Road

This is just a photo of the street that I took using a panoramic shot, I really like the photo.

PS Elliot and I got haircuts today, it was a little difficult since we couldn't talk to them much.

 

Roma

Roma was founded by Romulus and Remus, who were initially raised by a wolf called Lupa.

We've been here a few days, I've enjoyed it. We've been seeing lots of churches and fountains. The Romans loved their fountains. In ancient times they used these things called aqueducts which bring water from the mountains into the city, which they used for everything. Compared to the toilets in the tower of London the Romans were way ahead. They even had pipes to carry the water, sometimes using lead.

There are drinking fountains all around the city, the fountain water is very good and really cold. We fill up our water bottles there.

We went to have a look at the Vatican and went through the Pope's castle, there is a wall with a passageway that joined the Pope's apartment in the Vatican with the castle, so if anyone wanted to kill the pope, he would run along the passage to the safety of the castle where his army would protect him. Apparently lots of popes have had to do this! Papa Francis doesn't have to do this (that's what the Italians call the pope).

At the top of the Pantheon (which is a really old church), there is a hole, which lets light into the church and depending on the time of the day different parts lit up. Famous people are buried there, including Raphael (not the ninja turtle, the artist).

The streets are made of cobblestone and could be 2000years old. We have milk and croissants for breakfast and my favourite dinner is margherita pizza (tomato and cheese). The gelato is great, they are irresistible! One bite and it's all gone, they come in all different flavours like ciccolata (chocolate) and stracchiatella (choc chip), mint and fragola (strawberry), these ones are mine and Elliot favourites but I may not spell them correctly. The worst flavour I tried was pumpkin. Errgh, we had to throw it out.

There is Also a picture of me and Elliot in our apartment.

Versailles in America

American football is in the biggest photo. We watched a game when we went to Versailles, our team lost. It was fun because you had to stand up and scream at them. But it wasn't as much fun as bowling which was easy because if you got at least 7 pins down it counted as a strike. At the bowling alley we saw a stuffed Groundhog, it looked dead.

We saw lots of Halloween decorations and we went to US air force museum and saw lots of planes. We saw the stripped pyjamas that were worn in concentration camps, I took a picture of it, I will try and post it.

OK now I am almost up to date. Because we are not in America anymore, we're in Italy. Rome is great, but that will be other posts.

Some other things about New York...

Near the statute of liberty, we visited ground zero, which is where the twin towers used to be. They were the biggest buildings in NY. To remember the people that were killed, they have written their names around two huge fountains that go into the ground as deep as the twin towers were. It was a sad place to be.

There is a random picture of a dice kind of thing near the memorial which we jumped on. I have also attached a picture of a normal street in NY (except that this street has ME walking down it) and above that picture is the roof of the Guggenheim, which is where I had my first audio tour (they are fun). This building was very cool and designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (he is not a non- existent creature from my imagination like most of the things that come out of my mouth). He doesn't like boxes, and the Guggenheim is pretty much a spiraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal.

Opps forgot about the Statue of Liberty

The statue is really huge and green because it's made of copper. It's skin is the thickness of two pennies stacked on top of each other. It was designed by the same guy who did the Eiffel Tower. It was a gift from France to America. It represents freedom, she is holding a tablet and a torch. The torch lights up the way for new people coming to America and the tablet has the date of the American Independence. She also has broken chains a her feet, that's the freedom part again. It was pretty cool.

Cornwall

We went to Plymouth in Cornwall for three days to see great friends that used to live in Dunedin, Mat, Fay, Ella, Kate, Martha and Erica.  Plymouth is about 4.5 hours from London but mum and Dad drove in circles in before we left so it took more like 6.5 hours (wellies).  In Plymouth we went to a Maritime observation place overlooking a cliff.  The guys there were very nice and let us use there telescopes.  We saw some English Frigates and a German Navy boat that was doing live firing!  (Elliot reminded me about this).  We went on a ferry to get to a beach, visited Plymouth Hoe (where a famous English Sea captain used to hang out - DRAKE), and chased wild ponies on the Moors. Plymouth was almost bombed flat in WWII.

 

This is the Tower of London. These are fake poppies to represent dead soldiers from the wars. It looked like blood streaming from the tower.

The Tower of London is very interesting and there's quite a lot to tell about it. Two boys were murdered in the tower by their uncle because he wanted the throne. He was a pretty uncool uncle. Their names were Edward and Richard (I think). I saw this thing where they tortured people, there was one which squished people with metal bars and there was one that stretched people apart, sometimes ripping them up. Henry VIII was a very stupid man ( I will post a picture of his armour) he had 6 wives and some of them he killed.  Here is a picture of a toilet, people used it and it just fell straight out of the tower. Yuck.

 

Here are some more photos from NY. We saw the real Winnie the Pooh characters at the library, some of the walls in the library were purple and there were huge Lego lions. We went to MOMA (Museum of modern art), these are my two favourite paintings. I know nothing at all about the spiral. The other one is Starry Night by Vincent. We saw the dinosaur at the museum of natural history in NY. We saw heaps of dead animals, including Lonesome George, the last Galapagos tortoise.  We went to a Broadway show called Matilda, Broadway's a big street. That's where all the good shows go, although sometimes they're not necessarily good. I thought Matilda was ok, but the rest of the family thought it was amazing. Hope you had a good day.