Headed to San Francisco!

Our morning started with a quite late wake up because we were heading to San Francisco at 9:30 a.m. After a 3 hour drive, we finally reached our destination: the beautiful downtown area of San Francisco. Our first stop was the De Young Museum, which contained famous sculptures, paintings and photographs from all over the world, such as Picasso, Scully and Modigliani.  We had a great view over the city of San Francisco at the top level of the Museum’s tower.

Once we got back on our bus, we made a quick stop at the Ghirardelli plaza to buy some chocolate for our friends and families.  Some of us went down to the beach and touched the water of the San Francisco Bay.  Before getting dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant, we stopped at the fantastic Pier 39, which is known for great souvenir shopping, sea lions, and food. Most of us bought some sweaters because of the chilly (lol Floridians) weather. 

Probably the tmost exciting thing that happened at Pier 39 was that we met other rotary exchange students from Texas, Montana, New Mexico and Missouri. They were on their West Coast Trip and just arrived a day before us. For some of us it was a reunion with friends that they have met before their exchange, and for others a chance to meet new people. We said bye to our new or older friends and headed to our dinner place which was at the end of the pier. The food was great and the waiters were funny.  

After dinner we decided to go back to the hotel in which we will room with our favorite exchange friends J  We guess we are right in saying that nobody wants to come to the end of the trip but we can not wait for tomorrow”s adventures and experiences J GOOOO BELOOOOO

~Sophie Prokop & Romane Richez

Yosemite!!!

Today, 20^th of june 2014 we got to see the wonderful Yosemite national park. We went on a beautiful hike up to see Vernal Falls.  The trees and the waterfall were really impressive.  It's amazing how huge this park is; it seems to go on forever.

We took tons of pictures when we got to the bridge where you could view all of Vernal Falls

After lunch we were going to go either rafting or riding a bike around the park. Our group decided to go rafting.  When Emma, Helena, Moni and I were on the raft we started out a little messy in the way we paddled the raft, though eventually we got better at the rafting.  

Overall we had a blast with the rafting!

For dinner we headed to the food court.  Then it was finally time to leave Yosemite.  I know that we are all sad to leave this beautiful National Park.  I hope to be able to come back again someday!

~Antoine

Last Day in L.A.

Today was our last day in L.A.  We started the day off by visiting Griffith Observatory.  We drove all the way up a big hill to this public park to get the best view of the Hollywood sign.  There was a great view of the city skyline.  We took tons of pictures together in front of the Hollywood Sign. 

After leaving Griffith Observatory, we headed to BEVERLY HILLS!!!  The area was so beautiful and we passed lots of pretty houses on the way.  When we stopped we took a big group photo in front of the Beverly Hills Sign.  We also all sung the “Beverly Hills” song by Weezer together.  Then we walked along Rodeo Drive for lunch and to check out the fancy stores.  We saw stores like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Rolex.  We also saw an amazing Bugatti parked outside one of the fancy stores. 

We thought Beverly Hills was really cool and classy.  Our friends said they might have seen Kanye West walking around.  It was cool trying to spot celebrities.  It was fun to walk the same streets that the celebrities do.

After we finished our time at Beverly Hills, we headed back on the bus to go to Merced, which is near Yosemite.  The drive was about 5 hours but we had a couple pit stops and we watched Catching Fire and Frozen on the bus.  For dinner we went to a pizza place.  It was really good.

Then we headed to the the hotel for some time at the pool.

We are really excited to head to Yosemite tomorrow!!!  

~ Pauliina, Katrine, Eva Marie

Six Flags!

Halli Hallo everyone!

Congratulations, you have to put up with the blog of two GERMANS!!!

Today we spent a whole day at "Six Flags-Magic Mountain", an amusement Park just outside of L.A.

The amusement park itself contained more than 35 roller coasters, Games and Shows, ranging from children's auto-scooters to 7000 ft. drops and rides as fast as 100 mph!!

The most exciting ones were the "X2", a ride that spins around the riders while doing loops and turns, the "Riddler's revenge", a standing up ride, "Goliath", with a 260 ft. drop and "Superman", going 100 mph up backwards before dropping again.

All of us were wearing the Trip T-shirt so we took a group picture in front of the fountain  before heading out in our own small groups, getting splashed by water-rides and thrown around in roller coasters.

We got back together for dinner and then stayed in the park until nine o'clock, at which time we were all exhausted and ready to return to the hotel after an awesome day.

~Katharina and Simon

Hollywood and the Beach!

First we drove through L.A. to get to Hollywood.  We visited Madame Tuasauds and saw all the wax figures of celebrities and musicians.  My favorites were Leonardo Di Caprio, Spiderman, ET, and Obama.  The wax museum was really weird because the figures looked so life-like.  It was to fun take pictures with all the figures.  We also saw the famous Chinese theater and drove by the HOLLYWOOD sign!

After the wax museum we had some free time to see the Walk of Fame.  I saw stars for Winnie the Pooh, Tom Hanke, Tom Cruise Charlie Sheen, Disney and many others.

Then we all boarded the bus to go to Huntington Beach.  The beach was really cool, there were a lot a people there.  There was also a cool shopping area.  There were a lot of surf shops (Huntington Beach is known as Surf city USA).  We took a walk on the pier and even saw some surfer dudes.

We went into the water but it was pretty cold!  We also laid out on the beach and played soccer with everyone.

For dinner we went to Buca Di Beppo, which was an Italian American restaurant.  We had salad, pasta, chicken and brownies for dessert.  It was delicious!

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~Evamarie and Katrine

Good Bye Las Vegas, Hello L.A.

We started off the day with loading our baggage onto the bus and then we had some breakfast.  We started our bus ride to the fabulous Los Angeles.  We watched the movie Source Code on the way to L.A.  After the movie we listened to some awesome music.  We made one pit stop to grab some snacks and then to continued on our 5 hour journey.  After arriving to L.A. we headed straight for Universal Studios!  We finally got to see all the movie sets and learned about how films are made. It was amazing to realize that everything we see on TV started at Universal.  We went on the Studio Tour and got to see some cool things like Wisteria Lane and JAWS!  We went through a King Kong special effects 3-D tunnel, it was very unique. 

After the studio tour, we had an opportunity to go on the rides.  The haunted house was so scary! 

My other favorite rides were The Mummy and Jurassic Park, but I also liked the Simpsons and the Water World show.  After the rides we finished the evening by going to dinner at Hard Rock.  Fad and I even saw Snoop Dogg at the park!!!

It was an awesome day.

Mirna and Kasper

Exploring Vegas!

Today we had the opportunity to go back to the very well known Bellagio. Once there we had free time  to visit on our own the strip of Las Vegas. Wandering into the streets of Vegas and seeing all those street artists, is a once in a lifetime experience! No gambling for us but you can definitively feel the atmosphere of a town that likes to have fun. Entering in those monument of gambling make you feel like in the Hollywood movies ( Las Vegas twenty-one, Oceans eleven,…)

In the afternoon we went to the Stratosphere, and we saw the view of the Las Vegas skyline from 109 floor, afterwards for those who were brave enough, they went up in the insanity and X-scream roller-coaster. Believe that being shake over a thousand feet high can give you chills! Pictures are obligated in one of the tallest sky-scraper of Vegas. After a delicious and well deserved dinner at a buffet with TONS of food, we headed back to Vegas strip for one last walk in the effervescence of the town. 

- Arnaud, Belgium