School Tours School Tours 
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School tours have been an integral part of life in Our Lady's Bower for many years. Gone are the days when the tour groups hauled themselves by ferry and coach to the distant lands of The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and Switzerland, to name just a few of the places visited.
In recent years, groups have taken to the air,
saving time and energy, and have visited such places as London and Paris on
umpteen occasions, Barcelona, Rome and Sorrento.
Perhaps the most momentous air trip was in post Christmas 1991 when 65 pupils and teachers descended on Leningrad and Moscow. It was in the days before glasnost and perestroika when just about everything that could go wrong with a trip...did. A pupil had her appendix out and the school chaplain was arrested by the KGB dealing in dollars on the black market to name but two examples. Is there anyone out there who remembers the trip?
Long live school tours.
PARIS 2000 Student Accounts
Paris was the place to be in Winter 1999-2000. The city hosted three invasions of Bower girls. Transition Year, second and fifth years all brought their own rapporteurs
and what follows are the highlights of the three trips."The excitement started when 51 Bower girls met in the senior school at three o’clock in the morning! Along with the five teachers who turned up on time, Mr Higgins, Ms Donnelly, Ann-marie, Ms Kavanagh and Ms McCormack, all of whom looked as bright and cheerful as ever! Spirits were ‘high’ on the journey to Dublin. We arrived at the airport a student and the one and only French- speaking teacher missing!
After checking in, we all got a fantastic surprise when we saw our transition co-ordinator had sped the whole way to Dublin just to wave us off!! Just as the plane was about to take off Mr Bean, or I mean Mr Behan, made a dramatic entrance, with a guitar in one hand and a boarding pass in the other!"
Sarah Feeney and Claire O’Toole’s start to their Paris tour, though dramatic, was not as glamorous as that recounted by Jennifer Finnegan, 2X
"We found some ‘celebs’ from the previous night’s MTV Awards including Geri Haliwell, Puff Daddy, Blur, The Honeyz, Phats and Small. After getting autographs and photographs we prepared ourselves for our next big thrill, ‘The Flight’, which luckily passed uneventfully. …
We went to the Eiffel Tower, and at the very top in freezing weather we saw a man proposing to his girlfriend. What did she say? What do you think? It’s the city of love!
Early starts were a feature of all three excursions. Well after all, there is a lot to see and do in Paris. Emily Seery’s breathless account of a day goes as follows:
"09. 45hrs: Musée D’Orsay. It’s too early for words!
Later: 15.00 hrs: Our tour took us to l’Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs Elysées to the Place de La Concorde, down to the Louvre Museum, famous for the Mona Lisa and other pieces of Art, to the Jardins des Tuileries. All that in one hour. We were already tired…".
Aquaboulevard was the perfect antidote to all the art.. Jennifer tells the story: "On the third day we rose bright, early and full of energy. We were going to Aquaboulevard. We had a brilliant time and afterwards enjoyed our first taste of real food. Where would you be without Mc Donalds?
That night we headed off to Montmartre and the Sacré Coeur. While driving through the "red light district" some people couldn’t keep their cameras still. We walked up many, many steps to the Sacré Coeur and went in and prayed. We went to the Place du Tertre and had portraits and caricatures drawn. On our way back to the bus we got separated into two groups. One ended safely back at the bus, but the other group became lost, with no phones, no phone numbers, and no French….oops!!! Eventually, after running up and down many steps we arrived at the bus to find girls, and Mrs. Divilly, who thought we had been abducted. No such luck! Back to the hotel for some very sound sleep."
All three groups shared the same enthusiasm for Disneyland where even teachers grow young again. "At ten o’clock on a misty morning in November forty hyper teenagers ran through the gates of Disneyland Paris in a burst of energy, to the sounds of songs from Fantasia and other magical Disney films."
Emily summed it up thus: "Five or six hours of complete and utter fun. Brilliant!"
Sarah concludes: We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the teachers, especially Mr. Higgins, who put in so much time and effort into organising Paris 2000. This was definitely an experience we’ll never forget. We have photographs and souvenirs to help the memories live on, although some of these photographs we wish hadn’t been taken!