Barcelona

This is me and my sister at a place called Parc Guell. It was made by someone called Gaudi who is an architect and an artist. In Barcelona he is famous for his mosaics. 

We have some relatives that are living in Spain. We visited them.  This is their dog Donovan. He is part Yorkshire terrier and part Bichon Frise. 

This is a cool sculpture that we found on a famous street called Las       Ramblas.  My mom let climb on it so I did, and after we did that we chased pigeons.

Paris

We went to a museum called the Louvre. the picture below is of us looking at the original Mona Lisa. It was painted by Leonardo da Vinci. It is estimated to be worth $720,000,000 dollars! You can't see it in the picture, but a long time ago someone threw a coffee mug at the case.  It dented the case, but because the case was bulletproof it did not break through or damage the painting. 

   

We also went to the Eiffel tower. The Eiffel tower is 1,050 feet tall. It has only 3 stories, but the stories are at least 200 feet high. It was VERY windy at the top. There were 1,710 stairs , but we took the elevator instead. At the top the view was amazing.You could even see a soccer game from the top!

We also got the visit the Cite des Enfants which is the children's museum in Paris. This is me and my sister in front of a hair-do changing machine.  

Aix en Provence

We have been in  a part of france called Aix en Provence, but we are now on a train to Paris.  

Here is a picture of one of my mom's friend's cat.  The cat's name is Leo.  He can jump on the roof and down it. his owner's name is Eric and he is really nice.  he and my  mom have been friends for 20 years.  cat in french is "chat".

We got a fun toy in Venice.  You shoot it in the air with a rubber band and it  comes twirling down.  This is a picture  of me and Eric shooting them.

Here is me and my sister sitting on a dam.  it is near a famous mountain called Montagne Saint- Victoire.  a famous painter named Cezanne used to paint it.  here is one of his paintings of the mountain.

Venice

We are in Venice, Italy now and I am with my whole family.

    This is me chasing pigeons. There were only a few pigeons where i was chasing them.Then someone fed them but since where the feeding was going on was right behind me about 250 pigeons flew over and 3 of them hit me in the head.  it was not fun.

Here is me having ice cream with my sister.  In italy ice cream is called gelato.

This is a picture of the mirror statue at an art museum called the peggy guggenheim museum we went to.

The End of The Tournament

Now the tournament is over. I got ninth out of 126 kids and tied for fourth overall but because of tiebreaks i got ninth. the top three get medals , top eight go on stage  and top ten get certificates. something that nobody thought was going to happen was that a 14 year old girl played in the girl's under 18 section and won. that was completely unexpected because nobody has ever played up and won 1st place. nobody has ever even played up and gotten in the top 20!   

my favorite part about the tournament was tying for fourth place over all.  my least favorite part was missing 8th place by one tiny tiebreak point.  i hope i qualify for worlds next year too.  it will be in Dubai.

here is a picture of me with some team-mates, before the last round.  by the way, in the last round I beat the european gold medalist, a boy from bulgaria.

the closing ceremony was cool and loud.  the cool part was we got to see Garry Kasparov, he is the best chess player in the world.  here is a picture of people taking pictures of him.

this is us trying to get a look at Garry Kasparov.  those are my friends, Milind and Atreya.

              this was the loud entertainment

 this man could play the accordion really well.  he could even play it with one finger, with a water bottle, and while sitting on it!

 here are some kids from slovenia who joined him on the stage.

 this is me and my friend Joaquin on the bus after the ceremony.  we went out for pizza together and it was fun.

next we are going to Italy.  i am excited because in Venice it is a city on water.
                             
      

Chess and an epic cave

Today I will play Round 6 against a Romanian kid.  I have 4.5 points so far.

Yesterday we had a day off so we went to see the most famous cave in the world.  it's called postojnska jama, which means postojnska cave.  they said the cave is over 550,000 years old.  inside the cave we saw a lizard fish that doesn't live anywhere else.  it doesn't have eyes.

Here is a picture of me with some of my friends.

Stalagmites and stalactites in side the cave

next we visited the capital city called Ljubljana.  my mom and I shared a nutella and banana crepe there.  it was so good.

The Tournament Starts Today!

The tournament starts today.  I'm excited and I'm really nervous.  Right now it's 12:40 and the first round starts at 3:30.  Today I got to meet the American Ambassador to Slovenia, Joseph Mussomeli.  He came to wish us good luck, and he said we are the largest American group to visit Slovenia all at once.  Here is a picture of some of us with him.  Can you find me?

Yesterday we visiting the town center of Maribor.  We got to go in the castle, that is now a Regional Museum.  There I got to try on armor.  It was very heavy!  Here are some pictures from it:

I also took pictures of the torture devices

 Next we visited the second oldest synagogue in all of Europe.  At first we couldn't find the building.  But then we saw a clue.  Can you find the clue?  (Mom's note:  this picture may be too dark to find the clue, but below it is a close-up of the clue).

 


 This is the note on the door.  It is not used as a synagogue any more, but as a cultural center.  The synagogue was built in the year 1429, approximately.

 This is the tombstone of Rabbi Abraham.  He died in 1379, so the synagogue is probably older than they think.

Maribor, Slovenia, we arrived!

We took the train from vienna, austria, to maribor, slovenia. It was a 3.5 hour ride. This is me before I got on the train. 

This is me in front of the sign announcing the chess tournament.

Here is a picture of a bombed church. Me and my mom found it when we were hiking around the top of a nearby mountain.

Also on the back there was a bit of rubble but i don,t have a picture of it. Also my mom thought there could be tombs inside but when we tried the door to check if there was any it was locked.

Vienna, Austria

This is me at the Schonbrunn Castle.  It was built in 1569 by holy roman emperor maximilian the 2nd. There are 1,441 rooms in the castle ! I only got to go to 36.After we looked at the castle we went to a zoo.Here are some of the pictures I took. That is an african rhino.

that one is of a sea lion in mid-roar.

In austria they speak german. to say "please" is "bitte" and thank you is "danke".

at 4:30 we are leaving on a train to maribor, slovenia.The train ride will take 4.5 hours.Something i did not like about Austria was that practically everyone smoked and it was freezing cold.  Something that I do like was the dessert they have called "Apfel Strudel", which is apple strudel, and it tastes like apple pie.