Day 1-2 The Flight! What can you say about a 20 hr day of travel? I guess all you can say is that we all survived and we made it to Milan. Milan was great. We arrived to overcast skies and temps only in the low 80s. We first went to the Castle Sforza, a complex that was used for various purposes since the 1200s. We then took a nice city walk down to the Cathedral. The Milan Duomo is something else. It appears to have fairly recently been cleaned and the light pink marble looked stunning in the sun. The Milan cathedral is the 4th largest in Europe and it is giant. We took a long walk through all parts of the cathedral before heading back out. After a quick sandwich stop we walked through ... read more

Paris, Day 15 Our last and final day. I can't believe it is over. What an awesome tour. The places were awesome, the students were awesome, the weather..... ok not so awesome, but overall the cool and occasional rain was way better than way hot. Anyway, today was another packed day of stuff. We started off at the Louvre. That place is just too big to really get it all in, but we did see the Mona Lisa, Venus Demilo, and many other famous works of art. Most of the students didn't really know or understand the importance of the place in the art world, but they did a good job looking around. We then went through the Opera house. It was great. much more impressive than I thought it would be. We then finished our ... read more

Day 11 Today we started off by leaving the Chinnon and driving north and west to Mont St micael. Mont St Micael is an abbey built on a large rock just off the coast. As we got closer we started seeing pop up on the horizon. It is truly a sight to behold as it pops up out of nowhere. On the rock is the giant abbey the dominates the scene and then a small village below. Just 25 people live on the island. We took a tour of the island and the abbey that was like walking through a maze of small chapels and passages ways. After the tour we had some time to wander the island and have a bite to eat. This was a place I had always wanted to go and I ... read more

Day 5, Carcasonne Only 2 things on the schedule today but they were two outstanding events. First of all we left Barcelona and stopped in northern Spain at a great museum. Salvador Dali was born in a little town in northern Spain and before he died he renovated an old theater in his birth town of Figueres into a very unique museum. I think everyone enjoyed his very different type of art. Next we drove into France and stopped at the medieval city of Carcassonne. This walled city is a very well preserved and restored medieval experience. It is not a very large place so we turned everyone loose for lunch and exploring. There was a main castle building that some of the kids went into, a cathedral that had a very nice singing group preforming ... read more

Day 1-2, The Flight WE MADE IT. We have arrived safe and sound. All passengers and luggage arrived with only one shampoo blow-out. (Julianna had a nice leak in her shampoo) Some kids slept ok on the plane and others did not. We will see how that affects them the next couple of days. We met Thomas our guide and he is great. He is fluent in 5 languages and has led many tours, so we seem to be in good hands. arrived at Hotel Rubens and got checked in a about 4:30 local time and had a couple of hours of clean up and rest time, then had our first group instructions from Thomas followed by our first group dinner. After dinner we hopped on the metro and headed down to the main pedestrian street ... read more