Straight From Jake!: Paris, Dubai and Tiptoeing Through The Tulips?

This year for Easter we went to Paris. My Uncle JJ came too since he was visiting us for 2 weeks. We took the train and went for the day.

When we got there we got on the Hop On, Hop Off bus and sat on top. It was chilly and we were wishing we had dressed a little bit warmer. JJ was going to wear a shirt with no sleeves, but Nan and Mom talked him out of it and it's a good thing cause he would have been frozen. While on the bus, a bird flew over Nan and let one fly right onto her head. She didn't even feel it!! I noticed it when we were walking down the steps to get off but Mom said not to say anything until we got off so she wouldn't freak out and scare everyone on the bus. Nan was a good sport about it and we got her all cleaned up and off we went.

After lunch, we went to the Eiffel Tower. It was a whole lot busier this time than when we went with Aunt Bear and Lauren and we couldn't even go up in the tower because there were a gazillion people in line and Nan and JJ couldn't ever wait that long. So, instead, we had cotton candy, which is my and Mom's favorite thing about the Eiffel Tower anyway. When we went to get back onto the Hop On/Hop Off bus to go back to the train station, it was so crowded that we had to wait for the next one. When the next one came, there was a huge crowd of people waiting with us and everyone stormed the bus to try to get on. Nan toughened it out and pushed her way on first. Mom almost got into a fight with some lady who was elbowing her. Meanwhile, JJ was just standing on the side watching. He said that if Mom needed help he would have stepped in, but Mom's tough.

When we got back to the train station, I had a chance to play the piano and played a few songs for the people who were there watching. Then we had to get on the train to go back home.

A couple days later, we flew to Dubai for Spring Break and Nan's birthday. We flew on Emirates Air and they did some really cool things to take care of the kids on board. When we arrived, the hotel sent a private car for us, but it was really late and we didn't get to the hotel until almost 3 a.m. in the morning. It was a quiet, dark night on the cobblestone streets of Dubai, too quiet, the inky black waters of the aquarium... (Just kidding...that's a line from one of my favorite books called Big Nate).

We stayed at the Atlantis and when we walked into the lobby it was AMAZING. It was the most awesome hotel we have ever stayed at. We were starving, so we ordered dinner from room service and went to bed around 5 a.m. really tired but at least not hungry anymore.

In the morning, when I looked out over the rail of the balcony, I could see down into this huge aquarium that's built into the hotel. I also could look into the distance and see the incredible water park with its 2 big towers where all the slides started out from.

There were a ton of awesome rides at the water park and we went just about every day. There was a lazy river that wasn't lazy at all because it had rapids, a torrent wave section and the ziggarat ride where they took your tube up a conveyor and then sent you down through tubes and up and over big hills and drops.

It looks like she's having fun to me!!

One day we took Nan on the lazy river and then onto the Ziggerat and she kept saying she didn't want to go, but Mom kept them moving that way because they were in a double tube. Nan screamed the whole way down the Ziggarat ride and when it ended and dumped them out back into the main section of the Lazy River, she was not happy with any of us.

JJ went on all the rides with us and there were some great ones. My favorite water ride was the one where you rode the tube and went through a glass tube that went right through the middle of the aquarium and the sharks were swimming all around you and on top of you.

JJ's favorite was the Leap of Faith which was the biggest straight down drop from the tallest tower and it was a body slide so you just laid down and down you went...straight down!!!
(you can see it in the background of the picture to the left). He got up and was limping because he said he pulled his hamstrings and other muscles and said it really beat him up.

There were two other water rides where they had big rafts where you could fit 6 or 7 people and they went really fast. One of them went down a big drop and up a huge wall where you thought you were going to go up and over the top. The other puts your big tube through a big funnel and you slosh up and down the walls and then it drops you out and you go way up another wall where you feel like you're going to flip over. If you were on the lighter side of the tub you always felt like you were going to flip out. We went on a bunch of times where we would go and then run back up into the line and go again.

There were some other tube rides and they had this netting over the top of the half tube you were riding through to keep people from popping out, it was amazingly fast and scary. JJ made it through them all and then we'd go back to the pool so he could recover , sit in the water with Nan and have a beer.

Mom and I had cotton candy at the water park and we'd bring popcorn back for Nanny. And they had a Baskin Robbins and I had mint chocolate chip because they don't have that flavor here in Belgium.

In the mornings, they had a huge buffet and it had different foods for all different nationalities and a million different foods. Pops would have loved this buffet!!! I had the same thing just about every day and they even had my favorite banana bread just like they had in the Dominican Republic. Love that stuff, but not as much as I love my Pop's pumpkin bread. I bet he could make it for them there and they would never be able to have enough to keep from running out.

There were two big pools and a really great beach. The water was so clear that you could see the bottom of the sea floor and the fishes swimming around. So me and a friend were trying to use different things to catch the fish, but we couldn't catch any of them because they were just too fast. I also made a friend named Xavier from the UK who was really cool. We did a lot of stuff together and he even came to the water park with us one night. It was his birthday while we were there and nobody got him a cake, so I asked the concierge in out Club if they could send one to his room and they did. He loved cake and ice cream and only ate things like that and not healthy things like the grilled chicken sandwiches I was eating.

I got to spend a lot of time with JJ on this trip and he was really fun.

We went to a steak house for Nanny's birthday and while we were there, they gave me a drink with alcohol in it and Mom was not happy and JJ made the waiter give us another round of drinks for free. They brought over a cake and sang happy birthday to Nan.

She's 77 now, but nobody ever believes that's true.

Even she's surprised that it could be true!!

One time when Mom and I went to the furthest tower of the water park, we brought this black bag that mom usually takes with us but this time it had my ipod in it by accident from the night before. So we wanted to ride the lazy river back to the hotel, so we wrapped the bag in lots of towels trying to keep it safe and dry. So we went up to the rapids started and got into the tubes and I sat in front so that Mom wouldn't all the water blow and the bag wouldn't get so wet.

By the time we were done with two big rapids, the bag was wet and then we came around the bend and realized that we were almost back where we started and could have just walked around the bend and missed those big rapids. Luckily even though the black bag got soaked, the ipad was still ok because we had it wrapped in another towel on the inside. Then later Mom realized that she had a plastic baggie in the black bag for the sunscreen and she could have put my ipod in that and we wouldn't have had to worry about it at all!!

In the hotel there were rooms where one whole wall of the room was the aquarium. Mom didn't get us that room though and I thought that it would have been cool if she had. She said those rooms cost as much for one night as our suite cost for a week, so I guess we did ok. Our room was really big and it had a living room, dining room, big bedroom and a really big bathroom with a huge tub and a changing room even that was half the size of my room back in NJ.

Then there was another little bathroom that JJ used and a big double balcony. It was a great room and we also had this cool club that we could go up to on the 12th floor and have drinks and snacks and stuff. Nan says that on a scale of 1 to 10, this hotel was a 50. I think we'll be going back again.

When we got back to Belgium, they didn't want to let me back into the country because they said my visa had expired and all I had was a US passport so I didn't have anything that said that I belonged there here in Belgium. The man said they could send me on the plane back to Dubai and then from Dubai back to the US and that I would have to stay there for 3 months before I could get another visa and come back again. That didn't sound like such a good plan to mom and I don't think she was going to let them send me anywhere. We had JJ there and not too many people mess with him, so I wasn't worried. Finally, they let us through and we got our luggage and the man from Mom's work was there with the van and drove us home.

Today, we went to the Netherlands to a place called Kuekenhof where they have all the tulips that everyone talks about.

It was a long ride so mom played a video on her iphone for me that I really loved. It was all about the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. Here's the link so you can see it and laugh too, it's really funny, you should watch it. http://www.internationalstudents.nl/do-you-know-the-difference-between-holland-and-the-netherlands/

We saw all the flowers and walked through the park there where they have boat rides.

I went into the petting zoo and they had goats and pigs and chickens. They didn't have any food to feed them, but Mom grabbed some flowers off the trees there and the goats loved them. They were following me around trying to get more. Other little kids were watching, so I gave them some so they could feed them too. Then Mom had to jump up and get me some more and we fed some others and gave a lot of them away. Next thing you know, everyone was doing the same thing and people were pulling the trees branches down so they could grab the flowers. I started a trend there, but I'm not sure the lady working there was that happy about it.

We stopped to eat on the way home and Mom went to park by one of those canals where there isn't any railing to keep your car from falling into the canal so Nan was screaming that we were going to go in. I got out to try to help Mom but then Nan was screaming because she thought Mom was going to knock me into the water. So, Mom gave up and found somewhere else to park. On the drive home I was writing this stupid blog (which Mom MAKES me do) and then the ipad battery died and poof it was all gone.

Oh, and I played my last basketball game last weekend. I move up to the league called the Benjamins next year and start to practice with them this coming week. This season we played 3 on 3 which was like a fast break both directions all the time. Next season we play 5 on 5, so should be a little different but a lot of my teammates are moving up too, so that should be good.