Straight From Jake!: Country Jumping with Aunt Bear, Lauren and Beaks (oh yeah, and Mom too)

A couple of weeks ago, Aunt Bear and Lauren came to visit and we had a crazy week of jumping from country to country. Here we are picking them up at the airport. I made them a sign for the airport.

I have a new traveling companion and his name is Beaks. We got him at the Safari in the Netherlands, which is a whole OTHER story. I'll have to write about that next time because we have lots of pictures of the giraffes coming in our sunroof and video of mom and lauren screaming and aunt bear and me laughing.

This is Beaks, my new traveling companion

Monday, Mar 9th 2015
This morning we woke up early to go to Paris. My mom arranged for a car to pick us up. Aunt Lauren thought the driver was cute and made googley eyes at him the whole time our car drove to the train station. And it was a LONG drive...note to self, don't travel to Brussels during rush hour on Monday morning!!! It took us three times longer to drive from our house to Brussels than it did for the train ride to Paris. When we were standing on the tracks, mom, aunt bear and lauren were just standing there looking around and then I looked down the other end of the track and our train was sitting right there. If we stayed where we were, I bet we would have missed it. It would have gone right by us and we would have been saying "hmm, where could our train be?" And these 3 have all kinds of degrees and things...go figure!

When we got to Paris I stopped to play the piano in the train station and then we dropped our stuff off at a really ugly hotel that my Aunt Bear picked out for us.

Playing at the train station in Paris, but not all the keys work!

Here's the pink phone in the hotel, that was the nicest part.

Then we waited outside for the Hop On/Off Bus. Once we got on the bus, we plugged in our headphones and listened and learned a lot of things.

Aunt Bear made us get off because a guy was smiling mischievously and he wasn't listening to the sound thing so she thought he was going to bomb the bus.

On this trip, I also learned a lot about stocks and am researching on which is doing the best in the stock markets. Mom said when I turn 10 I can buy my first stock so I need to be prepared to pick a really good one!

While we were on the bus, we went to the Eiffel Tower and had a big stick of cotton candy.

Aunt Bear said she didn't want one but then she was stealing mine and mom's so we had to buy her one of her own. My mom bought some popcorn that was too salty so we returned it for a sweet one that we fed the pigeons trying to give them a sugar high. That's what happens to me, but I don't think it worked with the Paris pigeons.

Tuesday, March 10th
This morning we woke up really early at 7:30 so we could eat breakfast in time to go in a taxi for the Eiffel Tower tour. It wasn't really crowded which is very rare. I wonder if it will always be this popular? When we were done going up, we walked down as far as we could until we reached the bottom. On our way down we saw some people breathing heavy because they were going up, which I thought was a bit ridiculous...if you have to breathe heavy then you should probably be taking the elevator.

We had to take our usual shoe shot, this time with Beaks

On our way to the train station, the driver made us almost miss the train because he was driving like my nanny does...slow!! But with a little running we made it. We split up and Mom and I paid the driver and ran to the station to find the track we needed to go to while Aunt Bear and Lauren went back to the fleabag hotel to get our bags. And then we met up and all ran for the track! While we were in Paris, Aunt Lauren took like a thousand pictures and almost took up the whole memory card. The only time I got to take pictures with the big camera was in the cathedral Notre Dame and that was because everyone was cranky from not sleeping good in that hotel aunt bear picked and weren't really talking to each other. But they got over it. Sometime adults can be worse than children.

When we got home, Mom made me take off all my clothes and put them right into the washing machine and all the clothes from our suitcase and I even had to take a shower because she was not sure what we might have brought home from that hotel that Aunt Bear picked. Mom says that's the last time she gets to pick!

Thursday March 12th
I skipped Wednesday because Mom had to go to work and I had to go to school. And Aunt Bear and Lauren took mom's car that day and went to Brugge and we thought they were going to end up in Spain. Lauren said that Aunt Bear kept driving over the lines and she could tell because Mom's car vibrates if you get out of your lane because it thinks you might be sleeping and its trying to wake you up. Guess Aunt Bear sleeps a lot when she drives.

On Thursday, we woke up very early (sensing a trend here?) to go to Aacten so we could go to the drielandenpunt (three land points). It was a 2 hour drive and I was reading my kindle most of the time except when it was mom's favorite song. Aunt Bear and mom were screaming the song really loud (it was something about women being strong, but I think it should have been about women being loud). I was surprised the windows didn't shatter. Aunt Lauren and I both didn't get it.

When we got to drielandenpunt we took some pictures of us in all 3 countries which was pretty cool. It was like playing twister but with countries instead of on a mat. And then we were jumping to see if we could get us all up in the air at the same time. Beaks jumped the highest.

Aunt Bear, Lauren, Mom, Beaks and I went into the labyrinth which we all thought was going to be easy. Well, Beaks thought it was going to be hard, but nobody was listening to him. It was REALLY hard and we got stuck in there for over an hour before we had to go back to the beginning and out the way we came in.

While we were in the middle of it all the labyrinth had all these water geysers where the water could shoot up at any time as you walked across. When we got to one, Aunt Lauren, Mom and I ran across and then Aunt Bear tried to jump across and a big gush of water came up and smashed her right in the face. She was dripping wet and had water all in her nose and her hair was soaked and most of her jeans were wet. We laughed about it for a long time.

When we finally got out of the maze we ate lunch and Lauren thought that a bee was on her and did the wrong thing by shaking her head like crazy and swatting it with her hand. Whatever it was it stung or bit her but if it was a bee it didn't leave its stinger in there. I was ready a book in the car about how to be prepared for things and we had just read about this and Aunt Bear did what the book said and luckily it didn't swell up.

Then we started to drive to the hotel after we ate and my Aunt Bear put her wet smelly socks on my mom's head rest and she didnt notice. We finally got to the hotel and we were booked for the next night and not that night because mom got the calendar mixed up because here it starts with Monday and in the US it always starts with Sunday. They didn't have any rooms left for us so they helped us find another hotel which was pretty good.

This was from the hotel we were supposed to stay at

After that we went out to eat and talked about Carol Burnet and trying to watch Mrs. Wiggins but mom didn't have wifi. We all laughed so much about that and kept saying "Hellooooo??" and "Mrs Wiggins, can you come in here please and bring your notepad?"

Friday March 13th
We woke up in Bahn really late at around 12. Well, I thought that we did because mom asked for a late checkout so I thought that was what time it was, but it was really 8. When we finished breakfast there was a little playground and i went outside to play. The playground had a climbing obstacle and my aunts started climbing but Lauren almost got stuck in the slide at the end.

Then we went to the gummy factory and tried to find gummy bears without heads. Nobody spoke english and we didn't know how to say gummy bears with no heads in German, so they couldn't help us so we had to get them with heads.

Next we drove to Cologne where we saw the lover's locks bridge.

My mom bought me the coolest bubble wand there that is supposed to make really big bubbles.

The guy let me try his and it was awesome. The bubbles were bigger than me.

Then Lauren really wanted to see a Castle and it was on her bucket list so mom searched on her iphone and found one that we could do a tour through.

It was sort of far away and we had to drive fast to get there but that was ok because we were driving on the Autobahn. So we were on our way to Marksburg Castle and man did we have fun because mom was driving 180km/hr which is like 111 mph. (Shhh, don't tell Nan!!)

Mom was nervous but we just kept telling her to go faster. She wouldn't let Aunt Bear drive and it's probably a good thing because she couldn't stay within the lines when she was going 120km/hr.

We took a tour at the castle and got to try on a knights helmet which was really heavy. It was remarkable the it was the only castle that had never been destroyed during all of the centuries of different fighting and wars.

Saturday, March 14th

On Saturday, we drove to Amsterdam where we did a 3 hour bike tour. They names their bikes and mine was named Cream Pie.

I was the youngest person to ever do the tour because they didnt ask how old i was and the man thought I was 12.

We rode over canals and city streets with us having the right of way. I saw tilted houses all around the city. The houses were built on wood pilings and the woord started to rot which made the houses start to lean. I also learned why they used pulleys to bring things up and never hit the front of the house. It was because they made the houses lean forward so the pulley would always hang away from the front of the house.

When we got back to the shop our guide said that I could rename my bike and I named it Jersey.

After that we went to Hard Rock to eat and then on a river cruise. On the river cruise they gave the kids a little packet that has activities in it but the activities were like watching paint dry. At the end you had to design your own house boat and hand it in so they could see what you made.

When we were all done, we started to drive home but my aunt bear was driving and she first drove on the trolley tracks and then turned down a street that was only for walking on. Every way we tried to go there were posts up at the end and we had to turn around in these narrow streets and try to go a different way. In the end we were lucky to find a way out and our way home.

While Aunt Bear and Lauren were here, we went to France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. We also went to see my mom's old boss' castle, which is so awesome to see.