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• Euro Tour part I

Euro Tour 17/04 - 5/05

Part I - France, Switzerland and Italy

- Strasbourg - France
- Luzern - Switzerland
- Engelberg - Switzerland
- Lavagne - Italy
- Pisa - Italy
- Florence - Italy
- Lido de Jesolo – Italy
- Venice - Italy

When looking back on an exchange, almost everyone mentions right up the top, the Euro tour. So, going into the trip my expectations were very high, and the trip sure did live up to them! It was one of the greatest experiences ever, being able to tour Europe for 17 days with exchange students, the people who I can relate unbelievably well with.

My trip started at 6.30am on Monday the 17th when I had to get up to get to the bus, which was going to come through Elsfleth (the bus company was in Nordenham, about 20 mins north of us). So Rene, Apeksha and I were alone on a big tour bus with only "Captain Hackey" the bus driver. We drove first to Oldenburg and then to Bremen, picking up Exchange students at both of these places. We continued south, onwards to Speyer where we made our first real stop. We had a few hours to have a look around the town, which was very nice, and the large cathedral there. The last of the remaining exchange students got on here, making our bus pretty much full (41 exchange students, 3 chaperones and a bus driver).

We continued on to Strasbourg where we spent our first night. When we came in it was already dark so we didn’t see very much. The next day we had the day to go looking around Strasbourg. The way the tour worked, almost for the whole of the tour, is that we pretty much just got a map of the city and were told when we had to meet for dinner or what time we had to be back at the hotel etc. I found that really great; you could go around in smaller groups and look at the things that actually interested you. We saw the cathedral in Strasbourg (we saw a cathedral in pretty much every single place we went to) which stands at 142m tall and is a whopping great thing, very beautiful. We did a city tour for a couple of hours on a little train that talked to you in 7 or 8 different languages and got to see all the nice parts of the city that weren't in the city centre.

We stayed one more night in Strasbourg and the next morning went on to Switzerland, first to Luzern where we spent 4-5 hours looking around the beautiful city. This was one of the best parts of my trip, not just because it was beautiful with the Swiss Alps in the background with the crystal blue water, but because I met up with Lexie and Kim, two exchange students from my district back home!! They both showed me around the town and Kim gave me a nice present before we went further on to Engelberg, in the Alps. We stayed in the nicest hotels of our entire trip, a ski resort! The next day we all got a day lift ticket and were able to go right up to the very summit of Mt. Titlis (funny name I know!) which was about 3500m high. On the top it was sunny and we got to go tubing down a slope, but all the snow really made me miss snowboarding!

We continued on to Lavagne where we had a hotel just across the road from the beach where we went swimming in the Mediterranean! Unfortunately it was April… the water was I’d estimate about -25 degrees. And yes, we ate lasagna in Lavagne!

The next morning we had to pack up camp fairly early, and we drove through Pisa. Pisa was a beautiful 'tourist trap'. The other thing was that I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many tourists in one place at one time! The way it is set up, there is a massive grassy area (of course walking on the grass is forbidden) with the church and another couple of buildings, plus the leaning tower down the other end in the corner. There were also thousands of black men trying to sell fake watches, t-shirts, belts, you name it they would have it. This was one of the most fun things. I love bargaining! We were also given by the tour guides entrance tickets to the cathedral and to the other chapel. We were in Pisa until about 1pm before continuing on our way to Florence.

Florence, Italy. We only spent one night here and so we had the whole stay here as free time and got to look at some of the things that were going on in Firenze. One of the most interesting things about the city were the amount of people! We were told which bus took us to the city centre and how much a ticket costs and then we were left to do as we please. We caught the bus into the city, having absolutely no idea what there was to see in Florence, but then we met with an American exchange student (James) who was there the week before and he showed us around a bit, for example the Cathedral (I'm pretty sure the biggest cathedral we saw the whole euro tour...and we saw a lot of big cathedrals!). The amount of people walking around was really astounding. The whole time we were out of the hotel there were people everywhere.

Leaving Florence our way continued on to Lio de Jesolo, where we had a real beachside resort, but this one was actually located ON the beach. Of course we went swimming again, but this time we were prepared for the cold! The next morning was another early start, we were going to Venice! I was really confused as we got onto a ferry to get there. I mean, who would imagine Venice being an island!
Venice was amazing. Everything they say about it is really true! The little bridges, tiny non marked alley ways all really exist! We were given a map as we got there, but it didn’t help us at all because most of the time there were no signs anyway! So we just wandered around exploring everything we came accross until we had to get back somewhere and followed the occasional sign to Rialto, The bridge over the main water street, which was when we could orientate ourselves again. We stayed a full day, from 8am until 10pm, so we watched the sun go down over Venice before going back on the ship to Punta Sabbioni and with the bus back to the hotel.

Here is the link to part II