Travelog for: Spiker

Today I was sitting on a shelf with my brother Rory, when all of a sudden the CUTEST little girl came running up to me. She was pulling her mom by the hand behind her saying "Look, Mom!! Dinosaurs!! I LOVE dinosaurs!!!!!!!" She told her mom how she really really wanted me, and was talking about how I would make a great toy voyager. I didn't know what that was, but I really wanted to go home with that girl! Thankfully, her mom said yes, and I had myself a family She had two other creatures with her, Gooble and Wild Thing and they told me what it meant to be a toy voyager. Man oh man, am I excited!!

Right after my mom took me from the store, we went to see a movie We saw the Lion King in 3d, with popcorn and everything! Yum 

After the movie we had a surprise. Mom got invited to a birthday party and we all got to join! I had some yummy lunch, and then we got to walk around and see all the animals at the farm. There was a big black pig, turkeys (which are kind of funny looking), and roosters! Who knew the world was so much fun!

Today was Gooble's and Wild Thing's last day in San Jose! Tomorrow Gooble gets to go on her first ever trip!! She absolutely cannot wait It also happened to be my mommy's auntie's birthday today. So we went to one of our favorite Chinese food restaurants with a bunch of family and friends to celebrate. There was this fancy thing in the middle of the table called a lazy susan that spins around so everyone can reach the food, and Mommy let us take a ride on it I ate soooo much food, and even had some yummy cake. It was a fabulous way to celebrate. Birthday/Going away parties are the best  And after dinner, mommy's aunt offered to let Wild Thing come back home with her to Los Angeles. That leaves only me and Roary home with Mommy. Talk about an exciting day!

Today Roary and I went to work with mommy's mom. We got to play with the little girls she watches. We helped them build a puzzle, but we got a little hungry and might have eaten a few of the pieces... oops! Then when we got home we wrote out a bunch of postcards to people on postcrossing.com. Nice relaxing day

Mom forgot to send out the postcards yesterday, so Roary and I sent them out for her this morning. I really hope everyone likes them! Then we went to Morgan Hill for a street festival. All over downtown they have these big mushroom statues that people painted. This one was painted with a Wizard of Oz theme!

Today was fantastic! It was gloomy in San Jose, and started to rain. So mommy's mom packed us up and we all headed to the beach! I'd never been, but it sounded really fun. We all realized we were pretty hungry, so we looked up a burger place and stopped in Monterey. It got good reviews online and it sure was delicious! They had bottle cap checkers on the table for you to play while you waited for your food. Roary beat me, but that's okay I really liked all the pictures posted all over the walls! And the burger was so big, I could only finish half!

After lunch we headed to Cannery Row to do some shopping and hit the beach. Once we parked we had to walk a bit and saw the most gorgeous flower bush on the way. It's flowers hung upside down! Then we saw the sign and knew we were here! Mom convinced her mom to hit up some candy shops. There was sooooo much salt water taffy! Even a giant couldn't eat all that. I even found some really weird candies. One was supposed to be boogers, and the other was body part sushi. Yuck!!! Who would buy that stuff?!

After buying some candy and 65 postcards, yes, 65!! We finally made it to the beach. Mom put a quarter in the telescope so I could look out across the water. Then we got to go down to the water and have some fun. We posed for lots of pictures on the rocks and looking out over the water. It was just so beautiful! We found the perfect little spot on the beach where all kinds of fancy stuff was washing up. We got all kinds of sea glass, pretty shells and other interesting things. We found a few live sea snails, and crabs! And even found a big crab claw shell!!!! Then it started to sprinkle a tiny bit, but mom and the rest of the family didn't let it ruin our fun I mean, we were already wet from the tide, so what was a little rain going to hurt? After the rain stopped, there was a beautiful rainbow!!

Finally, the sun began to set. We gathered all our beach treasures, and chose a few that were fancy enough to bring back home. we started to walk back to the car and decided to stop by the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the way. They had another telescope that Roary and I took turns watching the sunset through. They also have a few outdoor educational things we could look at and read. Then on our way home we stopped for a delicious steak dinner. It was the perfect way to spend a Sunday

It is so dark in here. Can anybody hear me? Since some minutes it is finally getting warmer around me, so I guess I arrived at the new home.



Oh, someone is opening my envelope.



Hello world outside. Oh, I am not alone…





So much other toys. Hello. I am happy to be here now.



BlackCat likes the postcard we chose for her. I hope I can tell you more things soon!

Love,
Spiker

Hey,
Later today the sky turned grey and BlackCat got scared. Suddenly hail was coming down from the sky and we were all watching how it looked…BlackCat said not long and we will have snow. We will see. Snow is better than hail, I think. BlackCat said that she is sorry that I came when the weather was so bad. But I hope it will turn better soon, so we can go out and I can see where I am now.





Love,
Spiker

Hey,

today we had a walk in the new Thyssen Krupp quarter, which was built in 2010.



This house is the so called „Stammhaus“ from Alfried Krupp and his family. It was totally destroyed in the Second World War, but 1960/61 an original rebuilt was built only 100meters away from the original place. It is a symbol for the beginnings of the Krupp area, which made Essen to the city it is now.



Here you can see some steelworkers at work.



The new Thyssen Krupp headquarter.



With lots of water in front of it.





The area around it. On the second picture you can see the tv tower.



The black house in the background is the town hall of Essen. The one in the front is a car seller.



Next to the car seller is a furniture store (Kröger), Ikea and McDonalds.

Love,
Spiker

Hey,

BlackCat wanted to show us German cars, so we went back to the car seller. He had only VW and one other car which we made photos of. BlackCat forgot the real names of the cars, she will add them when she asked her boyfriend.



VW



VW



VW



Audi



VW

Love,
Spiker

Today we visited the light weeks with BlackCat. It was opening today, so we saw a firework (sorry, we have no photos of that) and BlackCat showed us one of the pictures that are hanging around in Essen from the 30th October to the 7th January. Maybe we will show you more later!

Today was warm weather, so BlackCat said we need some culture. So we went to a museum called "Coal mine Nachtigall". I really hope you will like our photos. I am sorry, but I can't comment them all, as BlackCat can't find English descriptions to them all. If you have questions, feel free to write BlackCat and she will try to describe !


A coal train.






These kind of boats was used to transport the coal on the river Ruhr! Horses were pulling these boats.





BlackCat went into the visitor coal mine, but we weren't able to join here. She made some photos we want to show you! So you can see how it looked in a coal mine!










The shining black part of the wall is coal.