In Scotland we spent about one day in each place, just as convienent places to stay near wher we wanted to go. We Stayed in Inverness, and saw Loch Ness. We went on a three hour boat ride through it. The whole time I was looking for Nessie, I didn’t think I saw her, but than, in some pictures I took, theres some unidentifiable black things in the middle of the water…… maybe…… we also went to the viewing centre, which had a movie and than a hallway about Cryptozoology, which I found absolutley FASTINATING.
We went to Fort William, and than went on the train they flimed in the Harry potter movies, (we took lots of pictures on the Viaduct that is in every movie) it was a steam engine which made me feel a little bad about polluting with all the coal.

Bath is an hour and a half out of London, and we had three days thre. My mom did that because there are 3 Great side trips from there, but she didn’t realise that Bath was worth seeing too. On the first day all of us went to Stonehenge, which was nice, I guess, but there were soooo many people, and the secound (which was Sunday which ment that public transportation wouldn’t be as good) my mom went to Cardiff and the rest of us stayed in Bath, and the third day Mum, Usha and I (my dad was feeling a little lazy) went to Glastonburry, Aka CAMELOT!!!!!!!!!!! We saw the Chalice well, which was in lovely gardens, and is said to have the Holy Grail in it. We than went to the remains of a church, that was on the top of a bright green hill, and than the ruins of Camelot that had Aurthur and Gueinever’s graves. We also saw a play of my favourite book Animal farm, although since we had front row seats we got spraaaaayed with fake blood.

We arrived from a Ferry from France past the White Cliffs of Dover, and than a bus to London. In london we saw a lot of things, the Brittish Musuem (which had the Rosetta Stone, and Cleopatra’s mummy) the Brittish Library (which had a collection of ancient Bibels Torahs and Qur’ans and other ancient writings Shakespere, Mangna Carta, and Beatles Lyrics written on napkins and paper bags) Buckingham Palace (from the outside) and we went to the PREMIRE OF HARRY POTTER 5 and saw Daniel Radcliff, Katie Leung, Devon Murray, the actor who plays Crabbe (I forgot his name) and Barty Crouch Jr. (I also forgot his name) but we didn’t have tickets so we couldn’t see the movie. Usha als met us with a good friend of hers who we went on the London Eye with. We saw 2 plays Shakespere’s Loves Labours Lost which was hilllllllllarious, (we saw it in Shakesprars Globe as Groundlings) and Wicked (the musical) which was also great.

We only went to Paris, we had three days there. During those days we saw the Scientific Progress Musuem, (I think thats what its called) which was nice, and had lots of inventions from ancient times to more modern things. They also had a Pendelum which Usha and I watched swing for a looooooooooong time but it didn’t knock anything down. We also saw an ancient grave yard, well most of it was ancient, that had (much to my fathers delight) the grave of Jim Morrison, which was coverd in flowers and had two security gaurds around it, (no other graves had flowers or security gaurds) My mom and I also climbed the Effiel tower, which had an amazing view.

I LOVE Switzerland. We started in Gimmelwald, the village in Heidi. It was just the way it had been back then. Cute little houses, in lush green grass, surrounded by snow capped mountains…. it was so perfect, and so picturesque, that every single picture we have looks photoshopped. Every single day when we woke up the snowline on the mountain was lower, and it was beautiful (although it didn’t snow in GImmelwald) We had a kitchen and cooked our own food. We went on hikes into the valley (when we were in the valley it was like being in a snow globe because everything was towering above us) and a cat followed us. In our guidebooks it sayd ‘if heaven isn’t as good as it says, send me back to Gimmelwald’ it was a fitting discription. The people were also nice. One night we stayed up to midnight playing charades with collage students, another night we stayed up late talking. The people were really nice, and very diffrent. One woman had never been out of the states before, and there were these cousins who had been to places like Israle. Altough the people who were arriving later weren’t as social.
I was very sad to leave. But we went to Geneva via the chocolate factory which cheered me up and made me feel sick. My dad lived in Geneve for 5 months, and even though it must of changed, still managed to show us around. We saw his school (which he hated) and his old house.

Italy was probably the most russhed because we wanted to see Everything. We were in Venice for a day, Florence for a day, Pisa for a half day, Rome for a day and the Vatican for another day. In Venice, we didnt really see much, we just wento to one church, and a walking tour. Usha had fun getting mobbed by pidgeons, in a square.

In Florence we saw David through a window. We got in line for another musuem and a lady walked up to us and said “Would you like these tickets for a tour? We got them but we don’t want them? You can have them for free! And the tour’s right now, so you can fronnt cut everyone in the line for getting in , if you wear these stickers” And the tour was interesting too.

We saw 3 cities in 15 hours Florence in the mornign Pisa in the afternooon and Rome in the evening. We left florence early, and arrived in Pisa. Than we climbed the leaning tower, which was really leaning. I was so glad that on ht etop they had railings, my dad said that 34 years ago when he went, there were no railings or anythign, and a few years after that they closed it, to strighten it one degree, so it would balance better.

In Rome we had two days. One for the Vatican and one for the colleseum. We saw the Vatican on the first day We marveld at the statues an dpaintings, and than went to the sistine chapel. Usha studied ancient Rome all year when she was in 7th grade, and she told me if you talk in the cistine chapel (I dont know how to spell) something bad happens, but when we were there, everyone was talking really LOUD, it was crammed with tourists, but I still enjoyed it, it was so pretty. And than we went to the basilica. It was huge and pretty. In the middle of our walking around a bishop came and security guards made everyone part as they walked through. The next day we saw the colluseum wehere 1,000,000 people died, for sport. It was rather creepy to be standing where so many people died. we also saw the remnaints of an old castle. The person who designed it was very smart and built it of bricks and than just put plates of marble over it, and people wouldn’t know the diffrence.

When we were in China we met a girl from Berlin, Maya. She was very nice, and so when we were in Berlin she gave us a walking tour. It was nice to see from a local’s prespective. We saw parts of the city (Some were big tourist sights, others were nice places, that few travelers get to see. The parts of the Berlin wall that still stood were diffrent than I expected, they were coverd in colorful grafitti, which made it seem much prettier and almost happier that I had orriginally thought. (other parts were that blah grey color I expected it, but onlyb a few) When Maya showed us the parliment building there was a funny thing, because right in the middle of their ‘capitol hill’ equivilent there is a Swiss flag, beacuse the Swiss embasy owned the landin the middle, before the parliment moved there, and they didn’t want to move out.
the next day, we saw Checkpoint Charlie and a history musuem about the Berlin wall. It was strange because in that musuem they showed the Soviet Union’s flag, (which I had never seen once in Russia) along with the other flags of the Allies.

So I was home for a week and that my dad and I flew in to meet mom and Usha in Copenhagen. We stayed with a lovely lady in a 300 year old house. We were only really there one day because I insisted we were only in Denmark once and so we HAD to see legoland, and on the way we might stop at Hans Christian Andersen’s birthplace. Denmark is very proud of Hans Christian Andersen, even though they weren’t teh first people to embrace his stories, now they love him. In Copenhagen (one of the loveliest cities) we walked down HCAndersen Boulevard, and took pictures of his statue. We than went to the government buildings (denmark always wins first or secound prize in the world’s most honest government contest) and it was strange because there was no uber protective machines or anything, it was just like a house. We saw some gardens, and than we went on a boat ride across their grand cannal (they have a lot of cannales, just not as many as venice) which was nice but sometime in the middle of it I started to doze off, even though I don’t usually get jet lag. After that we went to Tivoli gardens (the first ammusument park) and saw a pantomime show, went on a ride, ate loads of icecream, strolled in the gardens and jumped on a giant trampoline.

We took an early morning train to Vijle, and a bus to Billund that stopped at legoland. They had arranged legos into unique designs, of houses and machiery around in a garden. The rides mostaly aimed at younger children, but there were 4 rides that Usha and I went on again and again. One was a small rollarcoaster that would just go around in a bumpy circle, but it was fun enough. One would spin and spin and spin, which was fun, if you don’t get nauseous easily. One was a raft that went up a ‘wild west’ like sceanery that had lifesize animals made of legos, and it was a little racist towards Native Americans (but in Denmark they probably don’t learn much about the fact that they were actually quite civalized people) but going down a suprise waterslide at the end was fun (we dragged our parents onto that one and it was so funny to see their expressions after all they had been saying about how, ‘this isn’t really anything, we’ve been real white water rafting, this is a waste of tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime’) Then the haunted house, was cute with the way legos were arranged, but at eh end, to really scare people they had a suprise rollar coaster, that spiriled around really fast.

After legoland (the next day) we went ot Odense before our train to Berlin. Odense was where HCAndersen was born and we went ot his official musuem, which was fastinating. They had collections of his tales,and audio recordings, if you felt tierd of looking at other things, but they also had an ingenious way of presenting things. my favourite was a timeline of his life that also said what things happend globally while he was writing his stories.

I really liked denmark, it was a good country I think, the peole seemed honest and hardworking, and there were more bycicles than cars.

Moscow was very big. We spent most of our time just trying to see everything in the Red Square and the Kremlin. We met friends of my parents, and had meals with them. And (after I left) Usha and Mom got to see the best ballet in the WORLD. We saw St. Basil’s Cathderal which was really odd, but in a good way. And in the Kremlin we saw the churches, the gardens, the cannon and the bell, but not the armoury. We also saw the history musuem, which stopped abruptly at the Bolshevik revolution. In front of the red square there are three people. They all are look-alikes to famous Russians so they dress up an charge people for pictures. (Lenin, Stalin and Putin)
We learned to take the Moscow Metro which was quite an acomplishment because its bigger than the London and New York ones combined and 9 people die when its too hot.

THe trans siberian railroad is the longest streach of contiuous railraod in the world, streaching from Vladivostok to Moscow, we took it through Mongolia and to Ulan ude, Irkutsk, Yekaterineburg, etc. It was beautiful watching the world go by through the windows. When we started it was still winter with yellow-brown fields, but than it slowly turned green and lush. Also the forests in the begining were all birch, but as we couninued up north, they became other things too, pines, and evergreens. Another thing was that suddenly it’s light until midnight, and the sun rises at 4:00. THe most dramatic change was the weather. When we got onto the train at Irkutzk it was quite chilly but when we got off in Yekaterineburg it was boiling.