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The National Honor Society members spent spring break in France and Spain. View photos!

April 28, 2010 - Forty-seven National Honor Society (NHS) members and friends, along with six adult chaperones, had a wonderful spring break trip to France and Spain. The first part of the trip was in Paris, where the group saw the major sights of the city, including Notre Dame de Paris, the Arch du Triomphe, Latin Quarter, the Champs Elysees, Ile de la Cite and the Holocaust Memorial.

The following was a free day, and most travelers chose to go to the Louvre and to sight-see on their own. The evening ended with a boat tour of the city and a trip to the top of the Eiffel tower for much of the group. The following day, many had an early morning visit to the D’Orsay Museum, where there was a special exhibit of Impressionist Art, then joined the rest of the group at the train station to board the TGV to Provence.

Covering 450 miles in just less than three hours, we de-trained 53 people and all of our luggage in under two minutes. The train keeps to its schedule and anyone or anything left on after the three minutes allotted would have been on its way to Marseille! In Provence, the group visited Pont du Gard, the Roman aqueduct, the Popes’ Palace, took a short cruise on the Mediterranean to see the beautiful white cliffs of the calanques, saw a Roman amphitheatre and had time to wander the streets of Avignon and Arles, final home of Vincent Van Gogh.

The final leg of the journey crossed the low Mediterranean Pyrenees and into Spain, stopping for lunch and a break in the oldest medieval walled town in Europe, Carcassonne. We had a full day in Barcelona, seeing works of the modernist architect Gaudi, including La Sagrada Familia, Casa Mila and Parc Guell. These works were in contrast to the mostly Renaissance and Gothic architecture that dominates the old city. The evening was spent at a Flamenco performace, followed by a trip to the amazingly beautiful Magic fountains of Montjuic.

The last day of the trip was to many the most awe-inspiring. Through the hard work of our guide, we boarded a bus and headed to Mont Serrat, one of the most physically beautiful spots in that area of the world. Mont Serrat is a functional monastery and basilica, built around the Black Madonna, a Romanesque statue believed to have been carved in Jerusalem in the 12th century. Legend has it that a boy found the statue in a cave in the late 1300s on Mont Serrat and that the statue was somehow too heavy to move until the basilica was built for it. The statue has since resided in the Basilica, surrounded by an alter of gold, high in the mountains above Barcelona. Whether or not one celebrates Easter, we were very fortunate to be a part of the Easter Sunday mass in the basilica and to hear the world famous boys’ choir sing. Led by our guide, Antonio, we boarded the funicular to ascend higher into the clouds and then to walk back down with truly awe-inspiring views of the valley and mountains. Lunch and the afternoon in the beach town of Sitges finished our day and we returned tired and happy. We left early the next morning for the airport.

As Group Leader, Mrs. Moran would like to thank the travelers for being amazed, for being helpful and cooperative travel companions and for not getting lost; and the chaperones (Doc, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Giardina, Mrs. Lloyd, and Mr. Denaxas) for their hard work at making this trip so wonderful for our students.

The trip was funded entirely by the NHS members. Those who attended were Elizabeth Armistead, Parth Baxi, Marc Beliveau, Katherine Boese, Micaela Boles, William Brennan, Matthew Buono, Matthew Cannella, Chelsea Collins, Benjamin Conley, Anthony Cuomo, Ceira Dawson, Kathryn De Palma, Cassandra DenDanto, Peter Dermigny, Griffin Dinsmore, Selina Dzewic, Marisa Easop, Megan Eisenbacher, Derek Ellefsen, Douglas Finkelstein, Naomi Fogg, Brittany Foote, Thomas Gardinier, Sarah Gordon, Cassandra Graves, Katelyn Israelski, Sean Israelski, Andrew Kimiecik, Ericka Labrada, Jared Lisack, Kaitlyn Mesic, Alyssa Navilio, Rebecca Newman, Jacqueline Ortiz, Dylan Risucci, Allison Schlegel, Daniel Spencer, Wesley Sproul, Joseph Stark, Katie Tiger, Fiona Ward, Yale Weiss, Chelsea Wertheim, Francis Winski, Brendan Woods, Alexandra Zappier.