Gardening with Margaret

When we arrived in Michigan (June 2017), I spent a lot of time in Margaret's garden. 


Now, I have what you call a black thumb instead of a green thumb. But after working in the Garden for a couple of hours I have moved up to a brown thumb-yay! 



One of the many things that I learned was that you have to plant asparagus 1 foot deep and keep on covering it with soil also it just grows straight up and it go's to about my thigh. I never knew that it just grew straight out of the ground with no attachments and that it grew so high!





 Margaret said that I was very good at pulling thistles (that were next to her cantaloupes patch). She planted some corn a couple weeks ago and there are little sprouts of corn.  I got to plant a lot of vegetables! Like beets, green beans and carrots. When we were planting the seeds I learned what a hoe was and a Rototiller. A rototiller is like a lawn mower except that it has 2 huge blades on the sides and what it is used for is if you have really dry dirt you push the rototiller around the garden and it refreshes the dirt so that if you're planting a bed you have nice soil. A hoe is used for patting dirt on the seed lines but if you are planting carrots you have to make sure that you don't put to much dirt on top cause then the carrots won't come up out of the ground.


I also didn't know that you had to cover your strawberries with hay so that it does not get a frostbite. When I went to Margret's she had strawberries that were really green but we came back a couple days later and we got to have fresh strawberries!  


When I started gardening with Margaret I knew almost nothing about gardening except that plants need sun and water. But now I know way more all thanks to Margaret.

My 100th Blog Post!

In December I made a deal with my Dad to do 100 blog posts. Because last year we went on a trip and I hardly did any blog posts. So these past few months I have been working really hard on finishing 100 blog posts. It was really hard when we were not traveling to come up with topics. But my Mom and Dad came up with some really cool ideas that I would have never ever thought of. Over the pass few months I have written about taking a taking a 17 hour and 30 minute plane flight to taking an amazing cooking class in Goa, India. Here are some of my favorite blog posts that I have written...

• Sorza, one of my favorite restaurants in Paris
• Le souffle, another one of my favorites in Paris
• If I had a million dollars to spend on travel what would I do?
• Who inspired me to travel
• Kids reunion
• Norwegian star kids club

It was very hard to write the blog posts because my Dad got on my nerves a lot by saying don't forget to do this and this and this. My favorite part about writing the blog posts was getting them done at the end of the day and writing about the fun topics .

I like writing much more now than I did a couple of months ago and I think I am much better at it too! There have been a ton of people supporting me on this and I am so happy that I have finally reached the finish line! 

2nd Day in England

First we started off the day by getting lost.. We had a nice walk, but Google Maps took us into the temple grounds and all the gates were locked so we couldn't get out. We walked back to where we came in and then got a taxi to Chinatown.

 We had Dim-Sum for Breakfast with Clara, Brett, Josh, Jane and Jeff which are friends of Clara, Brett and Josh. My Dad wanted to order Duck Feet and he said they were pretty good. We also had shomi, har gow, soup dumplings and a whole duck it was all really good.

M&M world was next. It was 3 stories tall and had more M&M stuff than I had ever seen.

Josh and I went into a photo booth and took a bunch of funny pictures.

After that, we walked through Chinatown and Josh and I got drinks with Tapioca balls and they were really good. 

Then we walked through Trafalgar Square and Josh and I climbed on the lion.

London is famous for pubs and we had to go and try out another one!

Then, we made sure to go back to the fountains again and this time to take our shoes and socks off, but we winded up getting completely soaked anyway. 

Sadly, it was nearing the time for Brett, Clara, Josh, Jane and Jeff to leave, so we went back to our hotel room and Clara, Brett, Josh, Jane and Jeff had fois gra, truffles and exotic fruits like jackfruit. After all that fun it was time to say goodbye to all of them. 

After they left we walked along the river and the weather was perfect. We came back to our hotel room and watched a movie. We always try to pick a movie based on the place we are visiting, so we watched Royal Wedding which is based in London.

Michigan

Michigan is where my dad grew up. So we visit as often as we can . My dad has some friends in Michigan and we see them too.







The thing I love about Michigan is that there is snow! I am guessing that, that is partly because I live in California and we have very sunny weather. In the summer it is super duper humid.


 There is also a HUGE lake the Great Lake. the lake is really fun to play in except the water is very salty.   


My dad's friend, Margaret has a farm and we picked blackberries last year in the woods. They were really yummy. For her 80th birthday I used my loom to make her a scarf.




When we went this January it was snowing and I got to build my first snowman it was awesome. The best part about snow is that you can form it into spheres.




 
I spent my birthday in Michigan last year with Margaret, her husband Bob, her son Raymond (my Dad's best friend) and his wife Susan. I was supposed to be in Paris for my birthday. So Raymond made a sign that said Parisville cause we were in Harrisville. I had a great 10th birthday. 

London, England

Today we took the Chunnel from Paris to London. We decided to stay in London for 6 nights.



On our first day we saw our friends that we met 2 years ago in Paris, Brett, Clara and Josh (plus their friends Jeffrey and Jane).







For breakfast we went to a Pub and I had a really yummy sausage roll. Then we walked to Covent Gardens. On the way we played on some bikes and we saw a bunch of fountains and we had great fun jumping over them.

We stopped on the way to buy some candies we got: Toxic waste, Bean Boozeled and edible money. Then we went to another pub so that the adults could have a drink and also so we could try our candies.

     


After eating all that candy it was time to go SHOPPING!! We went into Radley's which had a lot of purses. Then we went to Kate Spade and they had so many beautiful purses and clothing there.

Then we went to Hotel Chocolate and I got my all time favorite 72% dark chocolate and some chocolate pasta - this was a gift from Jane who gave Josh and I each a $10-$15 limit to buy something.

  

After going shopping it was time to eat lunch so I had a bratwurst with crispy onions and ketchup and man was it good.

We walked by an Iberian ham store and it brought back great memories of Barcelona. We stopped by a Samsung store and I got to try the VR experience and it was AWESOME!!! Josh really wanted to go to a store called Hype so we went there and he got a very vibrant blue sweatshirt.

The adults decided that it was time for a drink, so we came early to the place we were going to have dinner to have one. Josh had a Pina colada and I had a Mojito both non acholic. For dinner we had Lamb Tagine and Chicken Tagine, pita bread, smoked eggplant, tzatziki, and for dessert we had turkish delight, mint tea, baklava and much more.   There was a belly dancer at the restaurant is that was an interesting thing to see.

 After that we walked back to the hotel.

Tours

We love taking tours. We all know that you can learn so much from them too. So we try to get the best information that we can and the correct information. So one of the things that my Dad does is read up the night before we go to places and we know stuff about the city. Then we take a cab to the places that we want to go instead of spending $100 per person on tours. The thing you can do is go to getyourguide.com which features special tours and adventures for you to go on with locals. Tripadvisor is also great for tours like if you want to take a photgraphy class around Rome ,then Tripadvisor is the place to go. We have booked a lot of cooking classes on Tripadvisor and getyourguide.com. Here is another one Viator.com it does the same exact thing as the other ones. We also like, well actually my Mom really likes, to take HOHO's which is a Hop on Hop off bus. The other thing my Mom really likes to do (and my Dad and I go along with it) is to take "Little Train" tours.

Napa Farmer's Market

I  missed the farmers market so much. One of our many favorite things at the farmers market is sausage rolls. The sausage rolls are better than the ones we had in London. My Dad says the reason why they are so good is that they put a lot of lard in the filo dough. Another favorite is Pupusas's, which are like a pancake shape but it has corn masa dough and it has pork belly inside or cheese and beans.

We also have a lot of good sweets at the farmers market. My favorite is Annie the Baker. She has the best cookies in the whole entire universe. My favorite cookie is Sugar Rainbow it tastes like cookie dough. She is also a very nice person. I like talking to her.

There is also a food truck that has very yummy crepes and he has this very French accent. One time when we got a crepe his parents were visiting from France. His wife speaks Spanish and he talks to her in Spanish.

We also had some really good honey there were 4 different flavors: Orange Blossom, Cinnamon, Wildflower and habenero. We like wildflower the best.

The farmers market also has lots of fruits and vegetables like really good strawberries and blackberries. They had the coolest way of displaying lettuce. They had a huge planter box and they put a bunch of water under it so when he did not sell any lettuce he would not have to worry about the lettuce dying, because the lettuce still had its roots. They have a stand in the farmers market that only sells mushrooms and he has so many different kinds.

We go to markets all over the world (it is one of my Dad's favorite things to do). The Napa market may not be the biggest, but I like it because it is in our town and we know a lot of the vendors. 

Florence - Pinocchio

When we were in Florence, Italy we saw a lot of Pinocchio's. That made me curious. Why is Pinocchio so popular in Florence?

What I found out is that the person who carved Pinocchio, whose name is Geppetto, lived in a village near Florence. "The Adventures of Pinocchio" was a novel published by Carlo Collodi in 1888. Disney made Pinocchio into an animated film in 1940 and in 2000 it is a television musical It is a story about very poor man (Geppetto) who gets a magical block of wood from a man named Antonio who was going to turn it into a table leg but instead gave it to Geppetto to carve into a marionette puppet.

Tuscany - Making Pizza

When we went to Italy I had 2 goals. One was to learn how to make pasta from scratch and the other was to learn how to make pizza from scratch. I got to do both! This blog post is about making pizza. 

We had found an amazing pizzaria near our apartment. They have the thinnest crust you have ever seen but the crust is really good. We asked the owner if he could do a pizza making class and he said yes! So we made arrangements to come back for a lesson. The owner's mother was there to make her yummy chocolate cake and she wrote down 2 of her own recipes for us. While I was  making the pizzas she put  a pink hat on me that said the pizzarias name (La Cantina) on it and a ton of tourists came in and took my picture. When you first walk into the restaurant you see the guys making pizzas and I was one of the"guys" making the pizzas. We went into the back kitchen and the mother was making pasta! She was making wild boar pasta and we got to taste it and it was really good! 

At the end of the cooking class we were very full and we now now know how to make pizza,

Making friends in Europe

When we look for a place to stay on Airbnb, my parents try to find places owned  by families with kids around my age. 

When we stayed in Tuscany, we stayed at a place called Villa Saladini. It was a villa that had been in the family for 500 years. The current owners are Marco and Perla and they have split the villa up into some apartments that they rent on Airbnb. They have 2 kids Bernardo and Beatrice. I had a lot of fun playing with them, even though I don't speak Italian and they don't speak English.

When we stayed in Rome, we stayed in a great apartment in Trastavere. The owners with Giovanni and Maya. They are artists. They have a daughter named Isabella. I had a great time visiting the botanical garden and going to the playground with Isabella.

Sometimes I also meet kids at local parks and playgrounds. I met my friend, Josh, at the Notre Dame playground in Paris. I also met a friend named Eliza in a playground in Barcelona.

The biggest dog I ever saw!

We were taking a walk in Colmar and we met these people who were walking the biggest dog I ever saw.

I looked up what kind of dog it is and I think it is an Irish Wolfhound. Irish Wolfhounds are the tallest dogs. They are almost 3 feet fall at the shoulder and weigh between 115 and 180 lbs.

Eventhough he was huge, he was very friendly.

Colmar - The best crepes

We stayed a month in Colmar, France and we found an awesome place to have crepes just around the corner from our apartment. It was like fast food because he had a little booth where he would make them and you just walk up to the window and order. 

He was a super nice guy. Sadly we could not communicate very well with him because we do not speak French and he did not speak English. The worst part about not speaking French was that we did not know when he was open.

I always ordered citron which is lemon juice and sugar. When he was making it, I always thought that he was putting too much lemon juice and sugar on, but it was always the perfect amount. He let me come to the back so it looked like I was making the crepe and he was in the picture too! 

Inside his shop he had a bunch of beautiful plastic flowers. At the end of our trip to Colmar he gave me a plastic flower that is orange and black.  It is a great memory of Colmar. I had a lot of yummy crepes and I hope to come back again in the near future. 

Rome is my FAVORITE city

Roma, or as we say it Rome, is a very big city and it has a lot of beautiful sights and monuments. For example, there is the Sistine Chapel, the Trevi Fountain and the Colisseum. 

We got to Rome on the train. My mom and I played cards and I won the most because I had more tricks up my sleeve! Anyway, we went to the train station When we got there everybody was selling selfie sticks and. interesting fact. I hope you have not bought any because it is illegal to sell them as a street vendor and if you have bought any you're in BIG TROUBLE!!! 

Then we checked in to our lovely airbnb apartment  and the people who rented it to us were Maya and Giovanni, who are both painters. The apartment had a bunk bed and had a mini kitchen and I would definitely recommend this place to anyone. 

We went wandering around and we looked for 3 hours for the Hop-ON-Hop -Off or as I say it A HOHO but we did not find it but there were a bunch of these guys on segways trying to sell tickets for the HOHO after looking forever!!!! we found a really neat looking monument that had 2 soldiers guarding it so I think it is pretty important then we walked around the corner and do you know we saw? - the COLISEUM!!!! and it was only a half an hour walk to our apartment big YAY!!! So we had to take a ton of selfies without a selfie stick and then we took a tour of the Coliseum and we got a great book from the book shop. If you are going to Rome I highly recommend it - it is called Rome Reconstructed. It is only 22 euros for the big one or in dollars $32.00, The book is about Rome when all the Monuments were new and then you flip to the other side and it is present for example the Coliseum had a roof for when it rained but when we got to the top floor it started to rain and of course it has no roof and we did not have an umbrella so we walked in the cold wet rain.

Cruise Crew

I met a lot of people on the cruise and they were all super nice. But I did have a couple favorites. One of the people that I saw everyday on the crew ship was Miguel, Miguel's job is making crepes and man did he do a good job (I had one almost every night). I came up with a name for Miguel - Crepe Guy. I got Miguel's email address he is getting off the ship in Miami and he is sharing cool information about where is now on the cruise.

Another one is Jared, Jared is a chef at Ginza and makes the noodles. I also came up with a nickname for him Wavy Guy. The reason I call him that is every night when we were going to the shows we passed by Ginza and I would wave to him and he would get this huge smile on his face and wave back.

Jennifer is one of the many servers on the cruise ship and is one of my favorites. One night we were heading into the buffet and she had a lei on her head and I asked where she got it and she said that she got it from a table near by. The next night we went to the buffet and we saw her and she was not wearing the hat and she said that her boss was not happy about her wearing it. So through the whole cruise I imagined that she was wearing the hat and say nice hat even though she was not wearing one but just to remind her.

There is a bartender named Alex and he was at the buffet as well and I would always talk to him on the way to our table at the buffet. He apparently loved the crepes too on the ship, but he liked his with Nutella and roasted coconut. Whenever we went to trivia in the Spinnaker Lounge I would talk to the technicians. I learned that one of the technicians' wife was the Kids Club Manager. There were people on the cruise that were called the cruise director's staff and they would do activeties around the ship like contests and trivia. There was a crew person named Tasha and she was one of the cruise directors staff. Tasha was from England and had so much fun doing trivia. There is another cruise directors staff and her name is Tiara and she was born in Celebration, Florida. I played wii with her and also go fish we had great fun together.

Meagan is one of the dancers on the cruise and she was my favorite because she looked like she was so enthusiastic about it. I actually got to meet her. There was also another person from the show that I got to meet her name is Addie and she is from Alabama. She is such a good singer. I had tea with both of them and my friend Holly. I got Meagan and Addie's contacts and Meagan is in London and having great fun, I have not emailed Addie yet though.  

Singapore

We got off our flight and then took a cab to the place where we were going to get on the ship. Unfortunately we did not get to spend that much time in Singapore because we had business stuff to do at home. What I wanted to do was go to the cat cafe and get some tea and spend time with the cats. We also had reservations at a Michelin starred restaurant called Forest and it looked really cool. The architecture in the pictures that we saw looked like they had a light fixture that projected trees on the wall.  Did you know that in Singapore they have some of the cheapest Michelin starred restaurants in the world. As low as $10.00 the reason why they are that low is they are street vendors. We also wanted to see the Singapore flyer which is a huge ferris wheel, Gardens by the bay looks beautiful. My mom and I wanted to see the worlds' largest zoo. Did you know that you can have breakfast with orangutans? Fortunately, we are already planning another trip and this time we hope to spend a few days in Singapore!

Paris and all the yummy sweets

As you know Paris is known as two things - 1.  the city of love (bleh) or 2. the city of baking. Whenever we are in Paris we sample some of the wonderful baked goods. 

My favorite sweet is a couple layers of filo dough and 2 apricots and some custard. 



My moms favorite is a coffee eclair and my dad likes strawberry donuts. 

Paris is famous for it's baguettes. There are many rules that bakers need to follow. By law the baguette can only contain 4 ingredients: wheat, water, salt and yeast. Did you know that the average french person eats a half of a baguette a day? Back in the 1900s the average french person ate 3 baguettes a day!

Soldes, shopping

My favorite time to be in France is when it is soldes why? Because all the shops have things on sale. Soldes is in France usually in January and July where every thing goes on sale. This year we are sadly going to miss it. I practically bought a whole wardrobe during soldes a couple years ago. The reason why everything is on sale is so that they can get ready for the new season. In July they sell all the summer clothes to get ready for the fall collection and in January they sell all the winter clothes to get ready for the spring collection. The best part of soldes is when I come back to the USA the clothes are in style cause it is still winter. 

The Whole Trip

We drove from Napa to San Fransico and took a flight to Singapore that was 17 and a half hours. Then we went on a 38 day cruise that went to Phuket, Thailand and we took a cooking class and we learned how to make pad thai and it was really good. Israel we went to the place where jesus was baptized. We looked at the sea of gallilee and it was beutiful, bethlahem we saw the whaling wall and saw the stone that Jesus was laid on we also saw the stations of the cross, In Oman we took a boat tour and in Oman you to wiggle your tea cup so that they don't give you more, Abu dabi, UAE we took a cooking class at a hotel and learned how to make lamb with a sweet syup , dubai, we took a HOHO and ate lunch at a mall , I had the best sugar can juice there. Did you know that Dabai has the tallest building in the whole world it is called the burj kalifa. Jerusalem, Egypt, we just stayed on the boat. Crete we took a food tour and it was our guides birthday, dubronik, croatia we saw a play ground and I got to hang upside down and we also saw a kitty cat sleeping by the wall, sri lanka was very hot we saw some kids waving on a bus so we waved back, Penang, Melasia we took yet another cooking class and made pork belly with a brown sauce and many other very good dishes.

After all that amazing cruise we took a a train to Florenze. We met a few friends there to. After Flornze we went to Rome and spent 4 days there and we had lots of mozzerella. We went to Germany and spent 2 days with relitives. After a wonderful weekend with the relitives we went to Paris. We stayed in Paris for 10 days and we had a wonderful view from our apartment it was the Eiffel Tower and it glittered for 5 minutes every hour.. Then we went to London and spent 6 days there  and we met some friends that we met 2 years ago in a park in Notre Dome. We spent almost the whole weekend with them.