London Excursion

In a daring initiative taken by our school, an international excursion was arranged to Paris and London through the EF Travels. Only a few of us students had the chance to utilize this unique opportunity this year, I wish many more of my friends had come along. Perhaps they will next time. I thank my school and my parents for this great trip.

In the midst of the searing hot summer six students from DPS Nacharam including me, along with our Jyothi Ma’am took off for Paris. On the seventeenth of May, in the middle of the night we were gathered at the RGI Airport, Shamshabad, thrilled and nervous and excited all at the same time. Our principal Sudha ma’am came to see us off. We boarded our flight for a boring twelve hour journey via Doha.

When we reached Paris, we were all greeted by our tour guide, Mr. James McKay and were introduced to another group of students from The New Era School, New Delhi, with whom we could not get along well, unfortunately. Setting foot on Paris we were disbelieving that we were finally there and yearning to go, inspite of the tiring journey. It was biting cold after the summer of Hyderabad.

The first impressions of this historic city, took our breaths away.  The next day we had a wonderful time in the famous make believe world of Disneyland! It was amazing to actually be amongst these cartoon characters and their fairyland. It was a much bigger place than what I could remember from my earlier trip six years ago.

The next day we went to the Notre Dame Cathedral made famous by the novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”.  Then we went on a walking tour of Paris along the banks of the scenic river, the Seine and had a tour of the beautiful Versailles palace. The grandeur and beauty of this palace, specially its painted ceilings, is beyond my power of description.

The tour through the Louvre after this was just too much to take! We saw the world’s most famous painting the “Mona Lisa” and many other paintings, which I thought were even more beautiful. The next day we went up the Eiffel Tower and had a breathtaking view from up there!!

On the fifth day, we said goodbye to the beautiful city of Paris, the city of artists from time immemorial and the fashion capital of the world and boarded the Euro Star train which goes under the British channel and is so smooth that unless you don’t look out of the windows you don’t understand that it has started moving!

We reached the King’s Cross Station, which must be familiar to Harry Potter fans because it is here that platform 9¾ is located. It was wonderful to be able to understand what was being said around us, inspite of the unfamiliar accent. We checked into our hotel and spent the rest of the day going through shops nearby.

The next day we went to the Buckingham Palace and watched a practice royal march past in preparation for the Queen’s birthday. After that we had our lunch at a fast food restaurant and made our way to Piccadilly Circus, where we shopped around for a while and settled down to watch the theater play ‘The thirty nine steps’ in the Criterion Theater, the most famous one in London. It a marvelous experience to watch this hilarious comedy live.

The next day we started with a brief tour of the Tower of London, where we saw the Kohinoor diamond on the King Richard’s crown!

Next we went to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum and met all the world’s celebrities in person! After lunch we went to the Lord’s Cricket Grounds, the birthplace of cricket.

At last this memorable trip was over and we headed home to Hyderabad. We were exhausted; we had walked nearly 40 km over the past week. But we were very very happy to have been so fortunate and for the next week we talked only of Paris and London to our families. We will treasure the memories of these great places, the hotels we stayed at, the museums we went through and the fun we had, for a long long time!