JT's First Adventure Abroad

We finally got a taxi after waiting in the long taxi line. It was my first taxi ride ever. The driver could barely speak English and he gave us a tour of Paris in French. My mom helped to translate. The taxi ride was crazy. The driver drove very fast and was weaving in and out of traffic. It seemed like he was making up his own traffic rules.

We finally got to our apartment. Our apartment concierge (an older man) who takes care of the apartment building was waiting outside for us. He spoke in French and we did not understand him at all. Then, we climbed the stairs to our apartment. There were about 100+ steps (we'll count them sometime). In France the bottom floor is considered the first floor and our apartment was on the sixth floor, so we had to climb 5 sets of stairs. We couldn't believe how tired we were. Mom had to stop at least 3 times going up. My dad did not have to stop as much, because he works out a lot.

The apartment was nice and clean. We had a big balcony. We could see over all the roofs of Paris. We even saw the top part of the Eiffel Tower and Louvre museum. There were a lot of windows from which we could view Paris. My bed was in a loft that I had to climb a ladder to reach. I called it my bedroom. I tied my headphone cord as a fishing line to drop things on the floor or pull them up to my bed. It was fun to do.

Our first trouble came when we tried to leave our apartment building. There was a big heavy door that we couldn't open. My dad tried to move all the bars up and down, but still the door wouldn't open. We looked around and found another door with some doorbell looking buttons. We thought we should probably push them to see if someone could come help us get out. One of the buttons made a clicking sound and we pushed the door open. It took us 5 minutes to figure out how to leave our apartment building.

We walked around the neighborhood to check it out and buy some groceries. It was very crowded. We got lost several times. We had to keep looking at our Paris street maps. We finally found a grocery store.

It was very small and very crowded. Everything was written in French so we had to figure out what stuff was. There was a whole wall of different kinds of cheese, meats and bread (very bad for you). They also had a whole entire wall with nothing but yogurt and desserts and just a little bit of milk and half and half. Their whip cream was not refrigerated and it was in small cartons. We bought salami and sausage meats. We bought milk, water, hot chocolate. We also bought different kinds of cheese and some delicious chocolate pudding cups. When we stood in line to pay, everyone had to bag their own groceries. Many people brought their own cloth bags to put groceries in.

We walked home and ate lunch - tomatoe soup, bread, cheese and meat. We had chocolate pudding cups for dessert.

After our late lunch, we went to explore again. We walked along the street next to the Seine (river running through Paris). We stopped at a book store for my mom so she could buy a french-english dictionary. Then we walked down to a famous garden called Luxembourg Gardens and sat next to the octoganal shaped pool. We just sat and watched all the people. Some people were partying and others were just walking around.

Then we walked home. We were very tired. We got lost again, several times. Then, when we got back, we had to figure out how to work the door code to open the building for our apartment. Dad tried and then I tried and we finally heard a click and pushed the door open. We never knew it would be this hard to enter and leave an apartment building.

When we got upstairs after climbing all those stairs again, we finally went to bed. I think I slept really well that night.

Saturday morning, May 12

When we got to the Frankfurt train station, we found a waiting room where a lot of people were sleeping on the benches and waiting for their trains to leave.

Mom went and got Starbucks for everyone and I got one of my favorite drinks - kid's hot chocolate.

We got on the train and it left a few minutes later. The toy that I got the day before, I played with - the "glow in the dark" skeleton. When we went through any tunnels it lit up green. When we got close to the Paris East train station, I got my iPod and I listened to music. I also took a short nap. I ate some french rolls, bobli cheese, and cookies.

The scenery was very, very green and I saw trees, canals, sheep and horses. We also some cars. I also saw some tall buildings.

I was happy when we got to Paris. I kept asking my parents how much longer till when I got there and are we there yet? It was very, very dirty at the train station. It was smaller than the one in Frankfurt and it had a lot of construction going on. My dad tried to find an ATM and couldn't even find one in the whole station.

I got up and I looked out of our hotel window and saw a whole bunch of German kids walking to school. They had backpacks on their backs. Then we went downstairs to eat a German breakfast. The breakfast was a soft-boiled egg, bread with butter and jelly. I drank orange juice. They also had meat and cheese. I ate some salami. I also had two bowls of frosted flakes with milk.

Then we left in my Opa’s new Mercedes Benz E class car that he rented. We got to go very fast on the Autobahn (German freeway) almost 200 miles per hour sometimes. Other times we had to slow down. It took us a very long time to get to Munich,
Germany. Every time we stopped at a rest stop they had a restaurant and when we had to go to the bathroom we had to pay. My dad did not like that at all! In the boy’s bathroom, once you started to go to the bathroom, I saw a light come on that showed an advertisement. That was very different than in America.

When we got to my mom’s aunt’s apartment in Grunewald near Munich, Germany, she showed us her rooftop garden. She had all different kinds of flowers and home grown vegetables like lettuce and different spices. We had lunch. First we ate lettuce leaves with lumpia rolled up in them. Then my aunt cooked an authentic Munich lunch for us – small white sausages with sauerkraut. I really like the sauerkraut because it different than American – it was sweet. I had apple juice to drink.

My dad, my mom and I took a walk down a forest path to the river called the Isar. On the way, you could see the zoo way down below. We saw one of the sea lions. When we got to the bottom of the path, we crossed several bridges. At the river we saw several ducks and one swan. My mom took some pictures. On the way back we bought ice cream and the lady gave me a small packet of gummi monkeys for free.

We left Newark late, because they had to load more baggage, but we got to Frankfurt early. When we landed we had to show our passports to the German police. They asked us how long we were going to stay in Germany. My mom told them 1 month. Then we got our baggage. I went up to the baggage claim and I pulled our suitcases off of the baggage carasels. We went out to wait for my Nana’s friend, Inge, to pick us up from the airport. We had to wait for 10 minutes and then she came. Then she took us in her car to the small village where she lived.

Her garden was the beautiful garden in the whole wide world. She had a pond with gold fish and lots of tulips, trees and grass. We sat on her garden bench and drank orange juice. Then I went around and took some pictures, but my dad deleted them all. Then my Opa came and we had lunch outside at the patio table. We ate bread and soup. The soup tasted very good – I think it was leak soup. We had strawberries with sugar and whipped cream.

I went upstairs to take a nap and my parents went back to our hotel to take a nap, too. After the nap, we drove to the old part of the village and walked around. Here are some pictures my mom took. I accidentally pressed a button on my camera that made a movie mode, and I tried to take a picture, but I couldn’t because the movies took up all the space cause it went for 2 minutes.

We went back to the house and had coffee, tea, and rhubarb cake. I had tea to drink.

That night we went to a classical music concert in a small church in the village. Then we went back home and had dinner. We ate veal fillet cutlets and rice, ratatouille. It was good. For dessert we had my first German ice cream with alcoholic fruit on top. I didn’t get any because it had alcohol in it.

We went back to the hotel and went to bed. I was very tired.

This morning I got up very early to go to the airport. I took my Tomagotchi, some books, some clothes, my backpack and my homework packet. At the airport, we took the escalator upstairs to check in our baggage. We had to show our passports for the first time. We went through the security. I had to take off my shoes and anything that I had that was metal. Finally, we came to the airplane gate. We had to wait for a short time to board the plane.

We sat at the back of the plane and I had a window seat. The plane 6 jets on it: two were on each of the wings, and two were on the end of the plane. We took off and it was as fast as a cheetah might run. We had a terrible egg biscuit sandwich for breakfast, some fruit, a yogurt and a small banana nut muffin. I had some orange juice and water to drink.

We finally got to Newark, New Jersey. We got there early and they made us circle for 15 minutes above the clouds. That was kind of boring.

After we landed, we walked around and we let my mom decide where to eat. We ate at the Garden State Diner. I had some terrible spaghetti and meatballs and my first chocolate Yohoo drink. It was the best drink I ever had! My mom and I were going to get some ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s but the next plane we were getting on was boarding and we couldn’t get our ice cream.

We sat near the front of the wing. We sat one row behind the bulkhead. We the seats in front of us, we had tv screens. We could watch tv, play video games or watch movies. On our armrests we had remote controls. On our seats we had blankets, headphones for the tv, and small, small pillows. Me and my dad watched watched the same movie together which was “Night at the Museum”. The movie was funny. My dad and I laughed a lot. Soon we ate dinner. We had a beef dinner that was hot and really good. We had a triple chocolate brownie for dessert. That was the best brownie I ever had.

If you watched the tv screen, you could change the channel to 9 and you could watch where the plane was going on a flight map of the world. It should how many km per hour it was going, it showed how fast we were going, it showed how high up we were and it told you the temperature. It also showed the continents and the cities we passed. It showed Newark, Nantucket, Rekiavik, Shannon, Dublin, London, Paris and then Frankfurt.