Katie has toured Europe’s treasures and been paid for the pleasure
Tour guide Katie Berridge saw the northern lights in Norway, rode gondolas in Venice - and fell in love while helping tourists enjoy expansive holidays.
Tour guide Katie Berridge was headed by bus to the Italian town of Ferrara with a group of tourists when she received an alarming email.
A colleague had intel that some of the town’s key historic buildings were under renovation and covered in unsightly scaffolding.
Katie Berridge in front of the Hungarian Parliament and Danube River in Budapest.
Instead of panicking, Berridge did a pivot worthy of an Olympic gymnast. She calmly directed the driver to head 70 kilometres north to Padua.
After online research, Berridge coolly hosted a walking tour of Padua’s churches and gardens, with none of the tourists batting an eyelid about the unscheduled location switch.
Berridge, from Kew in Melbourne’s east, says her 18 months of leading tours for Contiki clients, mostly aged 18 to 35, across 24 European countries, so far, has been a crazy but memorable ride.
She’s bathed in Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, paraglided in the Austrian Alps and cried at the beauty of the northern lights in Tromso, Norway. And got paid for it.
Katie Berridge and her coach driver boyfriend Joao on Christmas Day 2024, on Burano Island in Italy.
“There’s no other job like it, where you can get to go to all these incredible places and be able to call it something that you do for work,” she said.
Berridge is one of four Victorians that The Age is profiling for a Living Abroad summer series, about locals who spent 2025 far from home.
Two years ago, Berridge was working for a Melbourne betting company when a colleague who had been on a European tour heard that Contiki were hiring guides.
“I thought, ‘I really want to travel and none of my friends want to go overseas. Wouldn’t it be cool to travel and get paid for it?’”
