Following the Equator | EF's Educational Travel Blog

My tour experience: Spain, Italy and Greece

Cassandra Lund has traveled on more than 15 EF tours and has tours planned through 2013. Lund is a magazine journalism major at Temple University in Philadelphia, and she hopes to write for a travel magazine after her graduation in 2012. Here, she writes about her experiences on her EF tour to Greece, Italy and Spain.

By Cassandra Lund | EF student traveler

Europe and a mall have a lot in common. They both contain an array of items and people placed into a small area. Europe's small size, compared to other continents, helps make it a convenient area for getting around and a melting pot of different cultures. Europe's enduring cultures in each country make it a fascinating place, one that has entranced travelers for ages, myself included.

The long-lasting culture in each country really stands out from that of the relatively young United States. Europe's history is still on display today just as it was when it was in the making. For example, in Athens, there is the Acropolis from centuries past that can still be walked upon and viewed by visitors. Today's traveler can trace the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci in Florence. We can cruise over the same waters that Achilles and Odysseus sailed as they headed for Troy. In Barcelona, La Sagrada Familia (or The Holy Family), one of the world’s greatest cathedrals, is still being constructed!

On our EF tour, we visited Spain, Italy and Greece. The changing of cultures from day to day is what really made it a beautiful and unique visit. We went from bull-fighting Barcelona to leather-enriched Florence to ancient Grecian Athens. From there, our group took a five-day cruise around the Mediterranean islands of Mykonos, Kusadasi, Patmos, Rhodes, Heraklion and Santorini.

Greece is the word

 I read in the paper last week that Greece plans to sell some of its islands off to private investors in the hope of clearing some of its rather spectacular debt. This is, naturally, a shame as it will result in private complexes that you and I might not be welcome in. So, we can help the Greeks by going on tour there – trust me, there are few finer countries in which to spend 10 days or so.

I lived in Boston for a couple of winters. I know what it means to escape the cold that hits parts of North America, so imagine spending a warm, sunny day in March (March!) underneath an olive tree, while exceptional local guides unlock some of the mysteries of Delphi or Olympia.  The guides are great; they need to be. Often you find yourself looking at the ruins of original ruins, so a touch of imagination is needed. Tourism can often be easy – there it is, get a photo, got it, now move along. However, in Greece you need someone to help move your imagination along, to introduce the stories and the concepts behind the rocks you look at. The narrative really matters and where better than Delphi to understand the roots of political corruption, manipulation and cunning. Fabulous stuff.

Around Athens we often use hotels in the beach resort of Glyfada. If you are lucky enough to end up within striking distance then I urge you to get the tram and jump off at the first stop after the tram leaves the beach. Opposite you will be a gyro stand with tables outside. Indulge in, arguably, the finest gyro Greece has to offer, all for less than $3 wrapped and ready to go. Run by a superb Greek-American who lived in Chicago for many years, I would tell you his name but I was too busy hoovering gyros to chat much.

Some of our educational tours to Greece offer the possibility of a cruise extension; fabulous lazy days spent admiring islands such as Santorini and Crete or visiting the Turkish resort town of Kusadasi. If you don’t have time for that, your tour director can help hook you up on a one-day island cruise from Athens.  A chance to visit the islands of Aegina, Poros and Hydra, dip your toes in the ocean and just relax. Honourable mention on the one-day cruise to the on-board ‘entertainment’ offered during the last leg as you return to Athens. No-one believes me until they see it, but the Elvis impersonator will do cat impressions…see it to believe it.

If you are going any time this year, or next, have a superb time and tell a friend!

Summer European Events: Sports, Music and More

Travel, quite often, is about being in any one place at any one time. If you are in any of these places, you might enjoy partaking in some of the following this summer.

Fete de la Musique (Paris, 21st June): This day of free concerts is shared across many cities worldwide, but the idea originated in Paris in the early 1980's. 

Barcelona (Grec) Festival (13th June to 1st August): Enjoy music, theatre and dance performances at a variety of places in the city, but principally at the Grec Theatre (a Greek style amphitheatre), which is located on the side of the Montjuic Hill. The nearby Olympic Stadium will also host the European Athletic Championships in the last week of July, with tickets from as little as $15.

All England Tennis Championships (Wimbledon, London, 21st June to 4th July): One of the four Grand Slams, these matches are the only ones played on grass. Tickets for the main courts in the second week require a lot of luck or cash, or both. However, get there early and line up (queue) for tickets on the outside courts and you will see some top action for sure.

Calcio Storico (Florence, June 24th to 26th): Played on a sand pit in front of the Church of Sante Croce, this annual event is a brutal recreation of the earliest form of soccer. It is a kind of ultimate fighting with a ball in the middle and smoke bombs in the bleachers. If you cannot watch it live, just be around the spectacle to share some of the atmosphere.

Open Air Cinema in Athens: Throughout June and July, almost every neighbourhood will have an open air cinema, showing films in the original language (with Greek subtitles). Most films are shown at 9 p.m., and it is a great way to join some locals for a night out. Your tour director can help you discover what’s showing and where.

A personal favourite, which takes place at the end of May, has been cancelled due to crowd concerns. There will be no (legal) cheese rolling in our part of the world this year. Come back in 2011.

Group Leader Spotlight: Chris Seymore

After practicing law in Philadelphia for three years, Chris Seymore decided to change careers and become a teacher. Eight years later he says, “Without question I made the right decision. I look forward to coming to work every day.  I’m a million times happier as a teacher than I ever was as a lawyer.” Today, Seymore teaches World Cultures/Global Studies and Constitutional Law at Ridley High School, outside of Philadelphia. Since 2006, he has traveled on eight EF tours, and in 2009, he visited 14 countries. Here he tells us about his travel experiences.

What inspired you to begin traveling abroad with students?
My only international travel prior to 2006 was when I visited Toronto during my sophomore year in high school. As a world cultures teacher, I decided it was time to experience other cultures with my students  and do some teaching and learning outside the traditional classroom environment. Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine what the next three years would bring! In the last three years, I have been to Europe 11 times (eight tours, one Paris Orientation, one Rome Orientation and one personal visit to Italy on my own). I also visited Jordan and Egypt in 2009 as part of an EF Teacher Convention Tour. In 2010, I will travel on three EF tours: Discover Costa Rica, European Horizons and a customized tour of Paris, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and the Greek Islands. The impact on me has been tremendous, and the experiences we have had through EF have been life-changing for so many of my students.

Happy New Year

The ancient Babylonians were the first to celebrate the new year about 4,000 years ago. Today, the date that the new year is celebrated, as well as the way people ring in the new year, varies from country to country.

• In Scotland, neighbors partake in “first footing.” After the clock strikes midnight, people visit the homes of their friends to wish them good luck for the upcoming year. It is considered especially lucky if the “first foot” into your house belongs to a tall, dark and handsome man.
• Spaniards eat 12 grapes at midnight to ensure they will have 12 happy months in the upcoming year.
• In the Netherlands, people make bonfires out of their Christmas trees to get rid of old spirits and welcome the new.
• New Years Day and the Greek Festival of St. Basil fall on the same day. It is tradition for Greek people to eat a St. Basil cake into which a silver or gold coin is baked. The person who finds the coin is said to have good luck for the new year.

So that's what Clint Eastwood sounds like

The first movie my wife ever saw in the original English version was The Bridges of Madison County. She was quite taken with the experience of hearing Clint Eastwood's real voice for the first time; until that point, she'd only heard Clint dubbed into Spanish, by a Spanish actor who probably also dubbed Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks.  

More movies would bring her more revelations: Jack Nicholson's real voice, Robert De Niro's real voice, and the real voices of a host of other Americans, right on down to Steve Urkel (American TV shows were dubbed into Spanish, too). For her, there was no comparing the English voice to the Spanish dubbing: The real English was far superior and far more satisfying. 

Group Leader Spotlight: Carolyn Sanders

With 15 EF tours and nine convention tours under her belt, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Carolyn Sanders, a physical education teacher at Bill Reed Middle School in Loveland, Colorado, has visited 40 countries with EF.

Besides traveling to every continent (yes, she used her EF Global Points to take a trip to Antarctica!), she’s also met some of her closest friends through EF.

In the Group Leader Spotlight, Carolyn recaps some of her favorite travel adventures and talks about how she and some other EF Group Leaders once created their own EF convention to Thunder Bay, Canada.

Photo of the Week: Greek mountain

When you think of Greece, you often think of pristine blue waters and picturesque coastlines. But Greece has some pretty impressive mountainscapes in between its seascapes, as well.

This photo—submitted by clarkematt75 to the EF Tours group on Flickr—of a lone church sitting on a snow-capped, tree-lined mountain is so captivating that it reminds me of an image in a jigsaw puzzle—1,000 pieces, no less.

If you have a puzzle-worth picture, or any other imaginative images, from your travels, please submit them to the EF Tours pool on Flickr. We choose a new Photo of the Week every Thursday.

Photo: clarkematt75 via Flickr (EF Tours pool)

Group Leader Spotlight: Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe, a teacher and former football coach at Lethbridge Collegiate Institute in Alberta, Canada, first began traveling with students on the football team and in the high school band. After seeing the value these experiences provided to the program and his students, he promoted trips to Europe, and his travel program took off from there.

Now, Ian travels with a large group of students every year. He even has parents calling him, trying to get a head start on enrolling their children.

Ian (above right) shares his thoughts with us on the importance of student travel, advice for new group leaders and how traveling with students is like coaching a team.

Group Leader Spotlight: Susan Pennington

"The joy I have found in watching students learn and grow has made traveling with students one of the best decisions I’ve made in my teaching career," says EF Group Leader Susan Pennington, an English and public speaking teacher at Nerinx Hall High School in St. Louis, Missouri.

Read on to learn why Susan keeps traveling abroad and for some tips on planning an EF tour of your own.

What inspired you to begin traveling abroad with students?
When I teach poetry, fiction and creative writing, I use the images and experiences that permeate my brain to help me to understand literature and life. For me, many of these powerful images and experiences are from trips I have taken to Europe. About six years ago, I realized that if my students had similar experiences, they might make better connections between the things they study and the ways of the world, past and present.  When all this collided in my head, I decided I needed to take students to Europe to give them their own special images and experiences.

Group Leader Spotlight: Joyce Schaller

EF Group Leader Joyce Schaller, a high school English teacher from Nokesville, Virginia, knows there is nothing quite as exciting as learning about literature by experiencing it firsthand. That's why she takes her students on educational tours with EF.

Joyce—pictured above with her students at Hadrian's Wall in Scotland—took the time to tell us more about why travel is so important for her students, connecting her curriculum to her tours and where she wants to go next:

Maple Leaf Monopoly

Montreal is the new Boardwalk.

Monopoly finally revealed the winning cities in its new World Edition this week, and the Canadian city earned the global game's most prestigious position, as we predicted in February.

In fact, Canada monopolizes the new Monopoly board. In addition to Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto also earned spots. The other dominant country is China, which placed Beijing and Shanghai, plus Hong Kong, on the board. Only one U.S. city (New York) made the game.

More than 5.6 million votes were cast to select the 22 cities in the new edition, which goes on sale next week in 50 countries.