Day 8 Paris: Notre Dame, Louvre, Arche de Triomphe

We tore through Paris again today, using the Metro and our feet to great advantage. First stop: Notre Dame Cathedral, where we got a chance to explore the inside and outside features, including flying buttresses, gargoyles, fantastic stained glass windows, and other mysteries. Next came the Louvre, largest art museum in the world. Indescribable, it was fantastic. Ate lunch there in addition to seeing all we could, everyone splitting up to view their preference. Then walk to Opera area, to see the Opera house, sightsee and shopping in that area of Paris. Walked to supper (FLAM! Classic EF Tours meal, Alsatian pancakes with toppings of cheese, meat, veggies, and finally apples or chocolate). Finally, we climbed the Arche de Triomphe, viewed the famous intersection of 12 streets at the paved circle around the Arche and the beauty below us of of Paris at night, followed by a stroll on the Champs Elysees. Then Donovan navigated us home in the most crowded Metro ride we've ever had. Then sleep.

PICK UP for returning students is Sunday around 4:40 - 5:00pm WE HOPE... no guarantees for timing yet, remember how disorganized Miami airport is. Students will call from airport and we will try to post more in the morning from DeGaulle Airport. Sorry for the loss of internet connex.
Network going down here at McD's (they're trying to close!) , hotel wifi went down earlier. bummer.

Morning now, net works, here're some pics. We're up heading for DeGaulle Airport at 6:00. WIll try to post more pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

SUNDAY morning: Now in DeGaulle Airport, got a wiFi. Pics after this. Kids all safe, everybody had their passports THE MOST IMPORTANT THING!!! and soon board the plane for home. SAD part of the trip just occurred: We said goodbye to our wonderful Tour Director Emma Pask, who was everyone's favorite on the trip. What a great time we had because of her hard work and funny warm personality. Thanks for everything Emma. No pics today, just flying. Will upload yesterday's pics now and see you in Jupiter. Thanks.

The students have been awesome. We received a RARE compliment from a French hotelier in one of our small town (Pancoet) lodgings, who told us these young people were the most polite and most pleasant student groups he'd ever had at his hotel. Wow, that is fantastic praise. We'd travel with these students again anytime, they are great companions and friends, as well as competent and adventurous young people.  Thanks...they can give you details of yesterday's adventures when they arrive home soon after you read this.

Day 7 Paris - Versailles, Catacombs, Boats and Eiffel Tower

This will be a little briefer than usual as we are finally in our room and it is close to 1 in the morning!! It was a wonderful if very cold and sometimes rainy day. This morning a guide met us and took us on a bus tour of Paris showing us all the major sites and discussing their history etc....after the bus tour our group divided up with some going to Versailles and some going to the Catacombs. Those who went to Versailles were blown away by the grandeur of this wonderful palace where the Treaty of Versailles ending WW I was signed in the Hall of Mirrors which is totally amazing. The students and adults who went to the Catacombs were absolutely fascinated by the underground tunnels filled with the bones of Parisians that could no longer be buried in graves in the city - long interesting story - have them tell you all about it! This afternoon we met back up at the Garnier Opera House (home of Phantom of the Opera) and went to dinner back in Montmartre ( very good salad - chicken - French fries with ketchup ...quite unusual in France ;) Tonight was the boat ride around the Ile de la Cite on the River Seine which was enjoyed by all followed by out trip to the Eiffel Tower which did not end as expected but fun was had by all and most finished off the evening with crepes fantastique! Tomorrow we will see Notre Dame and the Louvre   the Champs Elysee and go up the Arche de Triomphe.....hopefully we will be awake to tell you all about it :)

I'll upload pics tomorrow, it can't happen tonight, sorry.

UPDATE: Pics up now at http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

Day 6 Chartres - Paris

We're in Paris now, after a day of bus riding from Plancoet, with an important stop in Chartres. Another fantastic cathedreal city, where we explored the cathedral  (after a mass that was in session was finished) , then got lunch on our own at various little places around the city. Then, back on the bus for the final haul!

Arrived in Paris early in the afternoon, and have now checked into our rooms on the outskirts of Paris at Hotel Campanile . We leave in a few moments for a Metro ride into the City of Light, to the Latin Quarter for sightseeing and supper, then to Mont Matre and Sacre Coeur. More later, got to get out of here to meet our group downstairs!

More to report after all our Paris adventures this afternoon. Rode the Metro to the Latin Quarter via Notre Dame Cathedral and the Moulin Rouge in the middle of rush hour crowds and bustle. We are tough travellers, didn't lose anyone,  and had a fun time navigating the heavy traffis underground. Onward to our supper destination, individual pizzas upstair at some place you could never find on your own, with fruit popsicles for desert. Then, more walking to Mont Martre, the big hill in the middle of Paris, and Sacre Coeur cathedral at its top. Many of us walked up, but SOME wimped out and took the Funicular tramcar to the top. Beautiful view of the city and Eiffel Tower. We goofed off up there awhile taking in the artist scene and carefully avoiding the scam artists trolling for portraits. Headed back to the Metro for a convoluted trip home to end our day around 11:30 pm. Tomorrow starts with a giuided bus tour of the city, then Versailles or the Catacombs depending on preference, then  boatrides on the Seinne and a trip up the Eiffel Tower. We are doing great.

More pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

Day 5 St. Malo - Mont St. Michel

Leisurely start today for a change: we got to leave all our stuff at the hotel, eat a nice Continental breakfast, then board the bus for the drive to our first destination: St. Malo. This is a sea-front walled city on a peninsula in the Brittany region of France with a huge rock island directly off shore. What a wonder it was when we arrived: rain was pouring down and the wind was howling off the Atlantic. It was just at high tide of the equinox (highest tides ever, given the full moon), and waves were pounding the city walls, exploding into the air as though shot from water cannons. We learned a LOT from our City Guide, Corrine (Coco), who told us that the tides here swing 44 feet or more between high and low, and that the City was built over the centuries to withstand the weather and protect the tough Bretons from marauding Vikings and the warring Briitish and Spanish as the centuries passed. This place is a part of France, but obviously considers itself a place apart from France. Once the weather abated a bit we took a walking tour, wearing every bit of warm clothes we had. Coco gave a couple of animated talks at various stops, having to improvise a bit when we were forced to duck into a cathedral to escape a hail storm which unloaded on us with no warning. Turns out the cathedral had been heavily damaged in bombing during WWII, and we learned how it was repaired using the legacy of its most famous parishioner Jacques Cartier, an ancient mariner/explorer/tradesman who claimed Canada for the French hundreds of years ago on a voyage.

After some free time exploring St. Malo, we bussed to Mont St. Michel, an ancient Abby whose history goes back to the first century. It's built on an enormous stone mountain jutting from the sea in Brittany, with lowlands all around it. At high tide, it is surrounded entirely by the sea, like a fairy tale castle sticking up from the ocean. There is one road connecting it to the mainland. Over the centuries, the monks living there built many different rooms and worship areas, in various architectural styles, culminating in the Abbey Church, with a tall spire and statute of St. Michael on the very top. We climbed stairway after stairway to get to the top, again dealing with howling wind, rain and cold. Wow, those were some tough monks to live and work here! Lots of shops and eateries are now found all over this place, so we had a great time exploring during free time. A few of us ate at the famous omelette restaurant "La Mere Poulard", where they beat the omelette ingredients in special copper bowls, then pour the contents into long-handled skillets to cook them over an open fire. Like nothing else I ever tasted. Great! Then short ride back to our place at Plancoet, and time to explore that town a little more.

Tomorrow  we head to Paris via Chartres.

Pics at:  http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

Day 4 Normandy Beaches and Cemetery - Plancoet

VERY early start today after a tremendous breakfast at our hotel in Rouen...we hit the road for a long day of traveling to the Normandy coast. The bus trip was a chance to catch up on lost sleep and catch a view of French farm countryside. Our first stop was Pont du Hoc, the bluff atop a 100 foot cliff which was stormed by U.S. Rangers in the early hours of the D-Day invasion in June, 1944. All the bomb and shell craters, ruined gun emplacements and concrete blockhouses, and debris from that day have been left as they were. Time has softened them and covered the stark details with grass, but the view of the Utah and Omaha Beach invasion area is unchanged. No wonder the Rangers had to take this spot and destroy the big guns they expected to find there, to protect the troops coming ashore at Utah and Omaha. Miraculously, the sun popped out while we explored.

Next destination was the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, an amazing site. It's officially American soil, with almost 10,000 buried there. The mood was respectful and restrained; this place is an open air monument to the Americans who died in this campaign. Weather was cold, windy, sometimes rainy, and steely-grey.

Our lunch stop was the beachfront town of Arromanches. The skies exploded with a hard rain just as we be-bussed, so we ran for the first restaurant we could find, "Hotel de Normandie"...it ended up being a good choice. Most of us practiced our French, ordering from the menu, and the restaurant staff patiently put up with it. The food was sometimes surprising:  pancake with ham and cheese inside and a semi-fried egg on top; baguette sandwich about 18" long, etc. etc. Fun food stop.

After our lunch exploration, we drove to Caen, a small town inland from the invasion beaches, where we visited an elaborate museum of WWII from the Normandy perspective. Perhaps the most impressive single site there for me was a huge aerial photo of Caen immediately after the war, totally bombed out with almost no intact buildings at all, save for one lone ancient cathedral, seemingly untouched among all the rubble. Wow, for the people of this region of France, the Normandy invasion wasn't just some theoretical event learned in a history lesson.

We left Caen for another long transit to the tiny village of Plancoet, the site of our hotel for the next 2 nights. It's a converted abbey, and we just finished a scrumptious evening meal of beef bourgnon (sp?). The town is small enough to explore on foot in a half hour, and as scenic and typically French as we could ever hope for. Hey, have you noticed how important food has become on our trip?!

I'll post more pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

Thanks for reading!

Day 3 Canterbury - Dover - Ferry English Channel - Rouen

There are no wasted moments on our trip...today we visited cathedrals in two countries/cultures, and plied  the water that separates them. First stop on our final day in England was Canterbury and its ancient cathedral. Built in 1070-1077 and the preeminent cathedral of the Anglican Church , it was the scene of the murder of Thomas Becket (as he prayed at the altar) in 1170. We learned about "Flying Buttresses" for construction of cathedrals, using a demonstration orchestrated by our Tour Director Emma Pask, and a dozen or so volunteers from the trip, then visited the interior of the Cathedral. The town of Canterbury surrounds the Cathedral, so we took some time to explore, buy some food, and prepare for our journey to Dover. Had a few problems we soon overcame, and headed off in our bus.

At Dover we saw the famous "White Cliffs", and the Dover castle built in 1066(?). We saw all this from our vantage point below the cliffs at the Dover docks, as we unloaded ths bus and transferred our stuff to the Channel ferry. It was a huge ship, carrying a full load of semi-trailer trucks on two decks, with three or four decks above for passengers witn shops, restaurants, louges, etc. The crossing took about 1 1/2 hours, and was really pleasant. What a busy shipping lane; we constantly saw other big passenger and cargo ships as we sailed.

We arrived in Calais, France, and loaded our gear into another bus for the trip to Rouen. Beautiful French countryside all the way, with a stop for snacks at a Shell "Arie" along the way. It's a French version of our Turnpike rest area, but nicer, less crowded, and cleaner. Back on the bus, we motored another two hours to Rouen. Its cathedral is the former tallest building in the world, later surpassed by the Eiffel Tower and a German Cathedral, but still having an impressively high spire. We headed directly for supper at a hidden-away restaurant in the middle of the old city, It turned out to be our best supper so far. Wonderful meat and potato entree (with alternate veggie meal for some), with a surprise chocolate desert we loved. The staff were accomodating to us, and we were grateful to them. Kudos for this wonderful surprise end to our day. On the way back to the bus, we checked out the spot where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, another sobering reminder that European history is not all pleasant. Tomorrow another reminder: Normandy

 Pics posted at  http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

Day 2 Windsor Castle, London Bus Tour, Jack the Ripper

This was another fantastic day, starting out with plenty of much-needed sleep and a good breakfast at our hotel. We met our official Windsor Castle Guide, Stuart, at the hotel, then boarded a nice Mercedes tour bus for the drive to Windsor Castle. The ride was about 45 minutes, which flew by as Stuart condensed 600+ Nyears of British history into a few minutes to help us understand the significance of WIndsor Castle and all the additions and inmprovements by the various monarchs through the centuries. Windsor Castle was uncrowded, we had the run of the place and the adjoining small town of Windsor for our 2 1/2 hour stay, and learned more about the monarchy than we ever realized we didn't know. After some lunch, we reboarded our bus and headed back to London for Stuart's humorously-narrated bus tour of the city. We saw EVERYTHING I think, and heard enough stories about the buildings, the Thames River, and the Royals to last us a LONG time!

The bus tour ended after St. Paul's Cathedral (where Prince Charles married Princess Diana; we heard a choir singing during a worship service that truly sounded "heavenly", what a beautiful sound in that impressive Cathedral), and several views of Big Ben, Parliament, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, etc. We returned to our old haunt, Picadilly Circus, to meet up again with Emma. We spread out for an hour's free time, some went shopping, some did sightseeing, some tried the Portrait Gallery and British Museum. We all were familiar enough with this part of London that we met back up with no problems at the Statute of Eros and headed off for supper. Another adventure: chicken curry and rice, then an hour to explore "Trocadero", a nearby arcade. Following that, we split in two groups: some to the "Jack the Ripper" walking tour of old London, and 10 of us back to the "tube" and train to return to the hotel. Altogether a FULL day and wonder of wonders, NO RAIN until the very end! Tomorrow's a full one: EARLY wakeup call and breakfast, some sightseeing in England on the way to the ferry, then we cross the Channel and begin our adventures in France. Hope you like the photos, will post more of them when I can at http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

Day 1 Miami-London

Whew, what a LONGgggg day! It started Friday afternoon loading the JetSet bus in Jupiter, with a great parental sendoff. Then, we made it to Miami International Airport with no trouble, finished the lengthy, cumbersome, and irritating check-in procedure, got through security, and took off for London on our American Airways plane right on time. The flight was long, we slept some, ate some, watched movies, and landed at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning, London time. Then we were swept up in recovering our baggage, getting through Customs/Immigration, connecting with our EF Tour Leader Emma Pask (whom we really like), and clambering on a bus to our hotel. We made it to the St. Giles-Heathrow Hotel, our home for the next two nights, dumped our bags, caught our breath, and headed out to sight-see London. We rode the train to Charring Cross, then hoofed it all over old London first seeing teh Changing of the Guard, pose in teh flowers at Hyde Park, then walking to Picadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, and all places in between before heading to teh Thames River for a ride on the London Eye ("The Wheel" to Londoners). It rained on and off during the day, but we handled it. After The Wheel, everybody got on the Tube and went to Soho for supper, after a walk through Chinatown. Then, exhaustion creeping in, we headed back to our hotel via Tube and train. Whew, what a day! More exploration tomorrow. Moer pics are posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02#

First Post: 11 days until Take-Off!

Well, are you ready for the trip? Congratulations to everyone for showing up for our final pre-trip meeting March 2, we had 100% attendance!

For our first post, how about some pictures of our tour leaders/chaperones?
Here you go, left-to-right: Emma Pask EF Tour Leader; Vicki and Alan Tays, and Lynn and John Phillips, Official Chaperones

Photos of the trip will be at http://picasaweb.google.com/jlphil7584/2010EnglandFranceTrip02
Thanks for visiting.