French Students Experience Spring In Paris

Over April vacation, eight Newtown High School French students and two teachers traveled to France under the auspices of the American Council for International Studies (ACIS).

Departing April 12 from JFK Airport, the group’s French experience began the moment they boarded their Air France flight, where menus were in French and the flight attendants spoke to the students in both French and English. For at least one member of the group, Heather Morgan, it was her first flight ever, and she was more than a little apprehensive as the plane’s engines revved up for takeoff.

But the Newtown group landed safely in Paris, both tired from the all-night flight and excited about the three days ahead in the City of Light, which many have proclaimed to be the most beautiful and romantic city in the world.

ACIS provides each group with its own courier and bus. Melanie, a young woman from Wimbleton, England, who had studied in Montpellier, France, was to be both courier and friend to the group for the next nine days. A second student group from San Francisco and its teacher as well as another student group from Albany, New York, also joined the Newtown student group, because of its small size. This combination of groups opened the door for new friendships to form in the days ahead.

During free time in Paris on the first afternoon, Newtown French teachers Paula Greenfield and Nancy Maxwell led the group on an excursion on the French metro to Montmartre, the area where starving artists have painted portraits for centuries. The students took the funicular to the top of Montmartre for just a few francs and savored their first taste of French cuisine in Le café du Tertre, located near the famous Sacre Coeur Roman Catholic basilica that, in photographs, so resembles the Taj Mahal. In the days that followed, the group took an ACIS bus tour of Paris, climbed the Eiffel Tower, and spent an afternoon in the Louvre. One problem that dogged the group was rain. The banks of the Seine had overflowed from a month of off and on rain, and so the group was never able to take the famous Bateau Mouche ride along the Seine. The water was so high that the boats could not fit under the low bridges for which Paris is so famous. On Easter Sunday morning the group braved heavy downpours for a morning of High Mass in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The choir sang a Latin Gregorian chant, but the prayers and sermon were in French.

After lunch in the nearby Latin Quarter, the students returned to their hotel to meet the entire ACIS group for an afternoon excursion to the Chateau de Versailles. During the 30 minute bus ride there, Melanie told them that Versailles is called a palace, not a castle, because a palace is much larger, and Versailles, with its more than 2,000 rooms, is the largest palace in the entire world. Upon arrival they visited many magnificent velvet draped and gold painted rooms, the Hall of Mirrors where treaties have been signed, and the magnificent gardens, where they were treated to the musical fountains, which only play on Sunday afternoons.

The group then took the TGV (French high-speed train) to Biarritz in southwestern France. The students visited Saint Jean de Luz, the small Basque town in the Pyrenees where Louis XIV was married, along with a side trip to San Sebastian across the border in Spain. Because of the membership of both France and Spain in the European Union, the bus was not stopped at the Spanish border. In fact, most of the students were unaware they had even crossed the border into another country. The group then spent a night in Montpellier, the very city in which their courier, Melanie, had spent her student days, and then continued on to Carcassonne, a medieval walled city dating from the 14th Century.

They then headed to Provence to visit 2,000-year-old Roman ruins in Nimes, and at the Pont du Gard they photographed an ancient Roman aqueduct. The group then continued on to Eze, where they toured Fragonard, home of the French perfume industry. More than half of the world’s perfume is produced in this tiny town. Nearby they climbed to the top of the stone village of Eze to view the Mediterranean Sea as well as the exotic gardens. In medieval times, French coastal villages were often built on craggy cliffs in order to protect the inhabitants from pirate raids. Today these charming towns are nearly as inaccessible to tourists, who are, however, well rewarded with magnificent views of the turquoise Mediterranean Sea below.

The last days of the trip were spent in Nice on the French Riviera. The group danced the night away at a local discotheque and spent lazy afternoons shopping in the open-air markets, lying on the rocky beaches and dining in French outdoor cafes. Finally it was time to say au revoir and return on Air France first to Paris and then on to New York.