The rest of the trip...

So, I'll give you a quick run-down of the rest of the trip:

Day 2: Italy - We had most of the day to ourselves to explore the city, then we went back to the hotel for dinner and then we had our first concert in a church outside of Venice. The priest who organized the concert was really nice and we were invited to a party after the concert with some of the rest of the church members.

The Grand Canal and Rialto Bridge

Day 3: Traveling - Bled and Ljubljana (Lub-li-anna) We set out on the road in our bus really earlier this day and drove for a little while, got a little bit lost and found ourselves in Austria, then ended up in Slovenia. We took a lunch break in a little town in the mountains called Bled that had a picturesque little lake complete with a castle and a island (the only one in Slovenia!) We got to spend a couple hours exploring the town and then we got back on the bus until we got to Ljubljana. We had an independent dinner and explored the city a little bit and enjoyed our four star hotel.

The Bled Castle

Day 4: Ljubljana - We went on a tour of the city which included a ride up the top of the mountain and the city's castle where we could see the whole city. We got a free afternoon and then we had dinner at the hotel and then we put on our concert. A bunch of us went out and enjoyed the city after the concert.

The city's mascot is a Dragon and one of their bridge's has four Dragons guarding it.

Day 5: Loooong Travel Day - We spent nearly 9 hours on the bus, stopping for a quick lunch at a coastal town in Croatia. We got to our hotel, which was not very nice, and had dinner at the hotel we all were pretty tired and there wasn't much to do around our hotel so we went to bed pretty early.

The Adriatic Sea, which we drove along for a good part of the day

Day 6: Split - Today we got up early and rode the bus into town for our tour. We then had the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon to ourselves which we used to explore and do a little shopping. We got back on the bus to hotel and had dinner and got ready for our concert, which was in the oldest Roman-Catholic Cathedral in the world! It was a little small but it was really interesting and a very cool experience.

The cathedral we sang at, the Cathedral of St. Duje

Day 7: Travel to Dubrovnik - After another day of travel along the coast we got to the city and then to our hotel where our whole group got put into a villa and the hotel was only a 2 minute walk from the sea. We played in the sea for a little bit and then went to a grocery to get sandwich making and we had a little picnic on our balcony. We explored the area around our hotel a little and enjoyed spending some time with all of the people on the tour.

The main hotel, Grand Hotel Park, as seen from our Balcony

Day 8: Dubrovnik - We rode the bus into Old Town, which is all inside of walls, really tall walls that go all the way around the city with only two entrances. We met our guide, Bozo, who was pretty awesome and got a tour of the city. Then we were given tickets to walk around the city on the top of the walls, which was quite an experience, we started walking around the sides next to the ocean, which I really enjoyed and then the sides on the land side got really high and I got pretty nervous and didn't venture very close to the edge. After a nice long lunch by the harbor we caught the city bus back to the hotel and showered and got ready for the concert. We got to sing at the church in the middle of the city, which was really neat. We sang a preview outside of the church before our concert.

The City walls and the Sea from the top

Day 9: Dubrovnik/Lokrum - We got to go to this awesome island off the coast, we hiked up to the top and we could see the whole island and the whole city of Dubrovnik. We spent the day jumping off cliffs into lagoons and playing on the rocky shore. For me this was the best day because we just got to relax and enjoy ourselves. We had our last dinner at the hotel and a little ceremony for our guide, tour bus, and seniors.

The lagoon - We jumped off that cliff, awesome

Day 10: Back to America - A LONG day of travel, we woke up at 3:45 to get to the airport in time for our flight then flew from Dubrovnik to Frankfort, Germany then ran through the airport to get onto our flight then after 8 hours we got to Chicago where it was raining so our 7 hour layover turned into a 9 hour one, we didn't get to Cincinnati till 11:30 and didn't get back to Transy until 1:15 in the morning.



It was def a whirlwind trip, but I'm wouldn't trade anything for the experience, the Transy May Term Trip is something everyone should experience and there's so many really cool places to go for different classes. I had friends go to Spain and France, Greece and Turkey, and Ireland. I'm sure there were other places too, there's always great opportunities.

I'm baaack!

That's right folks, your's truly is back from her whirlwind European Choir Tour! Let me say, it was warm, sunny, and didn't even think about raining the entire 10 days we were there. The plane rides, both there and back were long and kind of stressful but the trip was well worth it. We left Transy around 6 in the morning and drove to the Northern Kentucky Airport for our flight to Chicago, once we got to Chicago we had a 5 hour layover until we left for Frankfort, Germany. Once we got to Germany we had to race through passport control and security and just barely got to our flight to Venice in time to board it. When we landed in Venice we had to wait for everyone to find their luggage and to exchange their cash for Euros, and then we finally got to get on the bus to see Venice.

As you may imagine, we all had hoped to be able to go to the hotel freshen up, rest a little before we began our explorations but no, we went straight from a nearly 24 hour trek to being plopped down in the middle of Saint Mark's Square in Venice to find lunch in a place where we didn't know the language. Needless to say, this first day started off to be quite overwhelming and didn't slow down because we got a guided tour after our lunch break. We all were interested to hear the history of the place and excited to be in Italy, but I know that I personally was almost too tired to really appreciate everything that our guide was saying.

St. Mark's Sqaure, this doesn't come close to illustrating how many people were there.

After our tour, we got a chance to go see a demonstration of Murano Glass Blowing, one of Venice's most famous art forms. And then, finally, we got to go to our hotel. I'll update you on the rest later!