Virtuo-Euro Trip 2020 - Day 1 - A Travel Blog For Our Modern World.

Yesterday, I was driving down Central St. from Saugus Center towards my house.  As I passed the Iron Works, I saw a young couple taking prom pictures.  My only assumption was that they were preparing for John Krasinski's Virtual Prom sponsored by his new webshow, "Some Good News."  The Covid-19 pandemic is hitting us in a thousand different ways and is reshaping how we live our lives.  While many watch the numbers of infected rise on a daily basis, we do not, and cannot, quantify how the virus is impacting everyone...high school seniors are filled with anxiety about whether or not they will be having their own proms, graduations, or whether they will see their high school classmates again.  It all happened so quickly.

Saugus High School travelers in April of 2012.  We had just landed in Amsterdam.

Another group, albeit smaller, that found themselves impacted by this disease was a number of people who had planned on traveling during their spring breaks or over their summer vacations.  For me, I had two summer trips planned (both of which are still in limbo, but I doubt will happen).  I also had a student trip planned to Central Europe.  There were only 9 of us.  We were supposed to leave today...and that is why I find myself sitting in my office, writing another introduction to "Where in the World is Mr. Lavoie?"  This time around, it is a virtou-Euro-trip.

A group of Sachems at Logan about to head to Ireland in 2013.

The goal of the virtual Europe trip is so that my nine students can catch a glimpse of what we will see next year when we depart.  This year's blog is going to be a bit of a preview mixed with some of my favorite memories and pictures from the trips of the past.  We will make our own memories next year, but so many of the kids had been working hard to pay for their trip and asking them to hold off on their dream adventure was one of the hardest things I had to do, but it was the right call.  I hope that they will read this and will become filled with excitement.  I hope their parents/guardians/loved ones will read this and will feel assured that the kids will have a blast when our adventure begins in reality in 2021.  I also hope others will read this blog...former students and their parents, people who are isolated from loved ones and looking for a diversion, and others...my travel blog has always been geared for multiple audiences.  Another group I hope reads these blogs are the current students and parents of Saugus High School students who have not yet decided to travel.  The world may seem scary right now, but it has seemed scary before.  Throughout our past, people have ventured out into their brave new world.  We have benefited from those journeys.

We have just landed in Munich in 2014 on our History of the Holocaust Tour

The unofficial, or official, motto of my trips is "One Must Travel to Learn."  It was a quote from Mark Twain and even though he lived many years ago, it still has relevance today.  While we are stuck at home, Twain believed the best experiences one could have came from stepping away from our comforts and experiencing what the world had in front of us.  This blog has always maintained that its readers, whether they've been traveling or not, learn from the interconnectedness of our modern world.   

A large group of Sachems...headed to England and France in 2015

Here is what to expect for the next twelve days...I will be writing a brief explanation of what we would be doing that day.  There will be links to the different museums and exhibits we might have visited.  I will share photos from these places...usually from my past trips, but sometimes taken from the web.  I will talk a little about the food, the cultural connections we will make, and I will probably throw in a pun or two when appropriate.  The posts will probably be shorter than if we were on sight, but will give a glimpse of what to expect.  

Can you Belize that this group of Saugus kids had just landed in Belize! (Also in 2015)

We were supposed to depart today.  We never received our flight times or our airlines, but we were supposed to be meeting at Logan Airport today. My best guess is that we would have been meeting at around 5pm unless our flight was delayed by this snow storm.  We probably had a flight to Frankfurt and tomorrow, we'd be connecting to our first stop, Berlin.

I want to pretend, in a way, that we have traveled and so, beginning tomorrow, the posts will read much more like we were there than this one.  I hope I entertain and educate.  I just wish our group ran into other Saugus students like we did in 2015 when Ms. Morando's group and ours had the same departure day and left within two hours of each other from the same Logan terminal...I caught this shot of Mr. Valerio and myself.

Mr. Lavoie, currently in his office but wishing he was headed to Logan for the adventure of a lifetime!