Travelog for: Malcolm51

St Pol is a small town where lives Fleur's grand-father.  We celebrated Easter with her family with a big lunch and more chocolate! You can notice we've eaten a big part of Easter cake !

When we drove back, it was snowing a lot. In France they say "Noel au balcon, Paques au tison" which could mean "Christmas outside, Easter inside" but it was very strange to see so much snow for Easter. Joey the shetland pony loves playing in the snow. Today i've seen some big toys : a singing dog and a duck from Ireland. There was also Alhea the boxer dog who would have loved to play with us or with Austerlitz, the cat.
Bisous

[size=3]Bonjour,
Right now i'm on the way to Scotland , and i'm very happy to start a new adventure! Before i left France, i met a new tv : another dutch guy - a monkey called Youp. We couldn't chat a lot since i had to pack my stuff and write the last words in my travel book.
Well, i can't wait to discover Scotland !!
Bisous[/size]

What a pleasure to arrive in Vienna/Austria today. I had a warm welcome from my host family and some other TV here and I'm really curious about all my adventures here in Austria. Unfrotunately it is raining today so we didn't go anywhere but my host promised me to show me the city soon.

I started sightseeing here in Vienna! Yesterday we went to Schönbrunn Palace, which was the former summer residence of the Habsburg family. It is situated in a BIG park and is very impressive. We had a long walk around there and even went up a little hill to the point of view called "Gloriette".

Imagine there is even a zoo in this park - and we went there!! We had sooo much fun to watch all the different animals! There was noone like me there but nevertheless I had such a great time there! Most of all I loved the little polar bears and the rhinozeros!!

Today the holidays of my host family started. I was told that we would go abroad for almost 4 weeks and then I would continue my journey on my own.

We packed all our stuff and went to Italy today. Oh, what a beautiful country!! We stayed at a place called Lignano. It is situated in the northern part of the country, not far from Venice and Austrians love to spend their holidays there. You know, Austria doesn't have an access to the sea so the fastest way to reach the sea is to go down to Italy. Austrians are usually very welcome in Lignano since they are bringing alot of money down there, so everybody tries to speak a bit of German there to make them feel a bit like at home.

To be honest, we didn't see anything else except Lignano and we spent almost all the time at the beach which was really relaxing. I had a great time with my friends there! Fortunately elephants don't get sunburnt too easily so I was able to stay in the sun for a long time!!

I'm a very helpful beaver and pretty good in architecture. The Dad of my host family and the kids built a sand castle every day and I helped alot which was sandy but really funny. We also made a marble track and played with it then. Oh, time passed by so quickly!

I'm very proud that I fullfilled one of my missions in Italy: I went on a sunny beach. Yeah!!

On our way back from Italy we had to go through Styria. There in a little village called Piber the famous Lipizzaner horses always spend their summer holidays. My host likes them alot so we decided to visit them and say "Hello". Unfortunately we were a bit too late so we couldn't watch their training lessons but we saw them on the meadow and watched all the exhibitions about them.

Did you know that they are dark when they are born and get their white fur after some years due to a genetic deficit? Interesting, isn't it?

We returned from Italy yesterday, washed all our clothes during the night and left again today.

The grand-parents of my host family have a flat at lake Attersee in Upper Austria and my hosts intend to spend the following 3 weeks there.

It is a very beautiful place there. The flat is located directly at the beach and the view from the balcony towards the lake is sooo nice.

We went down to the lake then and had a swim there. Wonderful, I must say. The water was refreshing but very clear and it was fascinating to watch all the sailing ships there.

Can you see the mountains on the last photo? Look how big they are! I will tell you more about them during the next days!

I told you to have a look at the mountains on the lake-picture in my last update, remember?

Well, today we went up there! But not by cable car as you might think, no, on foot! To be honest, I was carried as well as the other TV which caused almost a crises between my host and her husband (the husband had to carry us up there in his backpack but my host only told him when we were at the top and he was pretty angry about that. First we thought he was angry about US but fortunately we found out then that it was our host he was argueing with. Sometimes humans are really difficult to understand...)

Dear Alexander, it was worth to take us up there all the 1.600 meters!! The view was simply breathtaking, I enjoyed it soooo much! It was the first mountain I ever went up - or was carried up - and I will never forget this adventure!

Imagine what we did today! We went to Germany!! It was a clowdy day so my hosts decided to take the kids (and me and the other TV of course) and go to Bavaria. There we visited a kind of amusement park. There weren't any carrousells but they built many sceneries of various fairy tales - oh, I have been visiting a park full of fairy tales for the second time now!! All the figures there were able to speak and the fairy tales were told there, so it was really beautiful. Unfortunately it started to rain heavily then so we had to leave quite early.

I didn't see much of Bavaria since we went back immideately after we visited the park, but what I saw was beautiful. I specially liked these beautifully painted houses - have a look!

Another adventure took place today. My host's father had his 60th birthday a while ago and as a present he got a balloon flight which was today. We all went there to watch him in the air and it was really fascinating to see the start of such a big, big balloon. Everybody was so busy watching it that we almost forgot to take photos...

It was pretty cold today so we couldn't go swimming. Therefor my hosts decided to go hiking. We didn't climb a mountain today but went to a small lake called "Gosausee" which was beautifully located on the foot of Upper Austria's highest mountain "Dachstein". But when we arrived there it was so clowdy that we couldn't see it.