Feb 11, 2011
Dear Parents & Participants
I want to thank the 21 parents/participants who
responded to our request for feedback as of Feb. 9. Your willingness to be flexible and to trust
us with a difficult decision has made our choice much easier.
As you read below, we offered you a significant
alteration to the itinerary by dropping the UK leg of our tour and revamping
the France/Holland portion of the trip. We took your feedback to Brightspark
Travel who were very willing to re-examine their scheduling and offer us
solutions. I want to assure you that they were very amenable to our
request.
Brightspark went back to work and were able to
negotiate a direct flight from Toronto to London on
November 10th @ 18:25 EST, arriving in London
@ 6:30am UK
time, via British Airways (BA). The cost of this direct flight is very
comparable to the Air France connecting flights on which we were originally
scheduled. Consequently, we have decided to take this option and stick to the
original itinerary distributed in May 2010; the one that does not include Paris.
We will still require a connecting flight from Amsterdam to Toronto via London en route home on November 19th, but the
layover in London in a very short time and will
still have us scheduled to arrive in Toronto
at 15:00 EST on November 20th.
I know that students/participants who had begun
to get their heart set on Paris may be disappointed by this decision, but in
light of the feedback we received and your overall flexibility in permitting us
to make the final decision, we trust that any disappointment now will be
trumped by the exhilaration of the entire tour.
A Final
Itinerary will be available by March 1st all-being-well. Please
don’t hesitate to call me at 519-925-3834 or email me at neil.orford@ugdsb.on.ca
Again, my thanks to you for your on-going
support.
N. Orford