Got my Program schedule!
 

Well, last night was our last meeting about our big Europe trip. We had a lot of fun and did some "ugly American" skits to remind the kids and parents how not to act while on our trip. I was the parent who had to go in and tell the kids to stop singing and being loud in the hotel room. FUNNY!

We actually have a non stop flight to London (a first on all the trips I have been on with the school) NWA to Gatwick.

Kensington Close Hotel
if anyone has stayed at this hotel I'd love some info.

Our local guide will be taking us to...Big Ben, Buckingham Palace,House of Parliment,Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's. We also will be seeing the changing of the Guard. We will be in London 2 days.

Next Stonehenge-Salisbury then contiune to Portsmouth to board a ferry to Normandy. Is the water there rough? I have no experience on this. Any info I would surely appreciate.

Normandy-Mont St. Michel
2 nights at Churchill Hotel Bayeux.

We will visit the American Military Cemetery and D-Day beaches, Visit Monastery of Mt. St. Michel, Tapestry of Battle of Hastings.

Loire Valley
Visit Chenonceau and Chambord.
Hotel Turone
if anyone has stayed here, I'd love info.

Chartres-Versailles
Palace tour and our friend/guide that we have known for years will be giving us all a lesson on the French Revolution. I can't wait for that, I'm a nut about the whole King Louis VIX. Then unto PARIS!

Mercure Porte de Bersailles Vaugirard Hotel.
Where we'll do...
Arc De Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees,Les Invalides, Norte Dame, Louvre. We'll be in Paris 2 days.

So if anyone can comment on the tour and hotels I'd love it. And Restaurant suggestions would REALLY be appreicated since at night I'm free to roam the city.

Thanks and I can't wait. We leave in 11 days...

Theresa in Detroit.

Practicing with skits for behavior sounds like an excellent suggestion.

May I ask if your school used one of the school tour companies and which one, if so? I guess the straight question is how your trip was organized. Many thanks.

As I type, a quick search and I see:

Detroit .. 26F
London .. 54F
Paris .. 55F

Enjoy the change! Cheers.

Another thought .. you're taking a ferry, perhaps pick up some Dramamine or the pressure point wrist bands and toss them in your carry-on? I took a ferry and thought I'd be fine. I wasn't and bought the pills on-board where they cost more. For anyone who thinks I am being too prepared .. anti-nausea pills (remember to allow 45 minutes to work) and even a sick-sack are things you want to quickly pull from a pocket and not have to stand in line to get :-d

scot We use NETC, they are a Student travel company. I can HIGHLY recommend them. We have traveled through them for many years. This is my 4th Europe trip with them. The school has used them for over 10 years. And the tour guides are AWESOME! They are well, traveled, educated, friendly and truly a pro.

The ferry trip from Portsmouth can be smooth ..... or not! It just depends on the weather.
Most of the year it's fine and I've only experienced rough sea on this route once or twice in a dozen or more crossings.

Check the weather report a day or two ahead.

Thanks for the info about your tour. It's helpful to know when people are happy with their tour company. I read enough posts when people are UNhappy, but not so many of the happy responses.

I can offer one more tip, though I don't know if you need it.

When we visited Westminster Abbey on our tour last year we were there at the time of one of the services. I tried waiting in the center area of seats but no service. I eventually started going out to go visit the gift shop and going out past the little food area to exit to the gift shop, there was the service.

BTW, the sandwich I purchased was very nice. And I managed to bring my empty lemonade bottle home (I think it's an attractive bottle), though every security stop at the airports had to doublecheck that it was empty. The lemonade was Fentiman's Victorian Lemonade, lemony with a bit of a ginger, very nice.

Have a great trip!

Scotlib,
What tour companies have you used? I am looking at doing this for the first time and have been talking with someone at ACIS--very nice young lady--even met her in person and she answered lots of questions. I just need to pick a tour and take the plunge now.

Any advice from veterans in this process on recruiting is appreciated!

Kellye

Kellye,

We used EF Tours. And if you've done any reading on the web, you may have seen posts that will make your hair stand on end and too scared to consider taking a group of students on a trip; however, we had a nice enough trip with them. The school has used EF ever since starting to take kids to Europe every other year since the 90s.

Mine was the only reply on a thread last year asking about EF, so I hope it was not your question; you'll have read much of this already :-)

We took 21 kids and 4 adults from our high school this past spring on the European Quartet tour. The Quartet had been advertised as the Quintet, but was changed by the company with no explanation to us (seems typical non-communication to some posts I have seen about EF). We did see a 5th city with about a 2-hour stop at Aachen for Charlemagne's Cathedral.

Many posts complain about the hotels. We stayed at 3 acceptable and 1 icky (for my personal opinion), but the icky mostly need an updated carpet and new bedding. We didn't see any bugs and, actually, it had the nicest bathroom of all 4! It must have been a very nice hotel in its past.

Comparing the web site for one of Mawmaw's hotels, I would say we stayed at lower star-rated hotels, but I would describe them as comfortably functional (with the icky as just functional). And going on so many posts I read about EF, perhaps we lucked out for getting mostly okay located hotels, in terms of if you wanted to go out on your own.

The chicken and fries for dinner did get old, very quick. The meals that were sometimes different, a Lebanese and a big salad, were not always eaten by the kids. But that was their choice not to eat! Prepare kids for the idea that the food will be different on a tour, perhaps.

What made our tour a very good experience? The tour director! We had Peter! I don't remember his last name, but you'd recognize him .. he looked just like Ian McKellan! The kids loved having "Gandalf" on our tour!

And it was thanks to Peter and the cooperative bus driver that we had an extra stop: Peter knew about an American WW2 cemetery in the Netherlands and we got to stop and see it. We had a few WW2 buffs and for them it was a wonderful surprise. For all the kids it was good to see an important part of our past. There were over 8,000 crosses and another 2K of MIA names.

I would not be surprised if we continue to use EF. I kind of would like to try a different company, going with ASIS or NETC (they get the highest ratings that I read on the web), but then we look at costs and EF is lowest, even with the hidden options are added in .. .. but then you're back to looking at things like where you stay for hotels. Look at the pictures for where Mamaw is staying .. darn tootin' nice!!

But for our little school (164 kids in grades 9-12), even when all the extra costs are added in EF's likely to be cheapest and going on cost, a couple of hundred more could prevent a lot of kids from experiencing anything. If things stay with comfortably functional, the kids are fine and the adults just have to stay quiet :-)

And from watching one teen say, "I don't eat THAT!" (picking up and throwing down a piece of lettuce from the big dinner salad that I enjoyed), there's no guarantee of pleasing anyone all the time.

Most of the best advice I have seen is to communicate, communicate, communicate with your tour director. Definitely, if you get a good tour director, then I think you're good to go.

Research your trip and know what the potential sights are. When free time starts, you want to be ready to hit a museum or other activity and not be drifting around wasting precious tour time.

Good luck.

Ah, another thought .. I'll write again that behavior skits sounds a good idea, as Mamaw's school did .. and pack light .. here's a thread I started about that and good words of advice came from some packing light experts:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35049389

A close friend of mine has used ACIS/AIFS for over 20 years for both student and adult tours.

Scot

Last night I was with the French Teacher that's heading up the tour to Europe and we laughed and laughed about the skits. Madame has it on tape. She will do a DVD of our trip to give to the student's. She does a fantastic job. She went around the room the other night and asked everyone what were they looking forward to on the trip.

One of the skits was killing us. It showed the kids in a museum making fun of the statues when a museum worker walks up and asks them to stop and be quiet and as the worker walks away she says "ah American's, The BUSH!" we were rolling on the floor over that one.

I have been on NETC and Joshua Expeditions for student travel. We also have just traveled on our own. Especially for missions trips.

NETC is on the higher side price wise, we just got hammered with another FUEL SURCHARGE so my trip so far has cost 2625.20. And that includes a discount. However, when you think about all the tours, meals,hotels,metro,transportation and on, it's a decent deal. The kids do much fundraising. Pizza kits, bake sales, jean day at school, side jobs and parents I'm sure kick in some. The kids trip's are cheaper than the adults, I had to pay a adult supplement of 315.00, what that exactly is for, I'm not sure. BTW, 2 students paid for their trip all themselves. We had awards to pass out the last night of our meeting, and the two that paid for themselves got a gift card to a local steakhouse. NETC did have a writing contest, and though none of our kids won, we did reward them for entering. Also if you paid your deposit on the trip before Dec. 1st you were rewarded by NETC a 150.00 Visa Gift card. That was an added bonus too.

If you go to NETC and check out the trip we are going on I think it's a fantastic deal. We are going on the London,Paris and the Loire Trip. 9 days.

For anyone wanting to do a Mission's trip Joshua Expeditions was who we used last year for Costa Rica. And another Class from the school is going again this year. My only problem with that tour group was the food and Guide. The hotel tried to treat us like second class citizens. Unlike Madame, our Spanish Teacher Senora wasn't speaking out regarding the food situation. I on the other hand had no problem going up to the desk and bitching them out. I swear to God, they were serving us food left over from the night before's buffet. And the same thing every morning. Finally they started giving us a little more variety. The kids were starting to get crabby because of the food. And they understand they have to be "flexie" about things, but It was getting to the point of GROSS. 10 days of Beans,Rice,Pineapple and stale bread for breakfast just wasn't getting it. And the grosses coffee. I mean come on, were in Costa Rica for Goodness sake, it should be AWESOME. But they were giving us coffee they made for the other guests that had been laying around all morning. But that was taken care of within 3 days, all it took was a visit to the front desk and confronting the manager. Thank God there was a store next door that had a bakery in the back, I would walk over there and get food and bread.

I did do a trip report on Costa Rica under "Theresa" here on fodors. I'd paste it here if I knew how. It was a fantastic trip and I feel we really helped out the Children in the shanty town we went to.

NETC does a fantastic job. The Hotel's, Tour Guide and meals are always great (well, expect for madrid, that's a whole story itself) but I have been to Spain France and Italy with them. As I said this is my 4th trip with them. Unlike Costa Rica where they stuck all of us in a conference room for meals, we go right down to the hotel's restaurant for Breakfast. And our dinners are always Delish. I am somewhat of a veggie person so for dinner I have been very lucky/blessed to ask the waiter for extra salad or veggies instead of the meat. Lunch were on our own and that is perfect for trying whatever you want.

Sorry if I'm all over the place on this but I really hope Teachers and Parents take the kids all over the world to better understand other culture's and religion.

Thanks for the additional information about NETC. From looking at the pictures of your hotels, they are definitely higher than what we stayed at last year .. a bit of you get what you pay for, eh.

The Madrid food was not good? Or did you not like what was offered? I ask quickly because we are looking at Madrid for our next school trip!

Many thanks.

Scot

The problem with Madrid is the restaurants we went to gave us some food that was terrible.

For instance...

One place started us out with soup that was like "mrs. grass" the kids loved it. Then they gave us huge plates of chickpeas, potatoes, cabbage and some kind of meat that was rancid. I smelled the minute we walked in the door. I'm in the restaurant business and baby I can smell a rat fart (my whole family say's that) and when I ordered coffee they tried to charge me 7 euro's. Oh that really pissed me off. I told them no way was I paying 7 euro's for coffee. And they told me "oh, it included with the meal" well I knew that.
The next day we were given breakfast in a box instead of going to the restaurant in the hotel "Hotel Paris" and once again the Spanish teacher was like "well, I guess this is what we get" but that was years ago and I know better. Thank God there was a all night Gyro joint right next door to the hotel, So I ate several meals there instead.

After spending time in Barcelona I would never go to Madrid again. But that's IMHO.

And Yes our hotel's for this trip look great. Madame didn't like the one we were staying at in Paris and had it changed. So I take her word the other wasn't a good hotel.

Kellye - Scotlib - If you want a student tour company a notch up from the bottom ones (EF and Explorica), try CHA. They use better hotels and their tour directors are very good, but their hotels aren't quite as upscale (they were 3 and 4 star) or as expensive as NETC or ACIS. www.cha-tours.com

Theresa - We're looking forward to another trip report. Are you going to sneak off to Montecatini at the end?

ky OMG, I wish. We talked about that last night at a Fund raiser we were attending. There were 2 Detroit Loins players (one retired who has 11 children) there and they were like butta! Beautiful.

Anyways, 8 of us that were on that France Italy trip all talked about Montecantini. And we laughed and laughed. Remembering being dropped off 1/4 mile from our hotel because the bus didn't fit down the road. All the uneven streets that were 3ft. wide and the school children asking us where are you from? And when we told them Detroit they shouted PISTONS! That was awesome.

But we will never forget it's beauty. The mountains, the flowers blooming, the merry go round in the town square, the stone inlay every where. And my Waiter and I talking without a word. I'll never forget it.

Madame the French teacher talked of doing that trip again in 3 years, I don't think I can wait that long.

KY, Thanks for remembering.