Summer of 1972

In the Summer of 1972 I have no idea what I did in June or August but I know that I spent July in France.
For only $750 I flew to France, had French classes at the University of Strasbourg, meals plus three side trips; a boat ride on the Rhine and vineyard tour, a weekend in Switzerland and a weekend in Paris.
I took $300 in spending money and brought about half back home.
The next year the same trip doubled in price.
For a extra $10 I took an extra day trip to Luxemburg.
More about that trip below.

I had inherited $1000 from my Godmother and talked my parents into letting me go.
Needless to say at 16 this was very exciting, and a great adventure.
The classes were boring but luckily only in the morning, we had the rest of the days free to explore.
The city is in eastern France, on the Rhine and its Medieval Cathedral is unique.
Unlike most, the Cathedral in Strasbourg has only one spire.
they had planed two, ran out of money and then decided to keep it as it was.
There are also canals and an "Old Town" section.

The food was, well, umm. . . . it was French university food.
We ate out sometimes and that was OK.
When we got to Paris some of us were going to eat snails.
I had had them before on a family trip to NYC.
So a small group of us go to a restaurant with big 4 or 5 foot high letters that said: ESCARGOT.
Opps. . . . . sorry this was France, the letters were 1.5 meters high.
When the waiter comes by he says “Sorry, no snails today".
We got Pizza.

The third weekend was suppose to be open with no formal side trips planed.
Our chaperon left us in charge of another teacher and went off the Spain to see her boyfriend.
I heard that another chaperon was taking her students by train to Luxembourg and I tagged along.
So for just $10 I got to see another country and travel by train with the classic European cars you see in movies.
The train cars had small compartments with the passageways off to one side of the train.
We played Chess on the train to pass the time, saw the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace and most important we found a place to get Ice Cream.
Maybe not a wild trip but I was glad I got to go.

Me atop The Eiffel Tower, 1972

Theatre, oh yeah my blog is about Theatre.
While in Paris a group of us went to the Theatre.
We went to the Comédie-Française and saw "Cyrano de Bergerac".
The theatre was beautiful, the stage was wonderful, the play was great and I didn’t understand a word.
Because I really could not understand but a few words of the play I focused on closely watching the sets and lighting.
The end of the play was classic; strong lighting and leaves slowly floating down as Cyrano died.
I had to smile 15 years later when we did the same thing for our production at Brockport.

Junior year was still ahead and more Theatre adventures were to come.