24 October 2015

Group Travel

I don't hide the fact that I'm not a fan of group travel.  Part of it is a dislike of crowds, another part being a dislike of tourists. (I know, I'm a self-hating traveler!)  But group travel does offer something that is difficult to get on your own:  cheap (/affordable) access to multiple museums, nice restaurants, decent hotels, and transportation within and between cities.


In the summer of 2000 I went on the Washington Ambassadors of Music tour.  This tour has remained the same for YEARS.  I've since had a few students go on this trip, and it's fun to share experiences.

After rehearsals, the group flew to London.  There was a city bus tour, some free time for shopping, and a show.  My group ended up at the Buddy Holly Story.  I would have more enjoyed a play that allowed the British actors to use their real voices, but it was still nice to see.  We were in London for 4 days before taking the bus to Paris.



















I didn't like Paris so much.  Sometimes I wonder if I would like it if I went back during a non-summer month.  It was over-crowded and quite frankly, it smelled bad.  The Louvre was interesting.  I was too young to enjoy it, but it might be nice to see again.




From Paris to the Swiss Alps - we were in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, but I don't remember the town's name.  It was quite small.  Here's a view from that village.  Lots of shops, especially if you're interested in watches or cheese.  



We took a day trip to Zermatt and saw the Matterhorn.  It was a beautiful day for the hike.


Another day trip was to Venice.  In 2006 I took a long weekend there in February, and will say I don't dislike the city anymore... I just dislike it in the summer.  It smells of fish, and there are many many tourists in the summer.  Shops were nice, but the gelato was better! It's a fun town to wander in with all the canals and bridges and beautiful architecture.  I didn't get to tour St. Mark's with the group, but I made sure to do it when I went back.







We stopped in Innsbruck, Austria.  We saw the home of the winter Olympics there. I don't actually remember much from this stop.  I did go back to this city with my parents in the winter of 2005-2006.  I like it much better in the winter time.




The last stop was Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria, Germany.  On the way, we went to Dachau.  It was my second concentration camp, and it wasn't nearly as bad as the first.  The first I had seen was in modern-day France, so a lot of the stuff was kept there to show how bad the Germans were, whereas in Dachau everything seemed more historical and matter-of-fact.  Rothenburg itself is an interesting middle-ages town that really caters to tourists.  I didn't much like it the first time I was there (with the group).  I went back a few years later to surprise acquaintances and former students who were on the trip.  I was there for 4 days and enjoyed walking around outside of town.  The paths connect village to village through fields and forests.  It was beautiful.



When I was in Rothenburg with the group, I got to sleep in when everyone else left on the bus for Frankfurt to fly home. My family met me in Rothenburg and we took a trip around Germany from there.  We started by back-tracking and going back to Waiblingen so that my family could meet my other family.  It was nice for my family to get to know the people I spent a year with.  My sister and I stayed up the street in Neustadt, and everyone else stayed in Waiblingen itself.  I got to visit my friends at a school festival and we had a special Posaunenchor meeting.







After a visit, my family and I drove around the country.  We hovered in the south for a while.  We went into the Black Forest and walked around Triberg.  My favorite town name became Abtsgmünd.

We went to Neu Schwanstein, but didn't go in at the time.  (My parents and I went back in the winter of 2005-2006 - I'll be sure to talk about that trip another time.) We did go in to the other castle there, Ludwig's father's castle.  There's a museum there with a lot of information about royalty and the days of knights.  You can see the vast amounts of tours that come here in the summer... that was the reason we didn't end up going into Neu Schwanstein at that time.



We stopped in Munich before driving on to the former East-West German border.  We saw the old guard towers and the difference in landscape.

We visited the Lutherstädte and toured the Wartburg, went to Dresden, and spent time in Berlin before heading back home.  We spent quite a few days in Berlin this time, but somehow I seem to not have any pictures of this one!


15 years later, I'm afraid the last couple of weeks of my month-long trip in Europe is mostly fuzzy and all details have been merged between many other travels.




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