A weekend in Germany

Last Friday was my mama's birthday and since it was the holidays we decided to take a trip to visit friends in Germany. We started at Ariane's house in Frankfurt, where Ariane's mummy Amaya spoiled Mama with a special lunch and lots of cakes. Here we are waiting for Mama to blow out the animal candles. Dada drove up to Frankfurt after work (and got stuck in a 2 hour traffic jam!) and then we all stayed with our friends for the night.

In the morning we drove to Bonn. But first we stopped in Koblenz to visit my friend Emilia. You can see her here smiling a lot because guess who is sitting next to her - me! With a funny wig on! We had some yummy spaghetti lunch and played like old friends do.

We arrived in Bonn in the afternoon and met someone very, very special - baby Bengt! He is my friend Carolyn's little brother and he is so cute and smiley. OK, he's not smiling here because I don't think he is so comfortable on my lap, but he smiled a lot while we were there. And slept a lot. In the meantime, Carolyn and I played a lot. And the mamas and dadas talked a lot. We all like getting together.

At night we went back to our favourite pub from where we used to live in the Altsadt in Bonn. Of course we had schnitzel again.

The next morning we visited some other friends, Milan and Emma, at their house. They have a beautiful garden and we kids had fun in the sunshine.

Then it was back to Carolyn's for some lunch, a nice afternoon in the playground and a last play together. I took the chance to "read" her some Pippi Longstocking stories. It was so nice to see all of our friends again and now we are hoping they will come to visit us soon!

Fasnacht 2008

The real Fasnacht came this week! Very early on Monday morning Mama and I got up to go to the Morgenstreich at 4am. This is the beginning of Fasnacht when they turn out all the city lights and parade the lanterns through the street, with everyone dressed up in special costumes and masks and playing the piccolo and the drums. I love it because I love getting up in the middle of the night and I love the music and the lanterns. This year I laughed a lot at the funny ones. Afterwards Mama and I walked home because the trams weren't running and we stopped at the bakery for chocolate bread to keep us going. At 6am we went back to bed!

Tuesday was the children's day and I dressed up as an Arabian princess, as you can see.

I had lots of fun throwing confetti

Throwing it on my friends

And having them throw it back on me

The funny clowns are called Waggis, and they are the best because they give you lollies and toys

The streets are very, very busy

It's a part of living in Switzerland that our family really likes. Here I am on Dada's shoulders for the very best view of all.

Spain and Portugal

Mama and Dada and I have just had the best trip! We went to Spain and Portugal and walked around lots looking at beautiful streets and buildings. We also ate lots and lots of yummy meals. We love tapas! And I love croquettas the best. I ate them nearly every day. Anyway, here you can see me near the cathedral in Sevilla.

And here I am with the cathedral in the background. It is very, very big and we walked all the way to the top. Actually, I ran, because I thought it was fun going up all the ramps. On the way down Mama and I ran and hid from Dada at each level.

The reason we went to Sevilla was to visit a friend of Dada's, called Eva. She is very, very nice and looked after us so well and I had lots of fun with her. I always wanted to show her things. She kept thinking that I was a princess, which was pretty funny. I tried hard to convince her that I am not a real princess, because I wear jeans and my mama isn't a queen, but she didn't believe me. Here is a photo of her in her favourite little corner of Sevilla. I took the photo of course.

Because I am a princess, Eva took me to a palace! It was very, very beautiful and I took lots and lots of photos. Here are some of the ones I took.

This is one of the palace gardens. You can't really show how beautiful they were. There were lots and lots of orange trees that looked really colourful.

This is a pretty photo of a very big, very old magnolia tree that was in the park nearby.

We went out in little paddle boats on the river in Sevilla too. Mama and Dada didn't like it so much but I LOVED it so I swapped over to Eva and her friends' boat and went for a good, long ride.

After Sevilla we went to Madrid, where we stayed in a cool hotel. Of course we couldn't leave Spain without having churros dipped in chocolate and the friendly man at our hotel told us the best place to go. Here I am enjoying them. They weren't all for me - I did share them with Mama and Dada, even though they were so good.

We flew from Madrid to Lisbon for a little look around. We didn't stay long, but long enough to have the best custard tarts we have ever tasted! Mama ordered some for us all to share but I quickly put a whole one away by myself so it became clear that we needed more. You put your own cinnamon and sugar on top and they were just...amazing. Me and Mama and Dada like eating yummy food on holidays, don't we?!?

Finally, here is a view of Lisbon at night. It is very hilly there and very pretty too.

It's almost Fasnacht!

Well, it's one of my favourite times of year again, Fasnacht in Basel. The real parades aren't for another week or so, but today we celebrated our last day at the Kinderhaus before the holidays with a Fasnacht parade. We dressed up as mice and we had a little parade with the kids from another kindergarten who were dressed up as cheese. That was fun, but the best bit was coming back to our Kinderhaus and throwing confetti! We had so much fun and of course we have confetti in everything now.

Other than that I have been enjoying the Winter in Basel. We are still waiting to get some good snow here so I can use my sled, but in the meantime we have been going ice skating every week and I am getting quite good on my own now. You can see me here looking very cool on the ice on a sunny day.

Tomorrow we leave for a week's holiday in Spain. When we get back it is the real Fasnacht so by then I should have LOTS of photos to show you. Bye for now!