Cadaques: Did Someone say “Beach”?

Our house in Cadaques was very close to the water and the beach, and the main square. We drove the car as close as we could to where our house was. We had to drag all of our luggage a couple of rocky streets up a hill to get to the house. I did not help bring anything in as I was still feeling sick from the ride. The house was an old fisherman’s house from the 1800’s, and was owned by a violinist. It had 4 floors. The first floor used to be where the fishermen kept their fish, and it had 2 couches. One of them we accidentally broke later on and repaired. The other one folded out into a bed. The whole house had 8 beds and could sleep 11 people. Also we had a mysterious room that had no door and no trap door: we could only see it through a window.

The next day I found out the world track and field championships were on, and my Dad let me watch TV for the first time since we were in Europe to watch them. So the coming week I spent a lot of my idle time in the morning watching the championships on TV. The next day, we went to a rocky beach, and my dad and I went snorkeling. When Lindsay went into the water she broke her sandals, and suddenly miraculously fit in mine... When we got back to the house my feet were all orange from my new orange sandals. The next day we went to a big waterpark that was a lot of fun. We spent the whole day there.

Then, we went to an old Greek and Roman city that is being excavated called Empuries. The name Empuries comes form the name “emporion” which means marketplace because it was a big trade city. Also, right outside the city, there was an amphitheater and – now this is pretty disgusting so brace yourselves – there was a penis carved on the walls of the city which was supposed to keep the city safe. There were also mosaics on a bunch of the old floors, and there were water tanks called cisterns that were made so well that they still held water in them – so the water they had in them could be thousands of years old. There were also still piers and breakwaters to protect the ships on the beach. The beach was so nice there that we decided to come back the next day just to stay on the beach. Before we left, my dad sent me out to buy some bread on my own, so we could make sandwiches. I came back with bread AND caps for a capgun! At the beach, my dad saw a foot-long fish jump out of the water in the waves. I lost a tooth at the restaurant taking out my retainer. I tried to put it in my baby sitter's plate as a surprise while she went to the bathroom but she figured it out.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Barcelona. We are going to stay there until the end of the year. Then we go to Paris in France.

Cavaillon: Baby Emperor

We finally arrived around noon. But when we looked in there were still a bunch of people in the pool playing around – nobody had left yet of the previous renters. We went to ask if this was even the right house, and found it was… We were told we could move in right then, but, as they were still cleaning the house, we decided to offload our huge luggage and go out to lunch.

When we came back everyone was gone. On the outside there were a very big garden, a croquet area, a ping pong table, a badminton court, a petanque court, a pool, an open pool house and an outdoor kitchen. On the inside downstairs, there was a huge living area with 4 big rooms linked together and a kitchen. In the far room there was a piano, a table, and a couch. In the next room, there was just one big table and chairs. In the next one there was another big couch, a TV, and an Xbox that did not work. The front room had plants and a big closet with lots of clothes and shoes. Then there was also a bathroom and a desk to the left. Upstairs there were 3 bathrooms and 7 bedrooms. Two of my cousins and my aunt shared the biggest bedroom with me. At night the same day my other French aunt and uncle arrived with my 3-year old cousin Clara and my newborn boy cousin Julian. For the first few days everybody was concentrating on Julian. He was named after a roman emperor.

In the whole week we only went out once. The rest of the time, we stayed at the house playing badminton, ping pong, all kinds of pool games and other outdoor games. A few nights into our stay, we had a fashion show using each other’s clothes and the clothes that were left in the house. My cousin Ariel (he is a boy) and I dressed up as girls, and my little brother dressed up as a little girl with a purse. My cousin Morane (she is a girl) dressed up as Michael Jackson, my cousin Clara dressed up as a witch (although she looked more like a pirate), my aunt dressed up as Michael Moore and my baby sitter Lindsay also dressed up as a boy. The next day we went out to watch the movie Ratatouille that my French family had not seen yet (but I had). The bathrooms in that movie theater are like dungeons: we have to go down two flights of stairs then there is a long deserted hallway.

The next day my cousins Ariel and Morane, my uncle Michel and I went out to play golf. My uncle Michel and I kept breaking tees and my cousin Ariel kept pushing them into the ground. My cousin Morane was the only one who was not damaging them at all. Then on the way back we ate some pastries and pizza. French pastries are really good! That was our last day at the house in Cavaillon. The next day we left for Cadaques in Spain. As we were ready to leave I started feeling sick, so my Mom turned the AC in the van while we waited 20 minutes for my Dad. Right as my dad got back, I threw up. For the whole trip I had a garbage bag by my side so that I could get sick as needed. When we were almost in Spain I did it again, and we had to stop at Carrefour (a big French chain of supermarkets) to let me feel better and also buy me some medication. That was the end of our week in France.

Milan: Midnight Rest

Yesterday evening we got to the hotel at 7:30pm. Then the people at the hotel came out and asked my dad to show everyone’s passport. My dad got really mad at them because he did not think that they needed to know all the stuff that was in them. He got out of it by ending up only showing them his passport. Then we moved in, and placed our huge pile of luggage in a corner of the room. After we were all in, my dad went out to get dinner for us. While he was out, Lindsay, Kaelan and I went into the pool. Then we came back, dried off and watched the news on TV. At that time, my dad came back with sandwiches for everybody.

We had to get up early the next day so as to arrive in time in Cavaillon, France, where we were going to meet my French family, so we turned in. My mom flew back into Milan Malpensa airport and arrived at the hotel while we were asleep.

I woke up this morning at 3:30am, exactly when my dad said we should, while everybody else was asleep. At the moment I did not know what time it was so I did not wake anybody else up. After a half hour I woke up my mom as I was a bit scared, and asked what time it was. The clock she had showed 3:00am (it was still on London time) so we waited for a bit, then woke everyone else up. Then we found out that is was already past 4:00am and had to rush to pack up and leave.

Rome Vatican City: Lindsay’s Flimsy

Today we visited the Vatican. My aunt Babette left really early that morning to get in line for the museum of the Vatican. The line was about 8 blocks long and it was very wide by the time we arrived. We thought you could get in at a quarter to nine, but when we got there we found out you could only go in at 10:30… Thankfully my aunt was about 50 people away from the front of the line. When the museum opened there was a gigantic crowd, and we got pushed all the way to the Sixtine Chapel. In the Sixtine Chapel, there were paintings all the way up the walls and the ceiling. My Dad showed me what everyone of Michelangelo’s pictures was and meant.

There is a guy in the painting with a story that goes with him. In the painting he has jackass ears and he is in hell. What happened was that he did not like that Michelangelo painted nude people. He went to the Pope and asked him if he could put a veil over the nude people and the Pope said yes. Then the Pope asked Michelangelo to finish the paintings, and when Michelangelo finished painting the painting we were looking at, he drew the guy with jackass ears in hell. Then the guy went back to the Pope and said:”Michelangelo drew me with jackass ears in hell. Could you make him change it?” Because the Pope did not really like him and he kept asking to Pope for favors, the Pope just said: “I am sorry, my powers don’t extend to hell, so I can’t help you.” So he is still in the painting in hell with jackass ears!!!

After the Sixtine Chapel we went to see a bunch of renaissance paintings. Then we went to the Courtyard for a bit. Then we went back into the antique museum, which had a bunch of Greek and Roman statues in it. That’s when Lindsay (my babysitter) got flimsy: she decided to go ahead of us and, when my Mom and I caught up with her, she was standing in a certain spot crying. She looked like she was having a heart attack. She kept saying she really needed to get out, so we took her outside, and figured she had got claustrophobic in the museum, a fear of being in enclosed spaces. She says that what got her feeling that way was that there were too many people and they weren’t moving fast.

After that we just decided to leave. First we went to the Piazza San Pietro, then we walked along the river Tiber for over a mile until we finally found a place to each lunch in the Trastevere, a district where there were lots of restaurants. That was the day when Lindsay got flimsy on us!

Rome: Gelato is our Motto

We arrived in Rome last Saturday and are staying here for a week. We live in an old apartment building from the 16th century, with a very nice apartment, and we are almost right next to the Roman Forum. We were across the piazza from the Tarpeian Rocks, where traitors got thrown off to their death by the Romans.

First we went to the Roman Forum. I saw the arc de triumph of Emperor Trajan, and the arc de triumph of Emperor Titus. On the arc de triumph of Titus, there is a sculpture of the menorah of the temple that was destroyed by the Romans. There was an enormous column of Emperor Trajan, where they sculpted all of the stories of his conquests. We saw the Cloaca Maxima, which is the main sewer system of the Romans, and is still used today: you can smell it! The whole forum is like a big park, where some of it is fenced off, and there are ruins in the fenced-off parts and everywhere. There are ruins of temples, and where people used to meet, and the Roman senate.

Right behind the Roman forum is the Colosseum, a big amphitheater. The Colosseum was built so that you could put beasts in there, humans in there, and you could even flood it so you could have ships fighting each other in it. The Colosseum was not very interesting or amazing but it was still worth seeing. It got its name from the statue of emperor Nero that was next to it. Since the statue was colossal, they named the amphitheater colossal too.

Next we went to the Capitoline hill which was right by our apartment. It had a big windy street to go up to the top. It was the holiest hill in Rome. That is the hill where the geese were that gave the alarm to the Romans when the Gauls attacked Rome. On the Capitoline Hill there is the statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius riding on a horse that is all made of bronze. In the museum next to it, there is a statue of a dying Gaul that was all made of marble.

We spent a whole day walking around town, from pizza to piazza, and that evening we went to the Piazza di Spagna and the fountain of Trevi. We had ice cream at the Piazza Navona. We also stopped to see the Pantheon. It is a huge circular roman building, with a dome and a hole at the top, and the coffin of Raphael.

The best museum in Rome is the National Museum. It was almost deserted. In it we saw lots of famous statues, like an old Greek boxer all made of bronze. We also saw a marble statue of a man throwing the discus at the Olympics. There were also lots of mosaics and paintings that looked like they were very hard to make, and we also went into a room that was completely painted on the walls with one garden.

In Rome we have been eating gelato at least once a day. Gelato is basically ice cream, except it is a lot better and not exactly the same: Italian gelato is the best ice cream in the world. Last night we ate crepes on an island on the Tiber, while we reclined on pillows on the ground, which I hear is more or less how Romans used to eat.

Florence

Today we went to Florence. During the Renaissance, Florence was a very rich city that had very good artists. The most powerful family was the Medici. The most powerful and famous of the Medici was Lorenzo the Magnificent who is called a prince of the Renaissance even though he is not a prince since Florence was a republic. In the times of Lorenzo, Florence had the best artists, like Michelangelo Buonarotti, Benvenuto Cellini, Leonardo da Vinci, and Botticelli.

In the main square, called the Piazza de la Signoria, there were many famous statues there. There was a replica of the David by Michelangelo (we also saw the real one in a museum in Florence), there was the Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini, a big Poseidon, and many other statues including antique roman statues.

We also saw the so-called Gates of Hell by Ghiberti. They are in front of the Duomo (the cathedral of Florence), they were very famous in the Renaissance, and it took 20 years to make them. They had very good ice cream by the Duomo. Then we walked around the city, then we went to a very good museum called the Uffizi that had lots of Renaissance paintings and also roman statues. There was also a room called the Botticelli room with paintings of the Birth of Venus and Spring, and my father said the room must be worth over a billion dollars!!!

Rigomagno, Tuscany: 1, 2, 3, 4, Tomato Sauce

On Saturday I met up with my aunt, two of my cousins, my grandma and her friend Jojo in a little village in Tuscany called Rigomagno. My friends Amy and Aaron were also there with me. There we played in the pool a lot and, and also played a lot of card games. On Sunday evening we went to another town called Lucignano for dinner, where my friend Aaron found a bee in his food. It was a fried, or maybe a baked, bee. By the way the bee was not supposed to be there! There was a sign for a zoo that my Mom tried to take my little brother to the next day, but we found out that the actual zoo was another 50 kilometers away. So my mom played with Kae at the park. Also my friend taught my brother to say “1, 2, 3, 4, tomato sauce” and from then on my brother said that every two minutes…

My parents went to Cortona, a pretty old town, but I stayed home to have a watergun fight with my cousins. Then we visited a bigger town called Sienna, which is exactly the way it used to be in the Renaissance. We spent the whole day there. It had a big square and lots of museums and another beautiful Duomo. We visited an old hospital with very old frescoes. Some of the frescoes had people getting surgery with animals around them, and also giving bread to the poor.

Today we visited a small town called San Gimignano. In San Gimignano there are lots of towers that were built by rich families in the Renaissance. The town is also completely the same as it used to be then. There is a beautiful Duomo and good food. I also tried ice cream from the 2006 gelato world champion, but I did not like it. I went to a torture museum where I almost threw up and I wish I had not gone there. Tomorrow we are going to Florence and Saturday we are leaving for Rome.

Milan: Pizza Pizza

We’ve been here for almost four weeks. These are some of the things I have found out. People here eat a lot of pizza, and a lot of ice cream, and the weather is really, really hot. There are four different parts of a meal: antipasti (appetizers), primi piatti (first plate, it’s always pasta or risotto), secundi piatti (second plate), and dolci (dessert). My little brother learned the word antipasti. Whenever we say it a bit wrong, he always says: “No, it is AntiPASti”!

My babysitter always goes to places called Internet cafes where you can go on the internet, which were very very boring for Kaelan and me, because all we would be would be sit there and wait for about an hour. She took us with our Dad to the Duomo, which is the cathedral for Milan, which, by the way, is really called Milano. We also went to a castle called the Castello Sforzesco. By the way, the way it got its name was that the duke of Milan, named Visconti, asked a mercenary called Sforza to become the general of his army. Then when the duke died, instead of his son becoming the new duke, Sforza had the son killed and became duke himself. That is pretty mean!

Another day we went to the Da Vinci Museum. It showed all the machines that Leonardo Da Vinci invented. That same day, we saw the painting “The Last Supper”. It shows Jesus and the disciples having the Passover dinner, which may have been the last one they were together, I am not sure. In the last supper, Jesus has just said “one of you will betray me”, so everybody and asking people questions and looking at each other trying to figure out who is going to do it. I did not like the painting very much. This may be because the painting is very damaged, because he used the wrong pigments.

I read a lot during this trip, because, a lot of the time, we were just sitting around at the house. Tomorrow we are leaving for good for Tuscany.