Europe

Finally during summer break this year, my family and I went to Europe. EUROPE. I'd never been there before so I was obviously super excited to go. First, our flight had a four hour layover in LA, and then we took a ten hour flight to London, England. My mom did tell me to sleep on the plane, but the movies were way too addictive, and therefore once we landed and got to the hotel, I slept for around five hours from severe jet lag. We then all changed and went out to go walk around downtown London. We walked on Towers Bridge and saw a ton of street performers, especially singers.

It was kind of like New York, except much more open and bigger. We ended up eating dinner at Five Guys, and then watched the bottom of the bridge open and close as ships came in and out through the river port. It was a pretty relaxing day, and around 10pm we went back to the hotel and went to bed with a lot of things planned for our next day.

So the next day, once we woke up and got ready around 8am, we left for the Tower of London, which is next to Tower Bridge. The towers were monitored by people called beefeaters, and they apparently had the name because back in the Middle Ages, the king would give them extra beef for their protection services, so they have been literally called beefeaters since then. The towers also had many many precious items in there, such as literally the most precious jewel in the world, the Ko-hi-noor Diamond, which was "given" from Indian to Britain as a "gift." We weren't able to take any pictures of the invaluable items because of the high level security in there however though.

When we went into the part of the towers where prisoners used to be held, we found carvings they had written in all sorts of different languages. These writings were over 500 years old, so it was pretty crazy to read what they had written and imagine living in their times. We also got to go into one of the towers where apparently in the 1600s or 1700s, after a king had died, instead of his sons being able to take the throne, the king's brother kidnapped and murdered them in the tower, and their bones are in now another chapel (we also visited that place too so this is going to be mentioned again).

After leaving the towers and having lunch, we went to St. Paul's Cathedral. The cathedral was ginormous, and by that I mean GINORMOUS.

It had apparently been built in the 10th century originally, but starting to decay by the 17th century, and was mostly rebuilt except for some small elements here and there. During World War Two, I learned, when the Nazis were bombing the areas around the cathedral, volunteers used to stand on top of the cathedral to kick off any explosives that might hit it and burn the place of worship down. Underneath the cathedral, there was a crypt with the bodies of some of the most famous people in history, like Florence Nightingale. There was also a set of stairs that we climbed to reach the dome, which is at the top of the cathedral. I think it was around six hundred steps that we climbed to reach the top, but once we did, we were able to get a view of the entirety of London (or at least a good amount of it).

The next day we went to Westminster Abbey. It's where Queen Elizabeth II was married and coronated, along with many other royal members throughout history. The church was built in 1066 and hosts the tombs of most of England's celebrities, from Sir Isaac Newton to William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Queen Elizabeth I, and the Unknown Soldier.

I was expecting the place to be fancy, but it was decorated on another level. There were so many stain glass panels, and the ceilings were definitely at least as high as twice the height of our house. In the upper level of the abbey, there was an opened coffin on display that LITERALLY had the bones of a person who died around the 600s. The 600s. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the bones of the two boys who were murdered were kept in Westminster next to their parents.

We were all pretty much exhausted after that and had lunch at an Indian place called Govinda's, and then went out to the huge grassy park nearby and all fell asleep under the shade (well at least my parents did, I was watching season 4 of Never Have I Ever then). Because there's no air conditioning in Europe since everyone is very eco-friendly unlike the U.S., there were tons of people like us outside in the park relaxing in the trees' shade since it was super hot outside. After an hour, we got up and walked over to the park near Buckingham Palace and after relaxing for a bit (it was burning hot that day), we went and saw Buckingham Palace from the outside. It was very very big, and it was cool to know that there were people actually using and living in it at the moment.

The next day we went to the British Museum. The first exhibit we saw was the African exhibit. We saw the ancient Egyptian civilizations and famous pharaohs and royalty that were mummified and inside those tombs. There were literally thousands of years old mummies a few feet away from us. We also saw a preserved human from around 40000 BC. Apparently, the human had died in the sand, and since this was before civilizations had formed, he was just left there to die in the hot desert. The heated sand, however, caused his body to be preserved, and when scientists found him in the 1800s, they were able to put him into a temperature controlled box so that people like us could see him.

After that, we went into the Greek exhibits where we saw these ancient statues and the figurines that used to be surrounding the Parthenon. There was also an ancient structure that had been transported from Greece to the museum as a whole. It kind of looked like a smaller Parthenon.

Our last stop was the Asian exhibit. First, we visited India, and saw ancient texts and models of Buddha from when Buddhism first started in the 5th century BC. There was also an entire room at the back of the exhibit dedicated to fragile and extremely precious and valuable sculptures of different gods and figures Indians worshipped. There was also a scroll somewhere in the exhibit that was written in Tamil, and I was able to translate a good part of it, which I thought was cool since the script was thousands of years old.

We then visited China, where we saw more scrolls and paintings depicting the ancient royalty. There were also a lot of statues of Buddha everywhere, but the thing I probably saw the most was china and jade. At the back of the exhibit, there was an entire hall dedicated to jade, and how it has transformed over the centuries from the 5th century BC until now. There were also a lot of watercolor paintings of nature that had sentences written in Chinese next to them, also in watercolor.

After leaving the museum, we visited the infamous 9 3/4 Harry Potter station. For all of you that have no clue what that means, it's basically the secret station between 9 and 10 that only non-muggles could see in Harry Potter.

After visiting the station, we quickly caught the metro to go to the London Eye, which is basically a ginormously huge Ferris wheel that lets you see practically the entirety of London. I took a bunch of pictures as we slowly went up to the top because the brochures weren't lying, you literally could see everything from up there.

The next day, we had our Golden Tours tour. It took us to three of the most famous sites in England: Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Oxford University. First, we went to Windsor Castle, which is not even operational on Tuesday and Wednesday because there are actually royalty working in it! We went on Monday though so we got lucky. The castle was huge, and because it is the only active castle left in England, we only got to go into parts of it.

Our next stop was Stonehenge. Our tour guide Amanda was telling us that no one has any clue of how the rocks came to be in that formation in that area, but that apparently the rocks align during the Winter and Summer Solstices, so it might have been used to tell time to ancient civilizations that built the structure. There are also multiple rims surrounding Stonehenge, which scientists think was used to mark the territory and to show the end of their "area."

Our last stop was one of the oldest universities in the world, Oxford University. It was pretty cold by the time we got there, and I was in a tank top and shorts so. We first saw the spot at which three bishops were burned under Queen Mary's rule. We then went to the head of the University, where there was a door for every different subject.

We then saw the huge library they had. After exploring the campus, we got back on the bus and drove back to London, which was around a two hour drive. Once we reached back to the hotel, we all packed because the next day we were catching the Eurostar to France.

The next day, in the morning we checked out of the hotel and caught the train to France. Because England and France are separated by a channel, the train went underwater which I thought was super cool. Not gonna lie though, I kind of thought we were going to see the ocean outside my window for some reason, but all I saw was black because we were traveling through a tunnel underground. Oh well, I can dream.

Anyways though, once we arrived in Paris, we first checked into our hotel and then got ready to go to the Eiffel Tower in the evening. At school, because learning another language than English is mandatory, I decided to take French, which also meant that once we arrived in France, my parents believed that I would navigate us around. The thing is, I am in French 1. One. Uno. That's it. So while I could read some directions and signs and understand basic words and phrases, other than that I was completely lost.

Because we were staying in the outskirts of Paris and had just arrived and didn't want to figure out the metro system on our first time-sensitive trip, we took an Uber around 6:30 I think to get to the Eiffel Tower outside. Once we checked in and everything and got ready to start climbing, we first took a bunch of pictures outside.

The stairs were around 600 steps, so it took me and my sister around 5 minutes to climb while it took my parents around 10. After the first three hundred though, there was a scenic viewpoint, and then after the next three hundred, there was another one and a restaurant to accompany it. To get to the very top after that, you would need to take an elevator that because is so popular, must be booked 6 MONTHS in advance, which is crazy. So obviously we didn't do that, but the second viewpoint area was still really high up, and they had a good pizza place with super good sorbets right next to it.

After walking back down, we walked around the nearby areas and saw a ton of street performers and sellers. We then took an Uber back to the hotel. Our Uber driver was actually really funny though because he and my dad used Google Translate to talk, and they were talking about their favorite Hindi movies and songs all the way back to the hotel.

The next day, we first went to see the Notre Dame, the unburned part I mean. Because it is still under reconstruction, we only got to look at it from the outside. There we met my mom's coworker, Ivaylo, who lives in Bulgaria with his wife Megi. We walked around Notre Dame together for a bit and heard a lot of different street musicians and performers, and then went to this nearby plaza square area for lunch. We sat down at this nice Italian place and while we were all talking, there was a school field trip near us, and a ton of kids were coming to get ice cream. It was kind of weird watching other schools go on field trips when everyone I knew was on summer break like me.

After lunch, we split up, and my family took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. The thing is, on the way to going there, when we were catching one of the trains, my dad and I were ahead of my sister and my mom and we thought that we would be able to get on in time. So I entered the train first, except right after I did the doors closed, and my dad had his hand stuck in the gates and doors. The people kept screaming to him to get his hand out because unlike New York subways, IT'S AUTOMATIC. This meant that even if my dad couldn't take out his hand in time, the train would just start running. He barely got it out in time, and the train started. There was still one problem, I was on the train alone in a country that I barely understood the language of. My parents called me and told me to get off at the next station and I did, except when they called me again when they were on the next train to where I was, I told them I was at the terminus instead of the station I was at, and they got so confused. When they got off and saw me, my sister was completely crying (which not gonna lie I thought was a little funny). I mean it was a scary moment and all, but it was only one stop so I feel it was exaggerated.

Anyway, once we got out and arrived at the Arc de Triomphe, we got to go inside and climb it and see everything from the top. The Arc de Triomphe was basically built by Napoleon after he won a battle against Austria that he was expected to lose.

I noticed something interesting when I got to the top though. If you walked around the entire top of the tower, there were streets covered with trees on both sides that were all uniform. This is what I mean:

The next day we took the Eurostar to go to Brussels in Belgium. We met one of my mom's super close friends Niaz Uncle. He lives in the Netherlands, and so he took the bus to come to Brussels to meet us. Because we really had no schedule for the day and he used to live in Brussels anyway, he took us around to some popular spots. We first went to the Grand Palace and took a ton of pictures there. We then went to see pretty much the two most famous statues in Brussels, Manneken Pis and Jeanneke Pis.

After that, we just walked around more and went to a comic museum, where they had models of all sorts of popular comics, from Tintin to The Smurfs. There were especially a lot of different Smurfs models because it was originally a Belgian comic franchise that the Americans (us) decided to make into a movie series.

We then went to the mall and pretty much ordered every possible dish because we were all so hungry and just split and ate whatever we wanted to. It was definitely the highlight of the day because it was the first time having good food after a long time since most things in Europe are non-vegetarian except for the basic pizzas and pastas. Around 7pm we took the Eurostar back to France.

The next day we went to the Palace of Versailles. My dad had ended up buying tickets for the day after we went to the palace, and so by some unconventional means that I will not discuss, we were able to get tickets for the day that we went to the palace. The palace was crazy huge, and we got to see where King Louis the 14th and his wife would pretend to sleep and wake up and eat so that the public could watch their "day to day" lives. I got to see the state apartments in which all the important knights and people like that would live, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, I got to see the secret getaway door that Queen Marie Antoinette used to escape the people trying to hunt and kill her.

After seeing the palace, we went to the Garden of Versailles. Because it's HUGE, and it was super hot outside, we rented out a golf cart and drove around the place. There were so many fountains and the most organized trees I've ever seen.

The next day, we went to the Louvre. I had watched DaVinci Code the previous night, and so I was really intently staring at the random shapes in the pyramid inside to see if there's some other pattern that I could make out. We saw tons of paintings and even though that was all cool, the coolest thing was seeing the MONA LISA. The real Mona Lisa. I didn't even believe it until we left the exhibit.

There were so many renaissance paintings and sculptures of all sorts from Greece and Rome. Even though the Louvre is one of the most famous museums in the world, they don't have an AC to keep the place cool, and because it was already a scorching hot day, it made it unbearably hotter.

After that, we left to go to the River Seine river cruise. We got to see the Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, and all sorts of other famous tourist places. There was also a marathon going on on the side, and there were so many people cheering them on.

That night we packed up because the next day we were going back to the U.S. We first had around a one hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany and then after I think a four hour layover, flew back to the U.S.