Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Trip of a Lifetime

This is the first time I have had enough time to sit down and update this blog. As you all know by now I took 5 of my high school students, along with 3 mothers and 3 grandmothers, on a trip to Paris and Rome. We went through an educational travel company, but I custom designed this trip myself. I wanted this to be a "true" art trip. So, I started by choosing the greatest art museums in the world----The Louvre and The Vatican Museum---to center our trip around.


The trip was for 8 days and truly by the power of prayer, was an amazing trip. 8 days/12 people and no major drama speaks for itself! We learned quickly how to use the metro system in both Paris and Rome. We even took a train to Versailles with no major problems. Of course we got lost a couple of times, but we looked at it as just another adventure! Austin and Ethan were great navigators!


The day we returned we didn't realize that we would have been up for about 24 hours by the time we all got back home. I didn't realize that I would feel so bad the next day. It took me about 3 days to snap out of it. The funniest thing is that on Tuesday we had to travel about 45 miles away to take a picture for our church directory (we missed the date they were taken here because I was on the trip). While taking the pictures, the photographer said something goofy that made me laugh and for some strange reason after that I thought...OK, I'm back to normal. The picture was funny because I'm looking at my husband cracking up and he's laughing but still looking at the photographer. Believe it or not, that's the picture I bought. I will put it in my trip scrapbook with a note that was the moment I felt like myself again!

Here's a quick summary of our trip:

We left Saturday morning from an airport about 50 miles from our hometown. We flew to Atlanta then on to Paris. We arrived in Paris at about 5:00AM Sunday morning. Like I said earlier---we lost 7 hours. We stayed in Paris until Wednesday. While in Paris we had a private city tour with our own tour guide, Claire. She was also our guide for a private tour of The Louvre. We also visited Notre Dame Cathedral, Musee D'Orsay, the Eiffel Tower, and took a night cruise of the Seine River.

In Italy we visited The Spanish Steps, The Pantheon, Piazza Navona. The Vatican including The Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's, The Colosseum, and The Roman Forum. We had a private tour of The Vatican, Colosseum, and Roman Forum. Fasta was our guide and she was AMAZING!

I will update again with more details and pictures of each place. It has taken me over a week to get caught up. I'm still trying to get back into a routine. I took over 600 pictures and have finally gotten them all developed. That was an ordeal for a later post!