Tours
SPRING BREAK 2009: SPAIN
April 10-19, 2009
$4748 Round-trip from New Orleans
TOLEDO, Madrid, Segovia, the windmills of La Mancha, SEVILLE, Cordoba, Granada, and BARCELONA
This trip is making our pulse race just writing the brochure. This trip is over a year in the planning and is custom designed with a healthy blend of culture, art, architecture, and guided tours, along with personal time for additional site-seeing and shopping in small groups. Everything is well thought out so that our time is used wisely. Our mostly four-star hotels are all centrally located so we can tour the cities on foot and we have day trips planned by private coach. Our tours appeal to both students and adults and we have many repeat participants, both students and adults. We will see and experience Spain from top to bottom and Spain is an amazing country, with Roman ruins, Moorish and medieval architecture, Renaissance and Baroque palaces and some of the most outstanding Art Nouveau architecture, anywhere. This blurb cannot do justice to all that we will see. Spending money will be needed for lunches and the dinners in Seville and Barcelona and for shopping. There are no hidden costs or optional tours. Our trips have never been the cheapest tours on the market; because we will not compromise on quality or the ease of travel. We like nice centrally located hotels with full not continental breakfasts, travel by private coach and NO add on optional tours. This will be our twenty-ninth year organizing and leading educational tours. Our chaperones are experienced travelers and work very hard to make the tours memorable, safe and exciting.
TOLEDO was ruled by the Romans, the Visigoths and the Moors, before being re-conquered by King Alfonso VI of Spain. Most of the architecture is medieval and the Gothic Cathedral is known for its amazing polychromed and gilded, life-size, wooden altar. This is the city where El Greco settled and features the Burial of Count Orgaz in Santo Tome, where El Greco is buried. In MADRID we will visit the Prado Museum to see works by Bosch, El Greco, Velásquez, Goya and other giants of art. The Reina Sofia is a modern art museum and is the home of Picasso's Guernica. We will also visit the Royal Palace with its over-the-top lavish banquet rooms, royal residence, armory and pharmacy. Not far from Madrid is the beautiful city of SEGOVIA, known for its Roman Aqueduct and Alcazar (castle). Both of these are amazing, as are the windmills we will see on our way to Seville. Don Quixote battled the windmills of LA MANCHA in Cervantes romantic novel. SEVILLE, the cultural capital of Southern Spain, has been inhabited for over 2000 years by Romans, Vandals, Visigoths and Moors until reconquered by the Catholics. Seville has the largest Gothic cathedral in the world and La Giralda, the bell tower, was once a minaret. The Alcazar is stunning and the city is a charmer. CORDOBA was the Muslim capital of Spain from the 8-11 centuries. Le Mequita (the Great Mosque) is the third largest structure in the Islamic world and features a prayer hall with approximately 500 striped columns. There were many additions and took eight centuries to complete. GRANADA was the Moorish city in Spin to fall to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. The Alhambra was a palace and fortress built by medieval Moorish rulers and is one of the finest examples of Islamic architecture in Spain. Our last stop is BARCELONA the Catalan jewel on the Mediterranean. Barcelona is another world, a richly decorated city full of Gothic, Moorish and Art Nouveau architecture. We are talking about the unique world of Antonio Gaudi with his still unfinished La Sagrada Familia Church, his apartment buildings reminiscent of dragon scales and Guell Park, overlooking Barcelona.
TOUR PRICE INCLUDES:
- Round-trip airfare from New Orleans, and flight from Seville to Barcelona.
- Airport hotel transfers and travel within Spain by private bus.
- Centrally located, mostly 4 star hotels based usually on 3 to a room.
- Full breakfasts daily and dinners in Toledo. Entrance fees to Prado and Reina Sofia museums in Madrid.
- Guided walking tour of Toledo with entrance into Santo Tome to see El Greco's Burial of Count Orgaz.
- Entrance fees and guided tours of Royal Palace in Madrid and Alcazar in Segovia.
- Guided tour of the Cathedral and Alcazares Real in Seville.
- Entrance fees and guided tour of Mezquita in Cordoba and the Alhambra in Granada.
- Private bus tour of Barcelona with emphasis on Gaudi architecture.
- Jet-Setter newsletter for packing, budgeting and other travel tips and general information.
- A guide booklet for the cities we will be visiting in Spain.
- Full time tour director and chaperones.
- The $4748 price is the discounted price if paying by check, an additional $100 will be added if paying by credit card.
High school juniors or seniors may earn 3 hours of college credit in conjunction with this tour. Tuition is not included in the tour price. Contact Miss Rich for more information.
DO NOT delay in getting in your deposit or contacting:
Francie Rich or John Hodge: 985.892.5108 / richodge@bellsouth.net
Anne or David Arbo: darbo@ssacad.com
Ms Paige Holtgreve: pholgreve@ssacad.com
This tour is not affiliated or sponsored by any school or organization and participation is at the sole discretion of the chaperones.
"I would go to a garbage dump with Francie and John, that's how much I trust them and how much fun I have with them."
Ms. Paige Holtgreve, Chaperone
Once, to get into a church in Paris, Francie Rich and John Hodge had to pretend to be my parents. If they actually were, this little blurb would probably be a lot weirder and more interesting. Still, their faux-parental attitudes were only part of the amazing experience that is a trip to Europe in their presence (yes, Miss Rich is paying me a lot to write well of her). In the two trips and three countries we visited, I had some of the best times of my life, and my advice to anyone considering a trip is to get a job, beg and plead, sell your soul, whatever you need to finance it, because it is totally and completely worth it. Not only are the cities visited more incredible than I ever imagined, the company really wasn't so bad, either! Erin "Punkin" Jordan
As president of Euro-American Tours, I am proud to celebrate 27 years of working with Francie Rich and John Hodge. When I first met Francie and John they referred to themselves as "battered travelers." They wanted to work with a company whose goal was to cater to the needs of the tour participants, not the financial needs of the company for which they previously worked. They were not interested in generic tours offered by most student tour companies; the cheap tour price with hidden costs, hotels outside the historic district or even the city limits, 24 hours of free time, reversing itineraries at the last minute, changing flight days, and the bottom line of trying to fill a 55-seater bus regardless of interests and goals of the travelers.
They were our first clients to offer fewer countries and cities, rather than the "if this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium." They can validate every choice they make regarding itineraries, why they offer what they do and include what they do.
I personally traveled with Francie and John on their first few trips and they were astounded by the ease of travel and the quality of the hotels. That was the beginning of a long and still growing relationship. After a few years, they realized it was not a "bait and switch" situation and they decided that they were in a position to continue to work with my company and lead the tours on their own. They know they have access to me personally, day or night, no matter where I am, or they are, in the world.
I respect their passion for travel and their integrity at refusing to compromise on excellence when it comes to their groups. It has paid off for them. Year after year they continue to astound me with the number of repeat travelers on their tours. I value their input and creativity to such an extent that I often use them as liaisons with other tour directors and groups.
It never ceases to amaze me at the personal commitment that Francie and John devote to planning and implementing their tours. This is seen from the beginning of the process when they design their tour, write their brochure and create the educational based booklets that are received by each tour participant.
I cannot overstate how I value our relationship. Francie Rich, John Hodge and Euro-American Tours have introduced hundreds of people to travel not just for travels sake, but with a cultural and educational component not ordinarily present in most travel programs.
Thomas E. Barnette, President, Euro-American Tours, Brooksville, Florida
Having traveled with my daughter, Emily Ward, SSA '94, on a Paris, London, Wengen (Switzerland) trip, I became a regular adult traveler with John and Francie. Here I am, with my own kind, having a gay old time. Emily, now an assistant professor of art at the University of Tennessee, caught the travel bug early on and now travels extensively. We were able to enjoy another Rich-Hodge trip together to Istanbul. I look forward to more travel with or without Emily.
Nancy Mullen, Repeat Traveler and Offender (far left of photo)