Going to Bristol

After leaving London, we had to go to Bristol seeings it is such a lovely place. We went there in the morning from the flat and went for a couple of hours in the car to Bristol, stopping on the way for a toilet stop and a snack. As we arrived at our hotel, the Mercure, we were all pretty tired and worn out for some reason. So we all had a nice relax in our room for a bit and then went down to the indoor heated pool downstairs. It wasn't too cold, and it wasn't too warm. Just right for me.
After the swim we were refreshed and feeling a bit less tired so we went out to a lovely restaurant for supper. It had the option of doing a buffet of all the meals that you choose. Gosh, it was nice, let me tell you. It was called Shanghai Nights and the food was sensational.

An example of the delicious food.

Lovely food + Hunger = Satisfaction. A bit of easy maths there that I think most people could work out. So we went to bed that night with a nice full tummy and soft bed to sleep on...

Royal Wedding

Since we were in London at the time of the Royal Wedding (with Prince William and Catherine) you would think it would be a great opportunity to go to it and see it in reality. Yet, we were somehow in the flat with my grandparents watching it on the TV eating curry. I suppose it was grandpas' birthday, but that is beside the point. We should have gone to the wedding and actually seen the future king and queen that aren't just a bunch of pixels plopped on a slab of metal made fancy. Well, that is how I see TV.
I saw the wedding, all the same as I am sure most of you did, and saw every bit of it that they filmed. I got a few pictures of the TV screen (which is a bit silly, but oh well) and some of them were actually quite alright.



At the alter.



In the open topped carriage



The enormous crowd that I should have been part of.

 

Sealed with a kiss.

I actually didn't mind seeing it on the TV in the end, but would have much rather have gone to see it in real life.
What about you? Would you have prefered to go?

Putting with Family

Today we decided to do some putting and most of the family did some. Eight people, in fact, so we had two groups of four. I was with Grandpa, dad and my brother so the competition between us all was pretty big. I did very badly (extremely badly, really) because I didn't get one ball in. I had a bit of fun and it was a good way to pass time, anyway, so today was... well... alright, I suppose. But I wonder, would you have enjoyed it?

Curry!!!

The car trip last night was crazy. We drove to my grandma and grandpas' flat in London and I was falling asleep left, right and centre (seriously, I was flopping everywhere). When we arrived there, we got to stay in a guest room and I fell asleep nearly straight away.
But today was an exciting time for our family, because curry is the yummiest thing in the world to us. Guess what, we got to have curry at lunch time. I was looking forward to it as soon as I heard it was going to happen, for like I said; curry is the yummiest thing in the world to us.
When the time came for us to go to the eating room, I had my stomach growling like a... hungry stomach, I guess.
As I sat down the smell of the beautiful food wafted towards our table, making my stomach sound like a crazy bear trying to eat you. Speaking of eating...
I couldn't wait to dig in to the food, and when it all came out I quickly got my plate and piled it on high. I then ate it all and went back for seconds, enjoying every peice of vegetable or drop of juice. Afterwards I was so full I could hardly move. I must say, curry eating is a serious thing in our family.
Do you like curry?

Ferry to Dover

Today we were going to go on a ferry from Calais to Dover. So we did. It was cool on a big, new boat, and I enjoyed it very much. I didn't get sea sick (luckily) but I did feel a little bit sick. I played minecraft practically the whole way, stopping for a bit now and then to eat a giant chocolate 2 Euros and drink some hot chocolate (mmm, chocolate).

The difference between the 2 Euros.

I took a few photos of us about to arrive in England, and saw the white cliffs of Dover looming before us.

The white cliffs of Dover.

When we arrived at the other end, we got into the port and everyone suddenly realised that my feet stunk. Badly. Well, I couldn't help that! But everyone was complaining, so I had to take them off and air them out a bit before I could get into the car. They still stunk a bit (a lot), but luckily I couldn't smell it. Everyone else did, and they sure didn't like what they had to put up with for the car trip. They lived to tell the tale and so did I, and everyone is happy, so we forget and live on.
I love being in England again. It's a bit like coming to a second home with all my relatives here and everything. Have you been to England? If so, do you like it?

ANZAC Day

ANZAC Day is a wonderful and maybe sad day for lots of people in many countries, where they either have a good cry about the many soldiers that died for the country those many years ago or just sit there sucking in all the memories of the battle. Well, we went to a special ceremony in France where I am sure many people did both of those things. We parked the car and did a 2km trek to the top of the hill where it was held.
After we walked the long trek from the car to the seats, we got a booklet with all the songs and about the ceremony in it. I got a free badge and mum got some more for herself and my brother (happy birthday, bro)! With badges and books in hand, we headed for the seats. The front was packed, but the back had hardly any people there. So we had no trouble getting settled and ready for the ceremony to start. It was still dark when it finally began, and we all joined in and listened to what they had to say. It was luckily in English because it was an Australian thing, so I could understand perfectly. They had a good talk about all the amazing things the soldiers of Australia and New Zealand had done, and what they had given up for the countries that were involved. Some important people like Kevin Rudd had a talk and mum got a picture of him:

Kevin Rudd looking at his best...

It all went on for quite a while, so we stayed up there at the place with everyone else to see the dawn. It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I had ever seen (Delfi was better). Mum got a picture of the sun in an awesome position shining through the top of the big building that was built in memory of the battle.

The sun shining through.

Then after looking at the beautiful sunrise we headed off to our hotel (that stinks of cigarettes. Yuck).There we celebrated my brothers' birthday with a card and a hug or two.
ANZAC Day was very good to go to. Do you think you would have enjoyed it?

France

France greeted us last night as we flew from Greece to Belgium, then drove to France in a hire car. The journey was really tiring and long, about 15 1/2 hours, so we ended up getting to France at about 1:00am (2:00am Greek time).  Today in France we went around looking at the war memorial cemetries. I didn't really take any pictures of where we went and what we did, so I won't put any pictures on this post (again).
Anyway, we went around and looked at a cemetry and found my great, great, great uncle Toms' grave, who was killed in 1918. We also looked at the book with a list of all the people there. Sadly, some of the people that had died were only 18. I think that is just way too young to die, personally.  Some people had brothers that had died in a war, and then they had also gone and died in a war. It was so sad being there.
After looking around, we went and had something to eat at a nearby town. I had a fairly big hamburger with fries (I didn't say 'I would like to have a hamburger' like on the Pink Panther, however), and so did everyone else except mum who had a baguette with fries.
After all that we were full, so we went back to our hotel to have a rest. Looking at the cemetries was sad, but eating that hamburger was nice!

Thermopyles

We stopped at Thermopyles (pronounced Ther-mop-ill-ees) in Greece on the way to France. At Thermopyles we saw the monument or statue of Leonidas, King of Sparta. He led the battle against the Persians in 480 BC. A long time ago, really. A very long time ago.

Leonidas, King of Sparta.

After looking at the statues and the monuments, dad and I went up onto the hill with an inscription of stone on it saying:
Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

It was written by a Spartan warrior. Here is a link to the wikipedia page with all the English translations of it on it:                                  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae 

Mum and my brothers joined dad and I after a while and mum and I sat under a tree. It was a really nice day that day. Very sunny with an occasional cloud. But enough about the wheather, I need to say what we did next.
Well, we went down the road a bit to find the hot springs. They are made of water that comes up from under the ground being warmed as it comes, making the water like a bath when you touch it. It smells a bit because of the sulphur it collects on its' way up through the ground. We went and dipped our hands and feet in, then got back into the car to head off to the airport to go off to France.

Would you have liked to get into those hot springs? It was quite warm, I'm telling you, so I wouldn't be surprised if you did!

Sunrise at Delfi

Waking up today at 6:00am was hard, but we had no choice. We just had to see the sunrise at Delfi. We dragged ourselves out of bed, put on some warm clothes and wandered over in the direction of the temple of Apollo. We didn't go into the archaelogical site because it was too early and that isn't the place you are supposed to see it from. There is a lookout place with benches to sit and wait for the sun to come, but dad wanted to go and see it come up from a different angle, where it would hit the temple, too. Mum and I thought it wouldn't happen that way, so we wanted to go back to the actual lookout spot. Dad didn't want to leave his spot, so he stayed there for about half an hour until he realised that Mum and I were right. So we wandered over to the lookout spot and immediately we noticed that the sun was beginning to come up.

Here comes the sun.

We waited a bit longer and began to see rays of sunshine beginning to come through a gap in the hills.



Rays of sunshine sneaking out.

And then...


It's coming...

Coming...


Here it is!

 Finally! The sun has risen before our eyes in a beautiful way in Delfi. The prettiest sunrise I have ever seen!

Apollos' Temple

 Last night we were in that lodge in Delfi that I put a post about. Tonight I am in hotel more into the city.
The place we went to today was Apollos' Temple. It was built on a lovely mountain with a beautiful view. It was built in 800 BC, so it is about 2,800 years old. The Romans took over a bit later on and stole about 300 statues from the place that were mostly gold. Then the Romans built different buildings over the place and made it like they wanted.
There were a few priestesses that drank a certain sort of water and were put on a tripod in a certain place in the palace. They then went into a sort of trance that made them see into the future and they would go on a rant about what they see. Five priests would stand there and record what the priestess said and they would then work out what it meant.

A hole in the wall.

An interesting rock that had no information.

Some remainds of old rooms.

An interesting part to a pillar.

The temple where the priestess used to go into a trance.

A big theatre stand.

The theatre stand from the top.

The beautiful view.

Some pillars and a wall.

 After looking around the archaelogical site, we decided to go and see the museum. Inside there were many statues and carvings in marble.

An enormous sphinx statue.

A statue of a woman.

This is how tall the actual statue of the sphinx was.

A drawing of the sphinx before being destroyed.

A front on view of the sphinx.

A horse carving into the marble.

The woman statue again.

A drawing of the temple and other buildings around it.

Looking at the museum was fun, but we had to go back to our hotel eventually. So we went back and on the way had an ice cream as a special treat. When we got back to the hotel, I had a nice drink of orange juice to cool me down. It was fun today at the temple, and I enjoyed it very much.

Friday

Since it is friday today, I thought that I might put up a song that someone made up about it.
It is called 'Friday' by Rebecca Black. Yeah, such an imaginative name (sarcasim).
On youtube it had 310,096 likes and... 2,292,743 dislikes when I looked. A lot of dislikes, and if you watch the video you will see why. It had 114,555,680 views also when I looked. Too many views for so many dislikes! I mean, it is so tacky! 'Gotta have cereal' is one of the lines. Come on, 'Gotta have cereal.' What is this song?! Oh well, she's proud of her song I bet.



You can write in the comments what you think of this video. You can also like and dislike it if you want!

Off to Delfi

We left Athens and its' busy city behind us today as we set off to Delfi. Delfi is still in Greece, so we went in the car. The trip was about three hours. I am getting used to car trips theses days, so it didn't seem that long at all. Compared to the flight here, it's nothing. Anyway, we are staying in Delfi for two nights, one at the wooden lodge sort of thing we are in now, and the other night at some other place. When we got to the lodge, the first thing we saw was a cat. My camera was in my suitcase so there will be no photos on this post. I had some mini-milks in my shoulder bag so I gave one to the cat. Immediately after that, we saw about five more cats emerge from underneath the lodge. One of the cats was very friendly, but she was definately pregnant. The cats finished off the mini-milks I had, so I went inside to see what we had for the night. I was quite surprised to see that it was quite nice for a little lodge. It had a toilet, two bunk beds and a double bed. There was surprisingly a cooker and nice shower. There was even a little TV (when I say little, I mean about 20 inches wide). I walked into my room and saw that the bunks were very skinny. I would say about a shoulder width apart, so there wasn't much room. To top it off, there was no rail on the top bunk, making it a bit dangerous for the person sleeping there since it is a wooden floor (I was sleeping up there by the way).
Sleeping in the lodge is sure to be quite fun for me. An adventure in itself, sleeping in a tiny bunk bed!

Archaelogical Museum of Athens

The archaelogical museum of Athens is just around the corner from our hotel. That made it convenient for us because we went there today. A five minute walk and we were there. Dad bought tickets to get in and we wandered in together. There were many different things there, but there were many statues of naked men and vases.  These things were from lots of different places and were so old and crumbly that some arms and legs were falling off.

Some carvings in marble.

An ancient vase.

A statue of a man.

Another vase.

A sphinx statue.

Another statue of a man.

A statue of a Kore made by the sculpter Ariston. Made 550-540 BC.

My camera ran out of charge so I didn't take pictures of anything else in the museum. There were many objects and statues of most things. There was even a beautiful bronze horse statue that was nearly lifesize. The horse had a young boy on its' back and the expression on the face was in high detail. That was my favorite thing in that museum.
After looking around at the museum for a bit longer, we went and looked for the museums' cafe. I had a mini chocolate cake that had chocolate mousse in the middle. Mmmmm, yummy! I also had an iced chocolate. That was possibly the most chocolately lunch I had ever eaten.
Then we went off to the shop to have a look at some things. I got a magnetic bookmark that had decorations of flowers on it.
After that we were all very sleepy so we dragged ourselves back to the hotel and had a rest. After that, we went and ate some supper at the restaurant. I had pork and everyone else had some sort of pasta. Everyone crashed into bed that night after the busy day walking around in the museum. I wish my camera hadn't run out of charge so I could've taken pictures of the horse and boy. I love museums in foreign countries. I hope we go to more in our trip!

Parthenon at the Acropolis

I woke up today feeling lovely and refreshed. It was a good day to feel refreshed, too, for we were going to do alot of walking that day. After getting dressed and ready, I went downstairs with mum and dad to have a beautiful breakfast. It was a buffet and I had some scrambled egg, boiled egg, a croissant, some bacon and two pancakes. I loved it and that built up my energy for the days' walking, so I was all set. It was really quite a long walk there. Mum and dad think it was about 3 kilometres from the hotel to the Parthenon. It certainly felt quite long. I seem to do a lot of walking around to most places these days because sometimes it isn't far and sometimes we don't even have a car. So we walked to the Parenthenon and saw a few sights on the way, like a few pigeons...

A pretty pigeon.

...and a few more pigeons!

A lot of pretty pigeons.

When we climbed the short staircase up to the front entrance, I saw a dog.

The dog.

I wasn't sure what sort of dog he was. He looked like he might have some German Shepherd, but that isn't too important (I thought he was cute by the way).  Dad bought some tickets for us all and we walked into the Parthenon. It wasn't too exciting at first, because it was just a pathway up to the actual building. Down next to the path there was the Odeum of Herodes. It was built in 161 AD and was used for plays and theatures. They still use it for a concert venue in Athens.

The Odeum of Herodes.

I walked along the path a bit more and saw some masive collums.

Some big collums. 

Then I went up the path a bit more and saw the Panthenon itself. It was actually replacing the temple of Athena. Historians call the temple the Pre-Panthenon or the Older Panthenon and it was destroyed in the Persian Invasion in 480 BC. The Parthenon - like most Greek temples - was used as a treasury.

The Parthenon.

Then we wandered over to the temple of Athena Nike. Since Nike means 'victory' in Greek, she was worshipped in this manner. The Goddess was worshipped when they were vicotorious in war. It is being cleaned at the moment because it was destroyed by earthquakes like many old building around. There were some nice statues of women on the front. As I looked around at the side, I saw a dog just lying there relaxing or sleeping.

The dog sleeping.

Women statues.

Then I walked and saw a big doorway at the back.

A very big doorway.

After looking around at the temple of Athena Nike for a bit, we wandered up to a look out area. The view from there was awesome.

What a view!

After that we went to see the Theatre of Dionysus. It was built in about 500 BC and was the first to be built of stone.

The Theatre of Dionysus.

After looking at the theatre, we went started wandering back. On the way, we saw a cat having a lie down with a wooden plank as a pillow.

What a cute cat!

After looking at the cat we went back to our hotel by the underground tube. We could only go halfway, however, because the line wasn't finished. So we walked back the other half of the way and had supper at the restaurant. It was fun today at the Parthenon and I enjoyed seeing that exciting part of Athens.