Austria

We only stayed in Austria for one day so this blog is going to be very short.

After leaving Neuschwanstein we weren't in the car for long until we crossed the border into Austria. Then it was a 1 to 2 hour drive to a place called Innsbruck (pronounced insbrook), which was where we were staying the night.

Germany

After saying goodbye to our cousins, Aunty and Uncle we went for a big drive to Germany and stayed in a hotel in a place called Stuttgart. We stayed there for one night. In the morning we packed our things and got in the car. Half way to the next place that we were staying in we stopped and went to the Porshe Museum.

In one section there was some trophies hanging on wires. After going in the museum we went to the Porshe restaurant and had lunch. Then we drove to Munchen (pronounced mewnik). At Munchen we stayed in a hotel for one night then moved to an apartment (that was still in Munchen). That day we had a walk around after a while it got really cold and we were lucky that the place we went to was nice and warm. the place we went to was a beer hall (Germany is famous for a beer festival called Octoberfest and there is beer halls everywhere. The beer hall we went to was packed and noisy, and we only just found a table for us to sit at. At the beer hall me, Elki and Eden had lemonade. The glass was ENORMOUS and it was nearly filled to the top.

After drinking our half a litre of lemonade (or beer) each we went out into the cold again and got a hot chocolate. Then we walked back and ate big pretzels from the supermarket when we got home.

The day after we drove to a place called Dachau (pronounced dak-oww) and went to a concentration camp memorial site. There we got to go into a barrak (where the Jewish people would sleep), the bunker (a bit like a jail),

the gas chamber (disguised as showers and at Dachau luckily wasn't actually used) and much more stuff. At the concentration camp I learnt a lot but most is to sad and mean to say. After going to the concentration camp we went home. The day that we left Germany we went to Austria. When we were leaving the man that owned the apartment we were staying in told us that the hotel that we were staying in in Munchen before we came to the apartment had had a fire so if we had stayed there and not come to the apartment we might have had to be evacuated. After not long of being on the road we stopped to go to a castle. It is called Neuschwanstein (don't ask me how to pronounce it),

and its the most visited tourist attraction in Germany... so we visited it as tourists. Then we drove to Austria.

Paris

After taking the train back under the English Channel we drove to our apartment, where we would be staying in Paris and met our cousins and uncle (our aunty was already with us). In Paris we did some cool things like going up the Eiffel Tower,





going up Notre Dame,

going to the Louvre and seeing the Mona Lisa,

going to The Pantheon, going to Sacre Coeur,

went to a cool playground and at the same place hired little boats and pushed them around with long sticks

and went to the Arch de Triomphe, where all the Le Tour de France races end.

    

London

For the last couple of days we have been staying in London. In those days we have done some fun things like an awesome Doctor Who Experience (some of you might not know what Doctor Who is, well it's a T.V show),

went on the London Eye (the enormous ferris wheel), found Vegemite in a supermarket YAY! (you don't find Vegemite in Europe), went in the FREAKY London Dungeons,

These photos are always taken at the awkwardest moments

which had things about the plague (did you know that Ring-a-ring-a-rosy is about the plague!?), Bloody Mary and Jack the Ripper, saw Big Ben (did you know that big ben isn't actually the name of the clock or the tower it's the name of the bell at the top that is hit by a hammer every hour?), saw Buckingham Palace, saw some Harry Potter film locations

  and found vegetarian food YAY!

Liverpool VS Sunderland

Liverpool have scored and my ears have fallen off of my head. We are in Liverpool and at Anfield Stadium for the first game of the season: Liverpool FC verses Sunderland AFC. We are going for LIVERPOOL! And at the moment it is 1-0 to Liverpool. Yay! The crowd and noise is incredible and I can't see one seat empty. There are police lining the fence and some of them have those big, funny hats that make them look silly. Here I have a rating of the loudest noises:
Clapping when the ball goes out of the field: Loud
Clapping when someone misses a shot: Pretty Loud
OOOOOO when someone nicks a goal post or cross bar: Very Loud
Booooooo when someone does a fake trip: Ear Ringing
Yay when Sunderland scores: Ouch My Ears Hurt
WOHO when Liverpool scores: Eardrum Popping

At the end of the game the score was a 1-1 draw.
Suarez (pronounced s-w-a-rr-e-s) scored the goal for Liverpool and Larsson for Sunderland.

Here is a video of the goal for Liverpool that my mum took:

England

Just six days ago me, Mum, Dad, Eden and Elki caught a train underneath the English Channel from France to England. We had to drive our car onto the train. We have been staying in a little town called Winchcombe.

 In the last couple of days we have gone to the town called Bath where there are the Roman Baths,

Leicester, where we watched a roller derby bout (game),

Cheltenham, Bourton-on-the-water, where we went to a car museum that is the home of Brum (the little yellow vintage car that has been on T.V for about 20 years) and where Brum was filmed,

we did a murder mystery thingy in Winchcombe and then we drove to Oxford, where we went to Oxford University and saw some of the places where Harry Potter was filmed. This is the stairs where the children waited for Professor McGonagall to lead them into The Great Hall in the first movie.

Belgium

In Belgium we stayed in a town called Bruges. In Bruges me, Mum and Eden climbed 366 steps to a bell tower and while we were up there the bells chimed. It works like one of the little wind-up music boxes. In Bruges we also went on a boring canal tourist boat ride, I didn't think it was very interetsting, the only fun part was when I touched the water and the underneath of one of the bridges. We stayed in a big, cool three storey house with very, very steep steps. On one of the last days we went to a chocolate museum and in the museum I learned that people used to use cocoa beans as currency. You could get a rabbit for 10 cocoa beans and a servant for 100. Belgium is famous for their beer, waffles and chocolate. I got to try lots of weird flavours of chocolate like earl grey tea and basil.

 

France Amusement Park

After coming back from Barcelona we met my cousins, aunty, uncle and cousin's friend at an amusement park in France called Walibi. At Walibi there was things like rollercoasters, tea pot/cup rides, woven mat slippery slides, spinny chairs, pirate ships and pony rides. The amusement park is also a water park that has things like water guns, inflatable boat water slides, river rapids, log rides and sprinklers.
On the log ride we got a photo while we were going down the steep bit (below).

It was very fun at Walibi.

Barcelona

Hey,

I,ve been in Barcelona for the last 3 days and I've done some pretty cool things.For a start on the way to Barcelona, just in Spain we stopped in a place called Figueres and went to a art exhibition by a  man called Salvador Dali, who does art called surrealism, which means not real,unusual,different and that kind of stuff. After the exhibition we got in the car and drove the rest of the way to Barcelona. In Barcelona we have an apartment suite, which has a lounge room, kitchen, two rooms with two beds in each, two bathrooms and one of those bed lounges that I can't remember what they  are called. Also in Barcelona we saw church that has been built for 129 years and is still being built. It is called Le Sagrada Familia. Le Sagrada Familia had started to be built in 1882 and is thought to be finished in 2026, which is 100 years after the architect died (this is also called a centenary). The architect, Antonio Gaudi died in 1926, when he was hit by a tram and Gaudi's crypt is under the church. The day after going to Le Sagrada Familia me, Eden and dad went on a tour bus and sat on the top bit. On the bus they had earphones and lots of different languages so you could listen to the description of what you were going past and you know the history of it and all that stuff. We went past the Sagrada Familia, a house called Casa Batllo which has lots of pictures on it from tiles, a couple of medieval buildings and villages, the Barcelona Soccer Stadium and lots more.

I had a lot of fun in Barcelona.

                                                   Me hugging the Torres Agbar building
Lily

Portugal

I haven't been able to put up any posts for the last week because in Portugal we didn't have any Internet connections so sorry about that.

In Portugal I did a lot of sight-seeing. We went to a big church in Viseu, we went to a wind farm, a village called Pena, felt thermal spring water, (which is thought to have volcanic water in it), the new Benfica soccer stadium, (which is the biggest stadium in Portugal), a castle on the water in Belem, a big shopping centre that had a "Funcenter" in it that had a rollercoaster, a bowling alley and heaps and heaps of games. We also went to another shopping centre that had an enormous spurting fountain in the middle of it that went up all something like seven floors.

At the Benfica Stadium there was a big room that had hundreds of trophies in it and some were taller than me! Also in the Benfica Stadium we got to see the Benfica Eagle that was a real eagle that at games would do a lap of the stadium and then land on a perch in the middle of the stadium.The eagle hadn't actually done it at a real game yet because it is a new eagle than to the one that used to fly around the old stadium.The eagle is kind of like a mascot.We got to walk right around the Benfica Stadium and we saw an awesome, enormous Lego replica of the new stadium that was about two metres long. It also had heaps of little Lego figures in he crowd and on the pitch. There was one Lego figure taking a swing at goal.

I had a lot of fun in Portugal.

Lily

                                                               Lego replica of Benfica stadium.

 

Me pushing the castle in Belem, Lisbon.

17 Days To Go

Only 17 days to go until us girls leave to go to Portugal. I've got my Passport and ticket and have been working on my French. I might also have to work on my Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German.