A crazy day

Seriously, I’m not joking. Last night at about one o’clock I was up late listening to an audiobook that I just got and I heard something from outside my room. My room is the only one downstairs and I thought it was my mom or dad coming down to do something because they couldn’t sleep. But when I looked at my door (all of the doors inside the house are tinted glass so I could see the shadow of whoever was standing in front of the back door) I could see a shadow of someone that didn’t look like anyone who should be in the house. I still thought it was my dad though so I open the door and looked out. When I saw the guy I just kind of froze and stared and for a second he stared back and then he ran. I was confused about why and how he was in the house and couldn’t really think straight so I just watched him run out the back door and jump over the wall around our house. That’s when I started thinking again and I knew instantly that he should NOT have been here and I ran upstairs and woke up my parents and told them that there had been a stranger in the house and they came down and checked if anything was missing. Nothing had been taken because he had just got in. In the morning though we found my mom’s kindle on the other side of the wall he jumped over. Our landlord also found his ladder propped up against the wall at the window to the stairs. It was really crazy that it happened on the last week so we only have to be worried about it for a few days.

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OK, while I was in the middle of writing this I went out into the living room to ask a question and I suddenly felt dizzy and I fell and my head hit directly on the corner of the wall and I got a big cut and it bled a LOT. I had to go to the hospital to get stitches but I’m OK now and I just got the cut cleaned and have to get the stitches taken out in London in 5 days. For now I have to take antibiotics twice a day so it doesn’t get infected or anything. I will try to get the blog about my cousins’ visit done soon but it’ll be much harder to in London because we will be so busy. Hope you’re having a better day than I did. Bye.

Cousins!!! (part 2)

It has been a long time since Kai and Eli were with us, but I still haven’t finished writing about their visit! Well, I will have finished by the time you read this. So, I left off when we got home from the Tra Que Water Wheel. The next day we went kayaking on the Thu Bon river and saw a lot of cool stuff. It was really fun kayaking together with everyone.

A couple of days later we went to Vinpearl Land which is a huge amusement park near where we live.

It was AMAZING! We had been there once before but only did the inside stuff because it was raining. This time we did almost everything! It was so fun! We went to the water park first but could only do half the slides.

It was still fun because there was a lazy river and a wave pool and a giant water playground! We also went to the indoor games which had an arcade where all the games were free and there were also some trampolines and a little kid area. We played inside for a while jumping on the trampolines and playing the arcade games. After the indoor games we walked around for a while and then went to the best part, the rides! There were two roller coasters not counting the creepy caterpillar baby one. There were bumper cars and flying chairs.

And last but not least the Swiss Tower!!! It was a super tall tower that had a ring of seats that took you up to the top and left you there for a whole minute and then just dropped you! I just looked it up it is 85 meters high! And that is about 279 feet! It was crazy! The first things we did there were the roller coasters which were super fun! Then we did the bumper cars which were really crazy and every one was ramming into each other so hard I would be surprised if I didn’t get whiplash! Next we did the flying chairs, they were just relaxing though compared to the other rides.

After we did all the other rides we finally got on the Swiss Tower! It was really scary going up. We were slowly rising up the tower regretting our choice more and more as we got higher. When we reached the top we were so high up that we could see everything for miles around it was so amazing. For a minute we talked and looked around waiting for the “click” and then the fall. Finally it clicked and down we went faster and faster and faster! I tried to scream but the sound was ripped away by the air rushing past me. I could barely see anything except for a blur of lights. And then we slowed rapidly like we had sunk into a pit of thick mud. I was kind of dizzy and full of adrenaline! We all got of and walked away yelling about what had just happened. By then it was pretty dark and we went home soon after and went to bed. We were tired! The next day they left to go back to the U.S.

Cousins!!! (part one)

In the last post I told you about taking a cruise in Ha Long Bay. After that we went to the Philippines but my mom already wrote about that and there is a lot to catch up on so I will start when we got back. The day we got back we went to Abby’s birthday party at the beach and swam and had a lot of fun! That day was kind of windy and foggy and cold but we still had a great time. Annabelle and Amelia came to Hoi An a few days before we got back so they had met everyone and came to the party also. It was so much fun playing in the water and the sand with everyone. The next day everyone came to our house and we made another stop motion movie and got pizza and watched TV.

The next day was the day that our cousins Kai and Eli were coming. I couldn’t wait because they were coming really late that night and we had to wait all day. When they did get here Kai was sick but other than that it was really exciting to see them again! They were really tired though so we all went to sleep, it was kind of hard to fit everyone in the house but everyone shared the beds and Henry and I slept on the couch and the floor. The next day we didn’t do anything except play video games and swim, and in the afternoon we went to the Hub & Coffee and had some drinks. We were all kind of tired. On Wednesday we went to Taboo Bamboo which is a bamboo workshop where you can make whatever you want out of bamboo. It was super fun and we all made some pretty cool stuff. And we got to keep what we made and it is going to be kind of hard to bring it around everywhere we go.

The next day we went to the Tra Que Water Wheel to do a cooking/planting/buffalo riding class that was really fun. First we all biked out to the market to get ingredients and we saw a bunch of cool stuff. After we got back from the market we tried watering some plants with two big watering cans that had a stick between them that you put on your shoulders and swung back and forth to water stuff.

After that we did a basket boat ride and made cool stuff out of the palm fronds like crowns and ring and a really cool grasshopper that the guide made.

Then we went to ride a water buffalo named Lady Gaga, it was so funny!

When we finished the outdoor activities we went back to the restaurant area and got short massages before we did the cooking. We made rice paper for spring rolls that looked really cool. We made some really good spring rolls called Three Best Friends (Tam Hữu) and rice pancakes (Bánh xèo) that were so delicious! Everyone loved it! it was also really fun flipping the rice pancakes even though mine fell into the rice pancake batter stuff, which was actually really funny. When we had eaten all the food that we made we went home and relaxed.

OK I think I’m going to leave it here for now but I’ll do a part two next week! Bye!

World travel is more fun with friends

Wow. It has been a LONG time since I posted a blog. Now I’ll try to make up for it but it might take a while. In January, we met some kids that were staying here for a while at hub & coffee  and had a fun time playing tag (it was an outdoor cafe) and running around. We met three families there, eight kids in all. Rico, Tiana, Eli, Abby, Daniel, Hannah, Declan, and Tobias. Rico and Tiana were siblings, Eli and Abby were siblings, and Daniel, Hannah, Declan, and Tobias were siblings too. It was really fun playing with them at the hub. We played hide and seek and tag and got ice cream which was really good! A few days later we all went to the beach together which was also really fun. The beach that we went to that day had big sand bags along it because there was a lot of erosion. We couldn’t swim but it was fun to climb on the sand bags and push each other off. We also dug a bunch of fake rivers and dams with the ground water that was being pumped out of the ground where they were building a hotel.

The next day, we invited everyone to our house to swim and have dinner. It was really loud and crowded and we had a lot of fun together. We swam for a while and made a stop motion video on my iPad. We got pizza and Indian food for dinner that was really good! After hours of playing everyone went home to sleep, we were all so tired.

Two days later we flew to Hai Phong and drove to Ha Long Bay to take a three day cruise around Cat Ba Island with our friends from Chiang Mai, Annabelle and Amelia. They drove from Hanoi which took a really long time so we had to wait a while for them at the boat place. When they got there we all got on the boat and saw all of our rooms and had lunch, the lunch was really good! And just so you know this boat was NOT a huge white commercial cruise ship like most cruises. This boat was a small boat with only about 10 tiny rooms.

On the first day we went into a tiny cave and looked around and then took the boat out to go kayaking. We kayaked for a long time and I got really tired, at one point we stopped at a beach and walked through a cave to the other side which was another beach. At one of the beaches some people went out to swim including me. After swimming in the freezing water we went back to the boat.

Later we ate dinner, the dinner was also really good because we got to make our own spring rolls! The first day we met a bunch of new friends who were really nice! And it was fun to do all of the activities together. The first night we stayed on the boat and went squid fishing until really late after dinner.

In the morning we had an amazing breakfast and then went to hike up to a huge cave that was really awesome. The cave was massive and it was super fun to explore it and look around because it was so amazing. The pictures can probably describe it a lot better than me though.

After the cave we went to Ti Top Island that was named after a Russian astronaut that came to Vietnam once. We took a really steep hike up to the view point at the top of the island the view was really cool from so high up and it was really fun running all the way down.

After that we took the boat to Cat Ba Island and got ready to do a really fun bike ride. When we got to the island, we all were given bikes and mine was way too small. It was tiny compared to the other bikes and it was so funny! The bike ride was really fun and we went through a cave and stopped somewhere to take a hike, the hike was really fun too and we all had a great time.

After we biked back to the boat we headed to our hotel on the other side of Cat Ba and on the way me, my mom, Annabelle, her mom, and some of the other people on the boat went kayaking around and into a little area of water that was surrounded by small mountains except for a small hole in the rock that we went through to get in. There was also a super crazy echo that was so funny! Annabelle and two other people got in the water but I didn’t because I was going to swim at the boat. When we got back to the boat we were allowed to jump off the roof of the boat but only me and another person did it. It was really fun!

After that the boat went back to Cat Ba Island and we took a van to our hotel.

The next day we took the boat again from Cat Ba Island back to where we started and we all drove to Hanoi which took so many hours! Our flight was really late that night so we went with Annabelle and Amelia’s family to check into their hotel and have dinner.

After dinner we left to go to the airport and flew to the Philippines but that will be in another post so bye for now! 👋

Goodbye, Chiang Mai

Hello again this is my blog for the rest of Chiang Mai that I haven’t written about yet. Hope you like it!!!

On the day after the Grand Canyon water park we didn’t do much during the day but at night we went to the night market with Amelia, Annabelle, Zoe, Delia, and some of the Wallaces.

Right when we got there a wire at one of the stands started sparking and lit on fire but they put it out.

It was a very long, packed street with lots of little food stands and other stands that had things like clothes, hand bags, toys, smoothies, and some little trinkets. It was really fun to walk around and have dinner with our friends.

I had some pork buns which are my favorite and I also had some meat skewers, yum😋. It was really funny at one point when we found the first pack of Sour Patch Kids that we’ve seen the whole trip at a seven eleven. Anyway the night market was really fun.

The next day we went to a place called the Sticky Falls or Bua Tong in Thai with Harley and his parents Jennifer and David. It was really cool because it was an ordinary waterfall but the water ran over limestone instead of regular stone so it wasn’t slippery except for the parts that had slimy algae growing on it. It was so cool because you could literally walk up the waterfall!

But getting to the top was hard because there was a lot of algae at the top and you had to use a rope tied to a tree to climb up. It was kind of scary at the top because if you fell and let go of the rope you would just slide down and fall on the un-slimy part. After playing on the waterfall for a while we played soccer and had a picnic nearby. We found a really cool branch of a tree that hung down like a natural swing like on a playground and it actually swung! It was really fun to swing on!

After we went to the sticky falls we drove to take a boat ride to a floating restaurant in a lake with some blow up thing like what was at the Grand Canyon. It was a really good lunch and really fun swimming. The boat ride was also really cool. The lake was really big and beautiful and the boat was really fast. I really liked the food too probably because I like almost all of the delicious Thai food.

After an hour we all went back in the boat and got in the car and drove to the Elephant Poo Poo Paper Park. At the poo poo paper park we took a tour to see how they made paper with the elephant poo. We also got to make our own paper and leave it out to dry. After that we made Christmas cards with the paper and we could decorate them with cut out reindeer and Santas. It was fun making the cards and we sent pictures of them to our cousins.

After the elephant poo poo paper park we all went to the Four Seasons hotel for the parents to get a drink. It was kind of annoying though because we couldn’t even swim in the pool because we were not guests in the hotel. After that we went home and had dinner.

Two days later we went to the Elephant Nature Park, an elephant sanctuary that rescues elephants from the tourism and entertainment industries. They buy the elephants from poachers and then help the elephants recover from injuries and settle into the community of other elephants. We took a van there and when we got there we fed the elephants with big watermelon halves. It was so cool to see how their trunks come and grab the fruit.

After we fed them we took a long tour around the area seeing all the elephants while the guide told us about them. We found out that most of them had been injured kind of badly by their former owners. Some of them were blind. And for some of them walking was very hard. A few of them had stepped on land mines and had huge bandages around their foot. It was really fun watching them take a bath in the river because they splashed around and shot water out of their trunks.

It was extra funny though when they went right to a pile of dirt and rolled around in it right after their bath😆.

After a lot of looking around we went back to the place where we left our stuff to have lunch. After lunch we went over to a little hospital area and saw pictures of the injured elephants when they got here and hadn’t gotten bandages and stuff. After that we left and took the van back to our apartment.

A day later we we took a five hour bus ride to Sukhothai and stayed at the Smiling Face guest house and went on a bike tour one day. It was the same bike tour that Annabelle and Amelia had taken before they came to Chiang Mai. It was really fun and the guides were amazing. It was a long ride but the snacks we had at one of the stops were very worth it. The history of Sukhothai was really interesting to learn about. We also learned about a tradition of chicken fighting where people train chickens to kick and shove each other until one is so injured that it runs away. The bike tour was really fun and interesting and we learned a lot about Sukhothai, I definitely recommend it.

From Sukhothai we took the train back to Bangkok and stayed there for a few days at the Paragon Inn that was a lot nicer than the other places we stayed.

It had a pool and a pool table and a really good restaurant and all the fancy stuff.

We met another family there with two kids that were both pretty young. It was fun to play with them in the pool and the little girl was a surprisingly good swimmer. I really liked the restaurant and we ate there three or four times over the two days we were there. The market nearby was also good because it had a lot of different local foods and I really like a lot of Thai food.

After two days in Bangkok we flew to Hoi An, Vietnam (were we have been for about a month now) and checked into the Green Apple hotel while we looked for a house to live in for the next three months. Long story short we found a house and moved in. It has a pool and three bathrooms and three bedrooms so we get our own rooms and have enough space for when our cousins come in a few weeks.

Our Christmas was fun and on Christmas Eve we went to a super fancy resort for dinner with some other expats who live down the street. On New Year’s Eve I stayed up until 3:00 and played on my iPad so that was great. Yesterday we met some more kids who are staying here for a while and planned to got to the beach with them sometime. The beach here is really fun. Next week we are going to the Philippines for a week with my aunt Katy. And after that our cousins are coming to Hoi An with us so YAY 😃.

Well now you’re all caught up so see ya later! Max out!

Max’s Chiang Mai

Hi everyone! Chiang Mai was one of my favorite places so I have much to say about it. This will be a long post!

On our first day in Chiang Mai we checked out the Maya mall and got used to our new apartment. The mall was great and we had some really good food and I had grass jelly drink. We also went to One Nimman which was an open mall with a street food market across from our apartment. The food was really good and I got some delicious gyozas that are like pot stickers. The next day, we also found a good pool called Green Hill in walking distance that has two huge pools. We went to the lantern festival and lit lanterns and set them of to float away into the sky. The lantern festival was so fun that we came back the next day because there were a few days of festival to celebrate and on the next day there was a big parade was so many floats and crazy fireworks it was hard not to get startled by flashing lights and loud explosions.

One day that we went to Maya mall to eat we met another family, the Wallaces, with 4 kids who were going to the same water park that we were thinking of going to in a few days so we decided to go with them sometime. We also met up with another family that had 1 kid who was almost 7. His name was Harley and we went to their house and played soccer with them for a while (the parents won 10/9). It was really fun playing with Harley so we invited them to the public pool. Harley’s mom Jennifer runs a travel agency called Wild Women Expeditions so she knew a lot about what to do in Chiang Mai.

On the day we went to the pool we also invited another family with two kids that my mom met through another friend. The kids were Annabelle and Amelia and the parents were Wayne and Christiana. They came to the pool too and we swam and talked for a while and then went to get a snack at the place next to the pool while Harley talked about a funny game he played. They ordered chicken nuggets and a sandwich and I ordered fries. But when the food came the waiter put all of the food in front of them so it looked like the French fries came with the nuggets. I waited for my fries and after a while I asked when the food was coming. They were like, “huh? Ooh!” and she went to the table and moved the fries in front of me and we were like “OOooHHhh… hahaha!” It was really funny😆.

When we left the pool we went to our favorite One Nimman with Annabelle and Amelia. We showed them around and got food and smoothies. Amelia’s smoothie had salt in it for some reason! What! We decided to invite them to the Grand Canyon water park too! It was starting to become a big party! The next day we went on a hike to a really beautiful wat/temple called Wat Pha Lat that was on a waterfall on a mountain. It was really cool and me and Harley used leaves as boats to float down the waterfall. While we were at the temple Annabelle and Amelia were at a bike tour that you can learn more about it on their blog at www.waacawayawhile.com.

The next day was finally Grand Canyon time woohoo! When we got there only the Wallaces and their friends were there and it looked so fun! It wasn’t a normal water park, it was outside and was in a big lake kind of place with blow up slides and pathways in the water kind of like the stuff at Pump It Up. There were huge ones though and we jumped off of them into the water. We met two girls named Zoe and Delia with their mom Julie who were also friend with the Wallaces. It was so fun meeting up with more kids my age. We swam and played until about lunch when Annabelle and Amelia showed up. Then we all went and played for a while before having lunch. We kept up the fun and did the zip line there and tried out their water bouncy bike things that were kind of confusing and then it was time to leave because it was closing time, wow we stayed there a long time. One of the staff chased use out of the water so we went pretty fast😂.

After the water park we planned to all watch a movie together but it turned out it only played in Thai until 10:30 so we all went to eat dinner together at the Maya mall – we went to Wrap Master and got tacos but the the girls’ tacos all had jalapeños in them so they took them all out and the tacos were still supper spicy. We hung out for a while and played at the arcade. It was a really fun day but we had to go home so we planned to go to the Green Hill pool with Zoe, Delia, Annabelle, and Amelia sometime soon and then left.

I think this blog has gotten long enough so I will finish Chiang Mai later so bye 👋!

Thailand, the Land of the Buddha

We arrived in Bangkok after an 18 hour trip including a three hour layover on November 11 from Namibia. We left the airport and went to our apartment in the middle of the city near the day old Icon Siam mall the fanciest, most expensive mall in Thailand 🇹🇭. The next day we went to it and ate lunch and looked around the fake floating market that had fake rivers with boats selling food along the sides. The only thing that was wrong with the mall was that it seemed like the bathrooms were very last minute because all of the sinks looked like they had been ripped out of the wall and the soap dispensers didn’t even work.

Our apartment was better and worse than the description at the same time because of two things. The first thing was that the building we were in did not allow people to rent out their apartment so that was kind of worrying. The other thing that was the best part was the pool, actually the two pools. They were both the perfect temperature because in Thailand it is really hot and humid so the pools always got warm enough, but not too warm. It was so fun to swim and jump in the pools especially because they were salt water pools so the water felt really smooth and soft.

In Bangkok we went to Wat Arun which was really cool because the colorful tiles on the sides were made with broken plates and pieces of ceramics. We saw many Buddhas and three headed elephants. A day before Wat Arun we went to Chatuchak market, it was huge! The biggest market I have seen in Thailand and it had so much stuff! I got some cheap fake legos and we all got foot massages (my first) and had smoothies. While we were there it rained so hard that all of the metal and plastic roofs sounded like thunder! Speaking of thunder there was thunder!… and lightning!… ten feet away!!! It sounded like explosions right across the road!

On Thursday of our one week in Bangkok we went to Amped trampoline park which was really fun. There was a big mat block thing that was about a meter high that I was able to do a front flip up onto it after starting with only being able to jump up and do a cartwheel on it. On Friday we walked to Soi Five, a food market with a lot to chose from. We ate dinner there and I had my first grass jelly which is a drink with condensed milk, brown sugar or caramel sweetener, and grass jelly cubes that are pretty much like jello gelatin that tastes like grass but I really like it and have gotten it a lot since.

On Monday we left Bangkok to go to Chang Mai. In Chang Mai our apartment was near a big mall called Maya that has a really good food court in the basement and on the fourth floor. There was also a movie theater, arcade, grocery store, food courts, stores with clothes, books, stuffed animals, medicine, and smoothies (I love the smoothies!).

Ok that’s all of Chang Mai for this blog but the next one is coming soon.

To be continued…

Auf Wiedersehen, Europe

Hello again everyone from Innsbruck, Austria 🇦🇹. I’m sorry that I haven’t posted anything lately but I hope you’ve heard about what we’ve done the last month from my mom and dad. If you haven’t I’ll tell you my favorite things that we’ve done. In Tihany, Hungary I trampolined and drove past a “shooting range” to a grocery store and bought potato helicopters😂(a funny circular fried piece of “potato bread”).

In Slovenia we went to Ljubljana castle where we took a tour and saw a fox 🦊!, the art district, met two funny Slovenian kids, went to cacao (the best ice cream place ever), trampolined and went to Piran where we swam and almost got blown away by wind.

We then went to Italy where we swam in a pool, saw ancient Roman villa ruins and ate puffo (smurf) ice cream in Sirmione. From Sirmione we traveled to Lake Garda which had big mountains that popped up right next to the shore.

We went to Lake Tenno where we swam all day before going back to the apartment where we where staying.

The next day we swam and went to a cool medieval village called Canale. Next up was Lago de Ledro. There we climbed up a mountain, at the top the view was so beautiful to look over the lake, from there we could see so far to the far away mountains.

We also went and biked for miles one day which tired us all out. After Lago di Ledro we drove to Bolzano to see Ötzi the ice man the 5300 year old mummy whose discovery pushed back scientists’ assumptions about use of copper by 500 years.

Amazing right! Also while we were watching a music video channel on TV a hilarious add popped up saying “ITALIAN CHEESE AWARDS” it was so funny 🤣.

Now as you know we are in Innsbruck, Austria where there is “drum roll please” a trampoline!

On our first day there we got the Innsbruck card to take a cable car to a gondola up to go up a mountain. When we where there we walked around and enjoyed the beautiful view of the city and the other huge mountains and valleys.

The next day we went to the zoo and saw most of the animals which were really cool even though all the animals were local.

We also biked around in Innsbruck with rented bikes to the Hall Mint and saw a bunch of old coins. Today is our last day here and we went to a really cool park with huge swings, a work out station and a big sand box with a fun water pump to dig little streams in the sand. The park was really fun and we stayed for a long time swinging and running around.

Our next stop is Munich where we will stay for two days and then Namibia where we will stay for three weeks with no wifi most of the time😱. Anyway that means that we probably won’t be posting anything but we will be taking a lot of videos and pictures to post when we get back to wifi. I can’t wait to see all of the cool animals from the camping truck we rented. See you next time. Max out!

Playing Games in Central Europe

Hello again everybody from Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺 district 12. We arrived Tuesday and were given a three-hour tour by our host where (Henry fell asleep) he explained that he had in fact washed “by hand” or just replaced everything in the house (he showed us this by licking the toilet… brush). We also were shown a picture of “his” yacht which was “boring” (and was actually from Lisbon not Hungary). OK well let’s get back on track, I posted my last blog post in the Czech Republic, Prague to be exact. Our apartment in Prague was very good because it was right next to a big playground that was really fun and that we could walk to and play at for a while. The swings were really fun because I could go really high on them and jump off. There was also a super huge grocery store near our apartment to that I got a bunch of candy at on our last day that lasted for weeks (I think I still have some in the car 🤔).

There was also a big metronome statue that was on a hill that a lot of skateboarders were skating at. The hill was next to a big river with a lot of boats on it. I really liked our place in Prague and would want to go there again.

Our next stop was Bratislava in Slovakia where we went to a fun geocaching mega event. At the event there were nine different geocache puzzles around the park that you had to solve and get a code, put it in a website, and it would register that you found it and show it on your account. Some of them were really confusing and hard to figure out, especially the ones that didn’t have English descriptions. One of them was really challenging because it was based on a Slovak riddle. We had to tune a radio to find a station that was replaying an old news broadcast in Slovak – and then listen for a number that was the answer to solve the geocache. We found eight of the geocaches in the end (the ninth one could only be found after 7 o’clock and we weren’t staying that long). It was really exciting that we almost found all of them though.

The next day before left to go to Veroce, Hungary we went to the tri border where Hungary, Austria, and Slovakia’s borders touch.

In Veroce we had rented a little house on a big hill in the forest with a trampoline!!! (and NO WiFi!) It was funny because at first the house looked tiny because on the top of the house there was a smaller room with turf around it that was at ground level. And as I said there was a trampoline which I was on at all times that we were at the house and was able to teach myself how to do three backflips in a row!!!

The view there was also amazing, sitting on the bench swing on the turf was so relaxing! (except when Henry was sitting on me!) One day, we went to a beach for a while but didn’t swim. After the beach we got some really good ice cream and went to a park with a funny spinny thing that we played at for a while.

When we left Veroce we went to the apartment in Buda, Budapest where the toilet brush licking occurred. While we were shown around we were given soda and beer (for the parents) too bad mine spilled all over my pants (no, no I did NOT wet myself). On the first day we went to the castle district and got a tour of the castle grounds but we did not get to go into the castle itself which was too bad. The tour was interesting but after the first hour and a half I got a bit tired of it. At 4 o’clock we went a magical place called “THE FLIPPER MUSEUM”/the pinball/old arcade game museum!!! This place was FULL of old video games, my personal favorite being a six or seven person X-Men game that we played together. We got really far and almost won but we got blown up by the quintuple boss fight at the end. Henry’s favorite and my second favorite was “MORTAL KOMBAT” 1 and 2. If you have not heard of them they are old arcade video games where you face an opponent on a 2D screen and kick, punch, dive on, and shoot lasers the krup out of them. We were there for three hours and had so much fun.

When we left we went and got ice cream and walked across the bridge between Pest and Buda. The next day we went to the House of Houdini and saw a cool magic show and saw an exhibition about Houdini’s life. It was pretty cool learning what he did and how he did it. it was a coincidence because I did a biography project about him in second grade. We are leaving Budapest today to go to Tihany, Hungary so see you in the next post. Max out!