite post subject: Plopsaland.

Merry Christmas from the world's most realistic reindeer and sleigh

It's our way of thanking everyone who was playing along at home via the website and made the trip even more amazing then it would have been otherwise. Cheers.

*"Everyone" may or may not include Simon.

Some of you may remember Plopsaland from earlier in the trip. I certainly do.

So yes, the excitement built as we followed the signs and, sure enough, we arrived at the shiny gates of the promised Plopsaland.

Matt arrives at his happiest place on Earth

...and still finds it unnaturally hysterical.

Now I officially feel that the Hilarity has reach a natural end. I've achieved all that I came here to do. Good times.

In case you're wondering where we've been, we've made a helpful map showing our merry path across Europe. The little dots indicate places we stayed, and everything's divided up by colour:

• Green lines and dots are for everyone travelling together;
• Red lines and dots are for Mot and Ness;
• Blue lines are for Matt and Si (with bonus guests Steve and Loren since Lyon, France).

Check out the map and marvel at the silly back-tracking Matt and I did around Germany.

Across Europe we've been dropping into old, old churches and cathedrals filled with stained glass and big blocks of stone. And we've noticed that there's usually a little sign somewhere pointing out that the church was built over longish period of time, usually starting at about several hundred years, sometimes a lot more.

So Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Familia, by the city's own Gaudi, is a chance to see one that's still under construction.

Simple, right?

Witness our hostel room in Valencia, Spain:

Red wall + purple dots = hideous painful headache.

There are possibly fewer colour combinations less conducive to relaxing, happy-place sleep than red and purple. Especially when the room is lit with red-tinted light.

My retinas are still burning.

The view from Park Guell looking out across Barcelona to the Mediterranean, with the plaza unusually empty.

Barcelona wouldn't be Barcelona without the whacky organic buildings by Gaudi which are scattered across the city. They're organic, they're kinda bulbous in a less-pretentious-than-Gehry way, and they're usually covered in crazy-bright mosaics.

Unfortunately they're also covered in tourists. Our planned Gaudi tour never actually happened, so I just might have to go back again one day and visit everything again with an actual trained guide.

After arriving in Spain and waiting a few hours for Matt and Si to pick us up we made for the border. After a brief pause in France we are now hanging out in Switzerland, land of the unsecured wireless internet points.

Yep, another lazy day in the Mediterranean.

Those who are observant sidebar followers will have noticed that my Mediterranean Swim-Count has today gone up from zero to one. Oh yeah. Another Hilarity-long goal that can be ticked off. The resulting flirting with hypothermia wasn't an overt goal as such, but was unavoidable as can be easily seen in the following equation.

ocean + december = freezing

Note that this only holds for special cases of 'ocean' that are elements of the Northern Hemisphere set.

There were quite a few Spanish people on the beach but absolutely none of them were swimming. They apparently had better things to do, like lounging in the sun and using their camera phones to document crazy foreigners who were stupid enough to go into the water.

But at the end of the day it was all a success and I was filled with the warm glow of a goal achieved. Numbness aside.

Matt battles a wave while Sanna's hands seem to have frozen to her face.

The one digit that hasn't succumbed to frostbite.

In fact - a word of warning for when I get back home - from now on don't try to contact me between the hours of 5:30pm and 7pm, for during that time I shall be contently unconscious.

Anyhow, today's video answers the question of how we manage to find valuable 'computer time' while still participating in a full and rewarding trip around Europe experience.

The other week we dropped by Bilbao for a couple of days so I could go quietly drool over Frank Gehry's whacky design for the Guggenheim Bilbao. And yes, it's amazing.

We're now in Barcelona and I'm psyching up for a Gaudi tour tomorrow, and will also be stopping by still-under-construction La Sagrada Familia before the week is out.

Cool architecture makes Si a happy man.

Sure this involved noticing in the Lonely Planet guide that the only supposed Holy Grail with the Vatican Tick of Approval™ was in the church a short walk from our hostel in Valencia; but it was a quest all the same. There was even suffering involved. We had to get up really early.

Early as in before some shops are open. In my world, all shops are open from some theoretical origin point and then just decided to shut at some stage during the normal day. That shops have a finite opening hour, and the possibility of me arriving before that hour, is a concept I've never really been confronted by. But there I was - pressed up against the glass window of a closed breakfast outlet, whimpering out of pure desperate need for orange juice.

Once that was sorted we walked the short distance to the cathedral and went in. At this point we failed in our quest, in a traditional Hilarity100 manner. Can you guess which of the following was the cause of our quest's demise?

1. Unable to defeat the dragon at the entrance to where the Grail lay.
2. Incorrectly answered one of the three questions to prove our worth.
3. Grail display closed for maintenance.

Most pathetic ending to a quest, ever.