New York Big Apple Discovery Winter Camp for Teens

This is a city discovery trip rather than a language course. Zigotours, a French youth-travel operator with almost four decades of experience, runs a seven-day winter programme in New York for young people aged fourteen to seventeen, travelling as a supervised group of between twelve and twenty-four participants with one adult for every eight young people. The week is organised by district. Downtown covers the first orientation in the city by subway, a boat trip at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, the Wall Street business district, Ground Zero and the immigration museum on Ellis Island. Midtown brings Greenwich Village and SoHo with their evening atmosphere, Rockefeller Center and Grand Central, Chinatown and Little Italy, and a Broadway musical. Uptown is Central Park, Fifth Avenue and its department stores, St Patrick's Cathedral, the SUMMIT observation deck on the Vanderbilt tower and Times Square after dark. Museum visits are agreed with the group, with the Met, MoMA and the Museum of Natural History among the options, and a college baseball or basketball game is included depending on the fixture list. The group sleeps in a youth hostel in the Queens district, three hundred metres from Queensboro Plaza subway station and four stops from Times Square. Rooms are single-sex and sleep two to four people, each with its own shower and toilet, and the group has a shared common room. Breakfast is taken at the hostel, lunch is a picnic carried during the day, and dinner is eaten in small restaurants around the city. Return flights from Paris with a stopover, airport transfers, an unlimited weekly subway pass, meals, accommodation, the guided programme and the excursions are part of the package. Departure from a regional city instead of Paris can be arranged for a published supplement, and each option is listed separately as an extra on this page. Travel documents are the family's responsibility: a passport valid beyond the return date, a signed exit authorisation for a minor travelling without parents and an approved ESTA are required for the United States. Movement inside the city is entirely by public transport, which suits teenagers who want to experience New York the way it is actually lived rather than through a coach window. Availability, dates and prices may change; please confirm details before making travel arrangements.