Europe: Day 14 (July 18)

Today, I got to experience something that not many people can claim. After a hotel breakfast, we loaded the bus and went to the Notre Dame of Paris Cathedral. There, we had an hour or so to look around this magnificent house of worship, and then we all took our seats to watch the Chorus perform some of their church pieces. The performance was amazing. The acoustics were fantastic; every syllable was crystal clear. You could see on every one of their faces how happy they were to be performing in such a sacred place. After that, I spoke briefly with one of the priests about the the trip, my friends, and family. He was a really neat guy, and I'm glad I had the chance to talk with him. After leaving the church, we headed to the bus to take a small group of us to the Musée d'Orsay. We spent a few hours walking around this huge and magnificent building. Taking several illegal pictures of the paintings and meeting up with a group of my friends, we left the Orsay and headed across the bridge to the Paris Opéra House, but we couldn't make that trip without stopping for some delicious croissants and pastries. The inside of the Opera House was absolutely amazing. There is just no such building like this back in the US, so I made sure to take lots of pictures. After walking around the Opera House for a bit with my friends, we left for the Hard Rock Cafe: Paris. After an early dinner filled with lots of awesome rock songs, we left for la Tour Eiffel. The line was pretty long, but it was definitely worth it for the experience I was about to get. In the line before I got to the metal detector station, I realized that I had a pocketknife in my pocket, so I hurriedly jumped out of the line and ran onto the bus to put them up so I wouldn't be rejected entrance into the Tower. I hopped back into my place in line and waited patiently to go up on the elevator. The elevator that took us to the first floor (floors are different in Europe; the floor that is "ground floor" is level zero. The floor one above ground level is level 1)  is really odd, because it goes up at an awkward diagonal because of the shape of the "legs" of the tower. After getting to the 2nd floor, we took a different elevator up all the way to the top. The sun was just beginning to set, and the sight was absolutely beautiful. You could see the city for miles (or kilometers) away. The top of the tower is an open-air enclosure, surrounded with only thin wire to keep people from falling off. It was rather intimidating at first, but once I got used to the height, I started to enjoy it more. I got lots of pictures with many of my friends, because the chances of us being able to do this again aren't very high. The air up there was really cold, but it felt great, and was such an surreal experience. I would have loved to stay up there forever!

Europe: Day 13 (July 17)

After packing up the buses, we departed for the Chateau (Castle) of Fontainbleau. We were able to do a self-guided tour around the Chateau. Although the Chateau was really beautiful, I was pretty distracted about going to Paris later today, because today is my birthday! The ride to Paris was hard for me because I was so excited! Once we got there, we had some time for lunch, and then we met up with a tour guide and got back on the bus for a bus tour of Paris. I have to admit, although I enjoyed getting to go through the city, being on a bus for another hour was just about the last thing I wanted to do then. After the bus tour, we checked into our hotel and ate at a Paris restaurant. That night at dinner, I had my first legal drink of wine (I had a glass of Champagne) for my 16th Birthday! Before we left, all the SOA members sang happy birthday to me and it was really awesome. I got a lot of hugs, and so one of the chaperones suggested that to make some quick cash, I should charge 1€ for a hug and 5€ for a kiss. I got numerous hugs and a few kisses, (on the cheek) but decided not to collect on my fees. I guess I'm just a generous person. After dinner, we headed to the port where we got on a nice boat and took an amazing and relaxing cruise down the River Seine. The sky was so gorgeous and the weather was amazing. It was the perfect temperature, just windy enough to keep you cool but not enough to be annoying. I sat with lots of my friends and we took tons of pictures while passing some of the iconic buildings, such as the Eiffel Tower, Louvre Museum, Musée d'Orsay, the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, and several others. Tonight was such an amazing day, and everyone was so happy and kind and sweet to me. I honestly can't think of any possible way better to have a Sweet 16 than in Paris, France!

Europe: Day 12 (July 16)

This morning, we leave the French-speaking, Swiss watch-making town of La Chaux-de-Fonds and leave for Fontainbleau, with a lunch stop in the mustard-making city of Dijon, France. This was my first time in France! Some of my friends wanted to go to the first place that they recognized: McDonald's. I was very upset with them, and decided to keep it authentic, so I went to a bakery and bought a real French bread sandwich. It was a very good first meal in France! After our hour lunch stop, we continued to the city of Fontainbleau. Once we arrived there, we checked into our hotel, got dressed very quickly, headed out to a restaurant and then performed in the Église St. Louis, the main church in the town. The audience really appreciated our performance, and were very energetic after every piece we performed. I announced again at this concert, but since I had time to make revisions to my lines, I didn't feel as stressed and therefor didn't mess up nearly as much. 

Europe: Day 11 (July 15)

Today, we had a late morning bus ride from the city of Grindewald to La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. We arrived at the hotel, where we quickly got ready for dinner in our uniforms and then performed our concert in the nicest performance hall so far, Musica Theatre. Since I have taken 3 years of French in school, I was invited to do some translating for announcements. They gave me a printout (in English) of things to say about a few of the pieces and I had to work out how to announce them in French to the concertgoers. I messed up quite a bit, since at the last minute, Terri, one of the bus leaders, asked me to introduce her dad, the Band Director. SInce I didn't really have time to get that written down on my sheet of paper, I pretty much had to come up with it off of the top of my head, so I stuttered and messed up quite a bit. There was a beautiful pipe organ in the background, and if you check on FB, I will post links of the picture we took there. This is the picture that will go on the front page of the brochure that is sent out to people that SOA is trying to recruit for next year's tour. After the concert, we packed up and headed back. Nothing much else really happened today, mostly travel, eating, then performing.

Europe: Day 10 (July 14)

So far, I can absolutely say, without a single doubt, that this was by far the most impressive day I have had since this trip began. We started it out by walking to the other bus' hotel to get the tickets that we already paid for to ride the cable car. Our little group went to this nice little supermarket and picked out some picnic-like foods to take along with us to the Alps. We took the cable car, called the "First," to the top of the mountains. We had a large chunk of the afternoon to wander through these wonderful mountain ranges. The sights in the Swiss Alps were just unlike anything that I have ever seen before. There is just so much open space there, unfortunately a sight that is becoming less and less common in the States. We hiked about an hour to this lake made entirely of glacial water. We stopped here and ate our picnic lunch. After a while, we headed back to the cable car station to head back to the concert hall, but when we got on the cable car (which takes 30 mins, one way), and got a good 10 minutes into the trip, the gondola suddenly stopped and hung, ricking, in the cool Swiss air. We all looked around at each other, noticeably a little nerve-racked. After a few panic-filled minutes, all the cars began to move again. Until they stopped a second time. But then they started working again until we got off. We got set up for the concert, and then performed a very nice concert for the people of Grindewald. Although I cannot express how amazing today was, I will certainly post many pictures once I get back home and have the chance to go through them all on my computer and whatnot.

Europe: Day 9 (July 13)

Today, we spent what seemed like forever on the bus departing Italy and heading into Switzerland. We were driving through some REALLY narrow roads with extremely sharp turns. I don't usually get nervous when being driven, but there were a few times that I felt like there was no possible way we would be able to make this next turn, but somehow, our fantastic bus driver managed to get it done. Switzerland is such a beautiful little country, and although it is so small (roughly 2x size of NJ), it has these beautiful, enormous alps that seem to go on and on. I'm really excited because we get to go up into the Alps tomorrow with nearly the entire day to ourselves.

Europe: Day 8 (July 12)

Today we had free to explore this lake resort town. Since I woke up late and missed breakfast, I figured I might as well do some packing up and reorganizing of my stuff since we were going to be leaving early next morning. After getting things wrapped up in the hotel, I went out for lunch and bought a sandwich. After that, we walked to the concert hall to begin set-up. We then went back to the hotel, ate dinner, and then performed our concert.