A castle+Halloween trick`or` treating and party

Gutentag, that's the German word for hello or good day. It's Ethan. Today I am going to blog about a castle called Schloss Burg and what Halloween was like here in Germany. Firstly, I will be talking about a castle that my family and me went to that was called Schloss Burg. The castle, Schloss Burg, was located in Bottrop which is a town in Germany. The castle is at the top of a big hill so to get up to it you have to go on to a lift. The lift it's self was very cool, it went diagonal almost the whole way up. One cool thing about the lift was that at the beginning you went over a little stream which I thought was cool. Alright back to the castle, so once the lift had reached the top of the big hill I was surprised because I just a expected a big castle to be at the top of the big hill but actually it was like a little town. There were tons of stores, places to eat, and other stuff but right in the center of all of that lay the castle, the huge castle. Inside the castle they had pretty much made it just into a museum. There were paintings and other artifacts plus some knight armor including shields, guns, helmets, and swords my brother liked that part of the castle. It was very cool walking through the castle. At one part of the castle you were at the tipy top of the castle and you step out onto something like a balcony and let me tell you the views from that balcony were AMAZING!! The whole castle was AMAZING!! I really enjoyed the Shloss Burg castle.

I would like to start this post by asking "how was every ones Halloween in Michigan?" That's what this post is going to be about, well it's not going to be about your Halloween but my Halloween. When I woke up October 31st (Halloween) I was so excited it is Halloween I kept thinking. Here in Germany they do not really celebrate Halloween they do not trick `or` treat at all but my family and me are lucky because a club called the American Women's Club (which is a club that my mom goes to) hosts a Halloween party and a thing called trunk `or` treat at my school. A week before Halloween (the 24th) the American Women's Club hosted a Halloween party at the ISD senior school which is just across the street from my school (the ISD elementary school). The Halloween party was very cool!! There was a haunted house plus tons of games and a place to eat. I really liked the senior school Halloween party! Oh, I forgot to tell you, for Halloween I was Antonio McDyess the basketball player from the Detroit Pistons.

They do not trick `or` treat door to door here but the American Women's club gets families that are interested to park their cars in the ISD elementary school parking lot and to open and decorate their trunk and instead of trick `or` treating you go trunk `or` treating!! Isn't that a cool idea! That's what my family and me did on Halloween since we couldn't trick `or` treat. It was a very fun Halloween!!

Neanderthal museum and one other thing

Hello it's me Ethan. Now that I have finished blogging about Paris I'm going to get back to talking about other recent things we have done. The first thing I'm going to talk about is this one museum me, mom, and Griffin recently went to. It was a different type of museum because it was a Neanderthal museum. It was a cool type of museum, I liked it. Me my mom and Griffin went to it my, poor dad was at work. It was a type of museum where you get headphones and at each exhibit you plug your headphones into a outlet and it tells you about each exhibit. The museum took you through human development history. I really enjoyed learning about the human development history, it's a fun subject. One thing I thought was cool was that there were full size replicas of cavemen from the beginning of time to right now, the replicas were in a glass case and at the end of them there was a glass case you could step into to represent humans right now. I really really liked the museum.

Recently me, mom, and Griffin went to a place called Lego Discovery Center and yep you guessed it's a place that has to do with Legos, lots of Legos. At the Lego Discovery Center every thing you do has something Lego-y with it. One thing there was at the Lego Discovery Center was this ride where you were supposed to be in a dungeon with the prisoners but everything was made out of Legos. On the ride you got squirted with water multiple times so when I came out of the ride I was wet. Another thing that was at the Lego Discovery Center was a whole Lego city. The Lego city showed Duisburg (Duisburg is the city that the Lego Discovery center is in) and the surrounding area. There were plenty more cool things at the Lego Discovery center but those were my two favorite things at the center. I really enjoyed going to the Lego Discovery Center!! :-)

Part 5 of Ethan's Paris story

This is me Ethan talking about my part five of my Paris story. I'm going to still be talking about Saturday this time but I'm going to be talking about Saturday when it was mid day and afternoon. We had just finished eating lunch at Cafe Saint Honore and decided we were going to go to the Notre Dame cathedral next. We had to walk a little bit to get there but we got there in no time. Just the outside of the Notre Dame cathedral was amazing but the inside of the Notre Dame cathedral was incredible!!

All of the stain glass windows, wonderful paintings, and lots and lots of pews. The Notre Dame cathedral was amazing, I really liked going to it. After we were done with the cathedral we decided we wanted to go on a tour of the city, at first we had planned to go on a bus tour but we couldn't find a good one to go on so we ended up going on a boat tour that was great!! The boat was all glass on the top and on the sides so you could see easily every thing you were passing. The back of the boat was not enclosed so you could just walk out a door at the end of the boat and get some fresh air. Some of the big places that the boat passed was the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and of course the Notre Dame cathedral. The boat ride was great, I really enjoyed it passing all of those land marks. That was the last big thing we did on Saturday. We went back to our hotel after that and relaxed for the rest of the day. That night I didn't want to go to sleep because I didn't want tomorrow to come, you know why it's because tomorrow my family and me would be going back to Germany and I wanted to stay in Paris for a bit longer, but eventually I went to sleep and I woke up the next morning. That morning around 9:30 we left our hotel and started are 5 hour drive back to Germany. On our way back to Germany I couldn't help thinking "this has been a great exploration vacation".

View's of the Notre Dame cathedral from the boat.

Veiw of the Louvre from the boat.

View of the city from the boat.

Part 4 of Ethan's Paris story

Hello again it's Ethan and this time in my post of Paris part 4 I am going to talk about Saturday. On Saturday we did a lot of things but I'm going to talk to you about them in chronological order. So that means I will be talking about the Louvre first. The Louvre, pronounced luv, is a huge museum in Paris that has an unbelievable amount of art work. All of the art work in the museum are the original or real pieces of art that the original artist made. They had thousands and thousands of pieces of art work in the Louvre and it would take you months to look at every piece of art work in the museum but the one piece of art work that really caught my attention was the Mona Lisa, the real Mona Lisa!! The Mona Lisa, made by Leonardo DaVinci, is an amazing piece of art. It was hanging on a wall with bullet proof glass in front of it, it was so indescribably great!!.

The Louvre museum was so cool, one of the galleries I really liked was the Egyptian art gallery. The Egyptian art gallery was mostly all sculptures and let me tell you those sculptures are really cool looking and I found it amazing how much detail was put in to those sculptures.

Those are definitely not all of the things we saw in the Louvre museum but those were my favorite parts of the museum. So now that I finished talking to you about the Louvre museum I'm going to talk to you about one quick little thing and that is where we ate after we went to the Louvre. We went to eat at a restaurant that was a type of restaurant called a bistro restaurant (fancy cafe). The restaurant was called Cafe Saint Honore. The pizza that I had at that restaurant was the best pizza that I've ever had!! It was so amazingly good that I almost fainted, well not really but it was amazingly good. Well I think that's all for now, so see ya.

Two cool paintings in the Louvre

A hall in the Louvre

A view from inside the Louvre

Jen's View of Paris Part 3

First of all, I need to say that French pastries live up to the hype - so yummy and buttery! We fit a lot into our last day in the city: Louvre Museum, walk around, Notre Dame, and boat tour. We started at the Louvre where we got there soon after opening to avoid lines and we made a beeline to the Mona Lisa. We got as close to it as is allowed - oftentimes you have to stand behind a crowd of people, but we were up close. After that we explored the Painting wing, the Egyptian area, and some of the Sculpture are, and we could have spent another day or two just in this museum, but we had our fill. It was overwhelming for me to see SO many of the great paintings in person that I'd studied in books - it's always surprising how different you feel when you see a great artwork in person versus in a book.

Outside the Louvre

Hall in the Louvre

Entering the Mona Lisa room, that's it across the room!

There she is!

In front of the Winged Victory of Samothrace - a Greek sculpture from around 190 BC!

Being silly imitating the sculptures!

Notre Dame was gorgeous, but we didn't go to the top to see the gargoyles because the line was too long, but that gives us something to do if we come back one day.

Outside of Notre Dame

The famous Rose Window in Notre Dame

We took a ride through the city on a Batoboat like this one.

From the boat, eyes painted on the river retaining walls

Views from the boat

This short stay in Paris was a great introduction for us, and just enough for the boys at their age. It really is an amazing and beautiful city and there's plenty for us to see if we come back one day, with or without the kids. The only thing that got to me was the language. I think after a couple of months of being immersed in the German language, and finally picking up little bits of it, to be back at ground zero again with a different language was very frustrating for me (though my frustration at ordering from the Disneyland resturant lady gave Scott a good laugh, so it wasn't all bad!).

Jen's View of Paris Part 2

Like Ethan has told you, we spent our second day at Disneyland Paris thanks to Scott's former co-workers! We find it's good for the boys to alternate days of a vacation or day trips between historic/sightseeing and fun/amusement/park days, it helps hold their interest. Disneyland had really pretty grounds, like you'd expect from them, but I was very happy that there were such extensive Halloween decorations throughout the park. I was definitely going to miss true Halloween celebrations and decorations being away from the States, so I was so glad to get some of that here!

A little side note, we've decided that one of the few things we dislike about living in Europe is that a lot of people smoke and they can smoke in a lot more places.

Jen's View of Paris Part 1

This was one of the deciding factors for us in taking this overseas assignment - the fact that we'd be able to easily travel within Europe. The boys had time off school at the beginning of October so we decided that Paris would be our first big excursion! Ethan has filled you in on a lot of the details, so I'll just add some of my comments here. Neither Scott nor I had ever been to Paris. We drove, and we figured that it took us about the same time most of us in Michigan would need to drive to Traverse City! The drive took us through the Netherlands and Belgium, and it was really surprising how much open space there was most of the way there. I always thought of Europe as being heavily populated, but clearly there are still lots of open fields, farms, and forested areas. We stayed at a hotel near Disneyland because it was a much better value than being right in the city, and we got about 4 times the amount of space as we would in a city hotel.

View of the hotel villas.

It took us 30-40 minutes to drive into the city, and yes we were crazy enough to drive into Paris. I should say Scott was brave enough to drive in the city, he took on that challenge and now he could drive just about anywhere with this experience! We had gotten used to German drivers who stay in their lanes, pay attention, and obey the traffic rules...drivers in Paris were pretty much the opposite. It is a free-for-all, with no clear lanes marked, motorcycles constantly pulling between cars and darting in and out of traffic, and gridlock. We successfully got in & out of the city and really enjoyed it!

Unfortunately, Griffin was under the weather most of the trip. He was getting over a bad cold, and we made a questionable decision to eat big fat waffles before walking up the Eiffel Tower - not so good on G's stomach. However, he was a trooper and Scott got great workouts in by carrying him around a lot (including up & down most of the tower!). The weather was drizzly a lot of the weekend, but both the city and the amusement park were not very crowded so we waited in very few lines - very uncommon in Paris, so I'll take so-so weather over heavy crowds any day.

The Tower itself really is a lovely structure, from all different angles, I've never seen anything else like it. The views from the top are definitely worth the hike.

Walking and driving around the city at night was one of my favorite parts of the trip. All of the beautiful buildings are lit up so you focus just on them and you don't see all of the practical parts of the city that may detract from the incredible surroundings.

In front of the Arc de Triomphe at night:

Part 3 of Ethan's Paris story

Hello it's Ethan again. This is my part 3 of our Paris exploration vacation. This time I'll talk about Friday. So Friday we only did one thing but it was a big thing!! We went to Disneyland Paris!! It was so cool. Some nice people that my dad used to work with in Michigan gave my family and me the tickets as a going away present to my dad. Alright back to Disneyland, so as I was saying it was so cool. One of my most favorite rides I went on is called Space Mountain 2. It was amazing!! It went upside down, went extremely fast (obviously), and it felt like you were in space!! It was supposed to be like you were in space it's in the ride name, Space mountain. In Disneyland they worked hard to make it like Halloween. Another ride I really liked was a ride that is called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril. It was super cool!! It went upside down, and at the beginning there was this huge climb and then you turned a corner and down you went almost as fast as a rocket. And finally, I saved my favorite ride to talk about last, it is called Big thunder mountain. It was super, amazing, extreme, cool, and a bunch of other good stuff. At one point it went under ground, under a lake to be exact. Then it went on to this big mountain in the middle of the lake. It was indescribably good, great, amazing well you get the point. Plus our whole family could go on it. Well that's pretty much it for Friday so as Mickey Mouse would say toodles.

A Few Rooms in Our House

We all have a lot more to tell you about our Paris trip, but I wanted to experiment with uploading videos here, and show you some of our house. Here goes:

Part 2 of Ethan's Paris story

(All pictures token by Ethan)Hello again its me Ethan doing my second post about Paris, France. Last time I left off talking about the Eiffel Tower and it was Thursday evening. In this post I'll talk about Thursday night. Thursday night after we had left the Eiffel Tower we went to a place called the Arc De Triumph. The Arc De Triumph is a monument built by king Napoleon the first to show how powerful he was. If you are walking to the Arc De Triumph you have to go underground into a tunnel because the Arc De Triumph is right in the center of this huge free for all road. Cars are driving everywhere they cut right in front of another cars it was crazy! So you had to go underground. We went to the Arc De Triumph when it was night time so it was cool seeing all the car lights and the Arc De Triumph lit up. You could walk up under the Arc De Triumph and all under it were carvings and words. When my family and me were looking at the words under it we saw the name of the city that we live in in Germany (which is Dusseldorf). As we were walking back from the Arc De Triumph to find a place to eat dinner at we saw this one window display that was unique and creative but a little weird at the same time. We ended up eating at a place that was on the Champs Elysees street which is a very famous street. As we drove back to our hotel it was amazing seeing Paris at night for example seeing all the street lights, the Arc De Triumph, and of course the Eiffel Tower glowing. So as they say in french au revoir (which in English is bye-bye).




This is a memorial to men who have died in war. (It was under the Arc De Triumph ).

These were some pictures I took showing some of the steets by the Arc De Triumph

These are pictures of cool buildings in the streets of Paris.

Part 1 of Ethan's Paris Story

(All pictures in this post were taken by Ethan)

Bonjour. It is Ethan. Bonjour comes from the french language and we just went to France. Specifically we just went to Paris, France. Yeah that's right my family and me just went to Paris, France! It was my families and my first exploration vacation in Europe. We left our house at approximately 8:30 a.m on Thursday morning . It took us about six hours to get there. (By the way we drove to Paris). Our hotel wasn't exactly in Paris so it would take us about half an hour to drive to Paris from our hotel. The name of the hotel we stayed at was called the Marriott. It was a great hotel but it wasn't like a regular hotel, it was a hotel that you literally got your own little house. There were two rooms (Griffin and me shared a room) three bathrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a dinning room.

The first day we were there which was Thursday afternoon we went to the Eiffel Tower! It was amazing! It was humongous!

We went right under it. The tower had four incredibly large legs, we went in the east leg. It was incredible walking up the Eiffel tower. There was a first, second, and a fourth floor there was no stopping point on the third floor like there was on the first, second, and fourth floor. You could walk up to the first and second floor but you have to ride the elevator up to the fourth floor which is the top floor. They used so much metal pieces to build the tower and a lot of rivets. Once we had gotten to the top I was relieved because I had broke a few sweats. The view was amazing from the top.

You could see the whole city. There was this one river that you could see from the top that was humongous it is called the Seine River.

It was a lot easier walking down than walking up.

Fun Fact: The person who built the Eiffel Tower is called Gustave Eiffel!

This is the tippy top of the Eiffel Tower.

Griffin, Mom, and me in front of the Eiffel Tower.

This is a view under the Eiffel Tower.