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