Cuckoo clocks

Guten tag.

Can you guess where we are?

We went back up into Germany to the Black Forest. This area in Germany has lots of hills, trees and beautiful views. The black forest is also famous for making cuckoo clocks. They have been making clocks for over 300 years.

We stayed in Triberg, which is home to the World's Largest Cuckoo clocks. They are huge. The woodcutter at the side of this clock moves his axe up and down, pretending to chop the wood. It was very clever.

The next cuckoo clock we saw had a water wheel next to it. Do you know why they are called cuckoo clocks? When the short hand points to the 12, the cuckoo bird comes out the door at the top of the clock and "cuckoos" the right number of times. 

(Can you see the cuckoo at the top of this clock?)

Other large clocks we saw were:

We also went to the House of 1000 Cuckoos (they sell cuckoo clocks). Outside the shop, there were bears making a clock, and a little bear climbing up a ladder (he moved up and down), but they were all carved out of wood. It was awesome.

We also went to Germany's highest waterfall, also in Triberg. 

There were squirrels there that you could feed peanuts to. They were too fast to take a photo of, but we did see this big squirrel out the front.

The black forest is also famous for the black forest cake.

When we left Triberg, we saw something else that was the biggest in the world.

The world's biggest toilet. It was 12 metres tall. 

Very funny.

Now we are going to Spain.  (uh oh, I have to learn a little Spanish, better start learning). 

Auf  wiedersehen.

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Buon giorno,

Just a quick note today because I thought you would all like to see these photos.

When we left Rome, we drove to the town of Pisa, where there is a tower that is really tall and is not straight.  It is the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I tried to push it back, but it just wouldn't go straight.

Guess I needed some more weetbix.

Arrivederci

Rome

Buon giorno/Hello

We're in Rome, the capital of Italy. Rome is a very old city and it has some buildings that are nearly 2000 years old. Some of these buildings have been restored (fixed up) so you can see what they used to look like, others are just the remains of buildings (ruins).
Some of the buildings we went to visit were:

the Pantheon

the Colosseum

and St Peters Basilica at the Vatican.

We also saw some fantastic fountains and statues:

 Bernini's Elephant

 Trevi Fountain

 Arch of Constantine

the Leaky Boat

We also love Italian food. We are eating:

 pizza

 lasagne

spaghetti bolognaise

and gelato. Very yummy.

Our favourite day in Rome was Friday, October 12. It was Matthew's birthday and we went to Gladiator School. It was fantastic.

Arrivederci/Good bye

Venice

Buon giorno/Hello

We are now in Italy and the main language is Italian.
(per favore - please, gratzie - thank you, si - yes, no - no, prego - you're welcome)

We are in Venice in Italy. Venice is a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and joined together by bridges.

There are no cars on Venice. Instead of using cars, people walk or they use small boats. We caught a ferry to go from where we were staying to the main island. It was amazing. The Grand Canal (the main canal in Venice) looked like our highways, full of dinghies, ferries and gondole (gondolas).

The main island in Venice is called San Marco. San Marco has a large square full of buildings that are very beautiful.

Venice is famous for masks 

One of the islands, Murano, is famous for the special things they create from glass. They have shops all over Venice that sell Murano glass figurines, jewellery and vases. They are very nice. 

Matthew bought a glass tiger. I liked this one, but it was too big to bring home.

Arrivederci/Good bye

Switzerland

Gutt morgen (Good morning)

We have been in Switzerland. Switzerland has many high mountains and lots of lakes. It is very beautiful (and very cold). They also have gorgeous houses. I'd love to live in one of these.

A lot of people here speak German (so my German is getting a little better, but I still need to practise).

The best things we have done in Switzerland have been to go up some mountains. We went on a cable car to get up to the top of Schilthorn mountain. It went quite fast and very high.

Up the top of the mountain it was so cold that there was snow. It was fantastic. Matthew and I had a snowball fight

and then we made a snowman.

Matthew also made Kev a little house.

We also went inside a mountain where the water from some of the mountains goes when the snow melts. The water coming down from the mountain makes a waterfall, but this mountain had waterfalls inside the mountain. Pretty amazing.

Another mountain that we went up had an ice cave. We walked through tunnels in the ice cave.

Someone had even carved a dog out of the ice. It was as cold as your freezer, so the dog didn't melt. We didn't stay in there to long,  it was too cold.

Now we're driving through the tunnels and roads that they have made through the mountains to go to Italy.

Auf wiedersehen/Good Bye