Mrs Shepheard's Overseas Trip

At the start of the school holidays I went to Great Britain with my family. First we landed at London’s Heathrow Airport which was very busy. We had to get into the city to our hotel so we caught the ‘Tube’.
We were very tired when we got there so we all had a big sleep. It had been a long journey of over twenty four hours on the plane. A whole day and a night!

The next day we had a lot more energy so we went walking around some of the famous places of London.
We tried to visit the Queen at Buckingham Palace but she was busy and couldn’t see us. Next we jumped onto the London Eye and had a bird’s eye view of Big Ben.






Our next stop was Edinburgh and to get there we caught a train. The journey took three hours and once we had arrived we hired a car to make it easier to get around. We visited Edinburgh Castle which was a fortress built to keep out invading groups of people. It has holes in the walls where they used to fire arrows. We saw a cannon being fired. It was as loud as thunder!

Greyfriar’s Bobby is a statue to a dog who was so loyal to his master that he refused to leave his graveside. People used to come and feed him at the church here the grave was and when he died they put up a statue to him. The Fourth Rail Bridge is a very famous bridge because of its unusual design. The Germans even tried to bomb it in WWII.


From Edinburgh we few to Paris in France. The weather was a lot warmer there fortunately! We went up the Eiffel tower and it was quite scary in the lift as parts of it were made of glass and we could see all the way down to the ground.
After that we needed an ice-cream.

We ate the most enormous ice-cream ever!
Another famous landmark in Paris is the Louvre Gallery. We saw the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci which is probably the most famous painting in the world. Lots of people were gathered around it taking photos and it was kept behind a sheet of glass.
I guess they don't want fingerprints!
Paris has a great underground train system called the Metro. The trains come every few minutes so it is really easy to get from one place to another really quickly. We still had to do lots of walking though. Just as well after that ice-cream.


Next we hired a camprvan and drove through the middle of France! Our first stop was a chateau. This is the French word for castle. The amazing thing about the chateau that we visited was that it went from one side of the river to the next. I visited this chateau when I was 8 years old and I always wanted to go back and see it again. I am so glad that I did! I think I would have made a good Princess. It must have been cold in this castle in winter thoughas the rooms are so big.


Next stop was Barcelona in Spain as Felix is a big fan of the Barcelona football team. On the way through the mountains between France and Spain we encountered an unexpected blizzard which was quite scary as we didn't have any chains on our tyres.
After realising that we had missed a tunnel we went back and under the mountain. When we came out the other side their was no sign of snow!

We of course had to visit Camp Neu (football stadium) but we couldn't buy tickets for the League semi-final as we weren't Spanish. Very disappointing for Felix but we watched the game in a local tavern with some other Barca fans. They had three big screens in a room the size of our lounge.
After Spain we headed back to France and to Arles. They have a bull fighting ring here that they still use! We were there on May 1st and there was a big festival to celebrate Spring! AFter sunning ourselves on the Riviera we headed for Italy - home of spaghetti!