Grand Tour, Day 28: Roma Sunday

After we woke up, we went to the Roman Forum and got audio guides. The Forum was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. And there was less shade!

On our three-hour walk, we saw the Temple of Julius Caesar, which used to be beautiful, but now it is reduced to a few mere pillars. 

In the background of the picture above, you can see Palatine Hill. Palatine Hill was the home of the Emperor Domitan. Half of it was for the public, and half of it was for Domitan. Beginning in time of Augustus, emperors started building their homes there.

Above is what used to be the Temple of Castor and Pollux. Castor and Pollux are the sons of Jupiter and Leda.

Above you see me standing in front of the Arc of Constantine.

After we our walk, we went to lunch. Then we got ice cream. I got frutti di bosco and strawberry.

After eating our ice cream, we went to the Colosseum. We got audio guides and I learned some new things:

1. Sometimes they put naked men in the arena.

2. They put elephants in the arena.

3. The Colosseum used to be made out of marble. I was very surprised about this fact.

After hearing about the Colosseum, I was a little sad because of how many innocent people died there.

After spending some time in the Colosseum, we were walking to our hotel when we saw a procession that a police officer told us the Pope was going to be in. There were nuns, children, and men and women walking in the Procession. They were all holding candles. I saw four men carrying a throne. We thought we were going to see the Pope, but he was already inside the church.

While we were watching we went to get ice cream. I got frutti di bosco and banana. It was tasty!

Once the procession passed, we went back to our hotel.

Grand Tour, Day 27: Roma Saturday

When we woke up on the train, we still hadn't arrived in Rome. I was feeling sick, so I did not eat breakfast. I read on my sister’s Kindle.

We had the lights out because Nina was sleeping, so when we went through a tunnel, it was pitch black. Nina finally woke up, so we turned the lights on,  and then we made it to Rome.

We left the train station and then went to our hotel. We dropped our bags off and then took a taxi to the Vatican. I did not like the taxi because I was already feeling a little bit sick, and the bumpy roads did not help.

We got to the Vatican, and I felt like I was going to throw-up. Then my dad poured water on my head, and I felt better.

We had to wait in line to get tickets to the Vatican Museum, and while we were waiting, we took turns playing on my mom’s phone. Also, while we were waiting, people kept coming up to us and trying to sell us "skip the line" tickets, and they were very annoying because they would not give up.

Then we made it to the Vatican. We got audio guides, and on them there was a hunt for paintings.


The painting above was made by Caravaggio. It is also one of the paintings that is in the Study Blue flashcard set that I used before we came to Europe to get ready for the museums that we were going to visit.


My most memorable panting was "The School of Athens" by Raphael. We saw it on our way to the Sistine Chapel. In "The School of Athens," you see Plato and Aristotle walking down the steps. You see either Euclides or Archimedes talking to some students. On the far right, you see what people think is Raphael with a black hat. You can also see what is thought to be Raphael with feminine features on the left.


In the Sistine Chapel, the audio guide to look at the man holding up the skin of a person. The skin's face is the face of Michelangelo. I thought that was pretty gruesome.


Once we left the Vatican, we went to get ice cream. I got lemon and strawberry. I regretted getting the lemon because it was too sour for my tastes.


Then we walked to the Fontana di Trevi. If you throw a coin in, you are sure to come back to Rome. My mom had already thrown a coin in twice. We all threw coins in this time.

Then we went and ate dinner. I had spaghetti. After dinner, while we were walking home, we saw a half-marathon. There were a lot of people in it. I think it would be cool to run in a half-marathon, but not in Rome because it would be so hot.

While we were waiting for the half-marathon to pass, we saw part of Augustus’ forum. We saw a video that showed us what the forum used to look like.

Then we took a taxi to our hotel.

Grand Tour, Day 26: Austria

The most memorable thing we did in Austria was go to Zell-Am-See and walk in the Alps. We started off by taking a train from Salzburg to Zell-Am-See.


The train ride was beautiful. We rode by a river and through mountains.

When we got to Zell-Am-See, we took a bus to a place where you could take a chair lift up to a trail in the Alps.


We took the chairlift, and you could see everything. Then the fog came, and you could see nothing. I was with my dad and Pablo.

At the top, there was a playground, so we went to play on it. There was a big slide that had a sign by it that said if there was a puddle at the end, do not slide, or something like that. There was water, but I still slid on it. It was fun. There was also a pretty short zip line. That was also fun.

After playing, we walked to the top of one of the mountains. Almost at the very end, there was a big hill. My dad asked me if I could run up to the top without stopping. I almost did, but I got gassed at the very end.


Once we got to the “top," my dad and I went to the very top.


I got a big rock and put it on top of the peak, to make the mountain taller.

As we were walking back down to the chair lift, my dad stopped and said to Pablo “You see that?" My mom, Nina, and I turned around because we thought that it was gold or something valuable. Then my dad said, “That’s poop.” We thought that was very funny.

We made it back to the chair lift and we rode back down. This time, I rode with my mom and Pablo. We got to the bottom, and then we were walking away, and my dad said “Do you want to do that again?” Everyone said yes, so we went again.

On the way up I was riding with my dad, and he saw bananas on one of the trees.

On the way back down, I was riding with my dad, but we were close to my mom, so I shouted to her to look, and she saw the bananas.


After we got down, we went back on the bus and took the train back to Salzburg.


When we got to Salzburg, we walked around the old city.


On our walk, we went to the place where the Von Trapp family hid from the Nazis in The Sound of Music.

Also, we saw a big chess board and big chess pieces. Somebody was playing a game, so Pablo gave one of the players advice that was probably not needed.


Then we took a train that went up a very steep slope to an old castle. We walked up some steps, and we got to a courtyard.


In the courtyard, there was a little town with no people--just houses. We took a few pictures, and then we retraced our steps and found a telescope that you could look through and see how far away some famous cities were. For example, if you looked south, it would tell you how far away Rome was.


Then we got on the train to Rome, which, this time, did not leave us. My mom and I played Desesperado and she won. Then we went to bed on the train. I slept on the top bunk on one side.

Grand Tour, Day 25: Munich

When we got on the train to go to the train station that was going to take us to Munich, we rode in the place where you put your bicycles.


When we got to Munich, we went on a walk through the city center. We got ice cream, and then Nina and I raced through a grassy field. Then we went back to the train station, and we waited for our train to arrive. Our train didn't arrive, and we found out that there was a sixty minute delay. So we waited for the train to come. 

While we were waiting, I went to check when the train would arrive, and the board said "+40" instead of  "+60." I told my mom what it said, and she said that it was just counting down the minutes, but I thought that instead of a 60-minute delay there was going to be a 40-minute delay.

When the train didn't come, we went and asked, and they said the train had left. My dad asked if there were any open spots on the train to Rome the next day, and they said there were none. I was scared that we were going to have to skip Rome.

Then they said that were six spots in the same room, and my dad said we would take them. My dad didn't want to spend another day in Munich, so he asked if the train stopped in Salzburg. They said yes, and my dad if there was a train to Salzburg that night. They said yes, so we took the train to Salzburg.

Once we got there, we went to our hotel, and we found out that abuela broke her arm.

Grand Tour, Day 24: Berlin Wednesday

Once we woke up, we went to the laundromat to wash and dry our clothes. I played on my mom’s phone and read Trials of Apollo on my Kindle while we waited. We had to wait almost two hours.


After we dropped our clothes off at the Hostel, we went to the Keiser Wilhelm church which had been bombed during World War II by the British.

Then we took a subway to a station near the Jewish Museum. We ate lunch at a pizza place, and my dad got lentil soup that I really liked.  I also ate pizza.


Then we walked to the Jewish Museum. Once we got there, we walked through a place where the ground was slanted and there were 49 pillars that you could walk in between. It was supposed to make you disoriented to help you understand how it would feel if you were a Jew and you moved from Germany to another country because of the bad things that were happening in Germany. It did its job well.

In the Museum there was a room with a whole bunch of metal plates that had holes in them to make them look like faces. It was supposed to signify Jews who suffered during the Holocaust. When you step on the metal plates, you hear a scraping noise that echoes around the room.

The Museum made me feel sad for the Jews who were killed during the Holocaust.



After we left the Museum, we went to Checkpoint Charlie. I got a pin that said "Checkpoint Charlie" on it for my friend Charlie. We also got ice cream. I had blackberry. It was awesome!

Then we saw the sculpture above. I thought that it was very weird, and I wished that I could climb it.

After we saw the sculpture, we walked through the Tiergarten again. There we saw a memorial to the homosexual people who died during WWII.



The picture above is the train station that we walked through a couple of times on our trip.

After we walked through the train station, we went to Aldi to get dinner. I was pretty surprised to see an Aldi in Germany. Then my mom told me that Aldi is a German store.

After we bought dinner, we went back to the youth hostel, and I had a plum, granola, chips, and a smoothie.

Here is a list of my favorite things I did today:
1. Eating ice cream
2. Reading The Trials of Apollo at the laundromat
3. Walking through the Tiergarten again
4. Visiting the Jewish museum

Grand Tour, Day 23: Berlin Tuesday

We went to the train station to eat breakfast and get information. I had a triple chocolate muffin, and a fruit cup. Then we took a train to an island with a museum on it. The museum was called the Pergamon Museum.



In this museum, we saw the Ishtar Gate. The gate was built during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.


On it are are animals such as lions, tigers and elephants.

Another thing we saw was a gate to an important market that was built in the second century. It is much bigger than it appears in the picture above.

After we left the museum, we went to see a statue of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. We took a few pictures and then went to the Brandenburg Gate.


Then we went to the Monument for Murdered Jews. In the Monument for Murdered Jews, there are a lot of blocks of stone to signify graves. You could also go underground to learn more. In the first room, you see some things some Jews said during the war. One of them was a letter from a mother to her children. The second room was about how old some kids were when they died, and how they died. One of the kids was nine years old when he died. The third room was about nine families that had at least one survivor. The one my dad and I read was about a Polish family where the dad and the son survived. The mother and the two daughters died in a concentration camp. At first, I skipped the whole thing because it was too sad, but my dad wanted me to come back so I could learn about it, so I did. It made me sad because millions of innocent people were killed because the Nazis were racist.

Once we left the Monument, we went to the Tiergarten, a big park. We saw a statue that had Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn. Then we went and had dinner at the train station. I got pizza. After dinner, we went to the Youth Hostel and read and journaled.

Here is a list of my favorite things I did today:
1. Going through the Pergamon
2. Walking through the Tiergarten
3. Walking through the Monument for the Murdered Jews

Grand Tour, Day 22: Trier

After having rice cakes and bread for breakfast, we went to Karl Marx’s birthplace.


We got audio guides, and we learned about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx had seven children, and only one of them lived to be over 40. One of his daughters committed suicide. All three of Marx’s sons died before they turned ten, one of them being still-born.

Marx thought that the workers of the world should rebel against the owners of the factories so that they could get paid more.  Marx didn't like capitalism, so he wrote a book about why capitalism was bad. That book is Das Kapital. The first volume of Das Kapital was published before Marx's death, but the remaining volumes were published after his death.

I like Karl Marx because he wrote books about what he thought. Even though he advocated for violence, he didn't actually commit any violent actions himself.
 
After we left Marx’s birthplace, we went to the train station. Then we went to Koln and stayed there for one hour.


While we were there we looked at a cathedral. It was tall! We had to carry our bags along with us because we didn't want to pay money for lockers.

Then we got on a train to Berlin. It took five hours to get there, so by the time we got there it was already 10:30 p.m.! Then we took a taxi to the Youth Hostel we were staying in. The taxi driver got mad at me for some reason.

Here is a list of my favorite things I did today:
1. Riding on the trains
2. Karl Marx’s birthplace
3. Seeing the cathedral