Tours
“I SEE LONDON…I SEE FRANCE!”
2011 SPRING BREAK
FOR STUDENTS AND ADULTS
PARIS, CHARTRES AND LONDON
APRIL 22 - MAY 1, 2011
*$4085.00 FROM NEW ORLEANS
Our tours are carefully designed with comfort, safety, and bang for your Euro and English Pound in mind. We have 31 years of experience in the designing and implementation of tours. Our tours are not the typical student tour. We go fewer places and stay longer in each city. Our hotels are centrally located and offer full breakfasts. Other than lunches and dinners, most everything is included in the price of the tour. The reason lunches and dinners are not included is to give us all more flexibility as to when and where we want to eat and to have the experience of ordering in real restaurants in smaller groups as opposed to eating mystery meat in some two bit flea ridden hotel on the outskirts of town. Paris taps into our local history and London our national history. This tour is not affiliated or sponsored by any school or organization. It’s hard to tell who is more excited, the chaperones or students and adults begging for this information!
Charles de Gaulle once said, “You simply cannot bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.” Grab your beret as we will begin our tour in Paris, the city of light. Think of it: April in Paris, French poodles, French bread, French perfume and French fries all in their natural habitat! We will begin our stay in Paris with a private guided city tour of this stunningly beautiful city. Paris features the Seine River with its beautiful bridges, boulevards including the Champs Élysées, Montmartre where Toulouse-Lautrec and every other artist who ever visited Paris hung out, outdoor cafes, Gothic churches, parks, gardens, shopping, and Parisians! Even the cemeteries and sewers in Paris are famous. Artist’s studios, such as Rodin and Delacroix are now museums. The department stores are blocks long. Paris has it all from Napoleon’s tomb, the Bastille, flea markets, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Latin Quarter, the Pompidou Center, swanky boutiques to trendy used clothing stores and some really good eats!
We will visit the Louvre, featuring anybody who is anybody; Mona Lisa, the Seated Scribe, The Winged Victory, Venus de Milo and an amazing food court and several gift shops! The Musée d’Orsay features a spectacular collection of Impressionist painting, housed in what used to be a 19th century train station. The d’Orsay boasts three restaurants and a great gift shop. The art in these two museums will be like visiting old friends. We will have a guided tour of the Garnier Paris Opera with the Chagall ceiling, which is beyond amazing!
We will take an excursion to the small town of Chartres famous for its cathedral, a jewel of Gothic architecture, with its asymmetrical façade two different spires, stained glass and labyrinth in the nave. On the outskirts of town is Maison de Picassiette, a house built in the 1930’s that is totally mosaic-ed inside and out with broken pieces of glass and pottery. We’re talking beds, stove, everything! I’m hyperventilating as I write this!
We will depart Paris on the Eurostar train that will take us to London under the English Channel (the Chunnel!) in only 2 hours and 15 minutes! In the olden days it would take that long to get from Paris to the Channel. We will have a guided tour of London and her 2,000 years of history from the Roman expansion to the times of William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Dickens, Austen, Jack the Ripper and both Elizabeths. With 150 museums and numerous galleries our heads will be spinning. London features the City of London (the Wall Street of London), Thames River, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, Oxford Street, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the Tower of London/Tower Bridge, Carnaby Street, Portobello Road, and Harrods department store, where its food court alone is worth the trip! There are lots of great Indian and Chinese restaurants and fish and chips!
London has many amazing works of art within its numerous museums. We will visit the British Museum which features the Rosetta stone, Elgin Marbles, Egyptian mummies, the Lindisfarne Gospels, coffee shops and a marvelous gift shop. We will also visit the National Gallery with van Eyck’s, Arnolfini Wedding, Holbein’s Ambassadors, Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, Turner’s Fighting Temeraire, van Gogh’s Sunflowers plus works by da Vinci, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Seurat, Cezanne and way more. Because London is known for its excellent theater we will go to the theater every evening! We will also take a behind the scenes theater tour!
TOUR PRICE INCLUDES:
· Round trip airfare from New Orleans (into Paris and out of London)
· Airport / hotel transfers /Chunnel crossing
· 3 and 4 star centrally located hotels with full breakfasts daily, based mainly on two to a room, there may be a few triples available
· Metro passes and museum passes in Paris and Tube passes in London, many museums in London are free!
· City tours of Paris and London
· Paris Opera Garnier entrance and guided tour
· Excursion to Maison de Picassiette and Chartres Cathedral
· Entrance to Westminster Abbey, entrance and Beefeaters tour of Tower of London
· 4 nights of theater in London
· Behind the Scenes Theater tour/ Royal Drury Lane
*(The fine print): The tour price is the discounted price for those paying by check. The non-discounted price of $4185 applies to those paying by credit card. Not included in the tour price is the international airline tax imposed by the FAA, which will be billed separately depending on the amount of tax at the time of final billing. See application for all tour conditions.
High school juniors and seniors as well as college students may earn 3 hours of college credit in conjunction with this tour. Tuition is not included in the tour price.
Our chaperones include: the suave Mr. David Arbo and his affable arty wife, Mrs. Anne Arbo, who have chaperoned on several of our tours; the spiffy Mr. Joe Adragna, aka teacher of the year; the cool as a cucumber Mrs. Bridgette O’Connor, who chaperoned the Spain and Italy trip and went with us as a 14-year-old SSA student; the illustrious Miss Francie Rich, who takes novels about foreign countries when she travels, but they are never about the country in which she is traveling; and potter husband Mr. John “no we are not lost, I just don’t like going the same way twice” Hodge. Our chaperones are artists, historians, a musician/sociologist/shoppers, an 18th century French freak, and a science guy. We know the value of travel and want to make this a trip of a lifetime for all who travel with us.
$500 deposit (made out to Euro-American Tours) and application are required to secure your spot. Deposits may be given to any of the chaperones or mailed to Francie Rich, 211 S. Jackson, Covington, LA 70433\
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Francie Rich or John Hodge 985.892.5108, richodge@bellsouth.net
Anne or David Arbo, darbo@ssacad.com
Joe Adragna: jadragna@ssacad.com
Bridgette O’Connor: 985.590.9452, brikev.oconnor@gmail.com