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Educational trips are a great way to see new places and learn in new environments. School trips can be an essential part of the educational experience. If you sing in a choir, or are part of a school band or orchestra, there are some amazing music based trips that could send you almost anywhere.

Education Through Music
Whilst sports based or activity based school trips are quite a normal thing, trips based around a musical tour are rather new. If you are part of a school or college band, choir or orchestra, there are trips available that could see you perform in live venues whilst also learning and exploring the local musical history and culture. Depending on your musical style and your destination, you could be performing in regal churches or in lively music festivals. Wherever you choose, you will build your confidence as you get real practice in front of a genuine audience. Take your school band on a real music tour and learn as you perform.

Why Not Try New Orleans?
Explore the Cajun culture in charismatic New Orleans. Choirs will find themselves singing in beautiful churches or overlooking the banks of the Mississippi, whilst school bands could end up playing at the Music Legends Park in the famous French Quarter. When you are not performing take a New Orleans Ghost Tour in "America's Most Haunted City" and take the Roots Of Jazz tour to learn about the masters who paved the way.

What About A Trip To France?
Stay in Paris and explore one of the world's culture and fashion capitals. Paris has a number of amazing parks with auditoriums for choir and orchestral performances and its churches are some of the most famed in the world. Arrange for your school to sing in beautiful historic surroundings such as Notre Dame or La Madeleine. For a slightly different musical education experience, you can even join the musical performers at Disneyland Paris for the day.

Prague Might Be Just Perfect
For orchestras in particular, Prague might have the most spectacular location you could find. Home to the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, stunning Dvorrk Hall is about the grandest venue you will ever find. Larger choirs or school orchestras would be able to put on a real once in a lifetime performance in a space of this magnitude. If your designs are not quite so grand, Prague is home to many more amazing venues and halls for performances of all kinds.

Educate And Entertain
If your students or kids are excelling at music it is a wonderful talent to be able to encourage. Educational school trips to somewhere exciting with the added bonus of putting on proper performances in front of real crowds could be an amazing opportunity for growth. Getting to learn the theory and the history of music is great, but really it is in the actual playing, singing and creating that people lose themselves. By combining a real musical tour with stops at museums and places of historical interest, you get both the fun and the facts.

AUTHOR BIO
Rob Gibson writes for a number of blogs on educational travel, as well as both online and print travel magazines. To get more information on educational school trips visit this page regularly for more updates.

Summer holidays need not always involve a beach. Why not try something a little more adventurous and head inland for a safari, to see some of the world's biggest, most beautiful mammals in their natural habitat? This article outlines some of the options for a great safari.

What Exactly Is A Safari?

The word 'safari' was adopted from the Swahili word for journey. Many people envisage a trip to eastern Africa when they imagine a safari and often they travel to a Swahili-speaking country; Kenya or Tanzania, for example. It is a generally an overland journey and could be in a car or on foot. The assumption in modern English is the aim of seeing big game.

For a truly authentic journey, why not take African safari holidays off the beaten track? Uganda, Botswana or Malawi all have spectacular scenery and wildlife, but a less developed tourist industry. Camping might still involve canvas, but make no mistake, the current demand for luxury accommodation means tents may well have real beds and en-suite bathrooms.

Choose Your Destination Carefully.

Taking the example of Malawi as an up and coming destination for African safari holidays, what does the country have that more established destinations do not? It is called "the warm heart of Africa" for more than just its physical location; the people are friendly and very welcoming and want to show you their country.

Mount Mulanje is the highest mountain in central Africa. Lake Malawi is known as the "Lake of Stars," or the "Calendar Lake," because it is 365 miles long at its longest point and 52 miles wide at its widest. The Lake is home to hundreds of species of cichlid fish, many of which are only found in Malawi. Snorkelling or diving is a must during a stay at the lake, although advice should be sought on location if you are travelling independently, because it is also home to large populations of hippos and crocodiles.

And What About The Big Game?

Malawi's Liwonde National Park is home to herds of elephants that can often be seen playing in the Shire River. A boat safari is a great way to see some of the many species of bird, as well as getting very close to the hippos!

Poaching put an end to Liwonde's lion prides, but a conservation project sees the park home to a very small number of black rhinos, now a critically endangered species. For a better chance of seeing all the Big Five (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant and rhino) consider including some time in Luangwa National Park, in neighbouring Zambia.

The beauty of a safari is that there are few guarantees. The animals are wild, not accustomed to seeing people. The possibility of coming across them in their natural environment beats seeing any of them in a zoo. The romanticism of being at one with nature, a tiny being in the vastness of the wilderness, is unmatchable and must be one of the best reasons for leaving the beach behind and going on safari.

AUTHOR BIO:

Alice Aires is a regular contributor on various travel-related topics for a range of websites and blogs. She recently discovered Malawi when she took her family on the first of many African safari holidays.