Monico Family Travels

Author Archives: Milly

• Shes 9!!!

  Posted at 11:35 pm by Milly, on April 19, 2019

  

  Bright lights of Osaka: Japan’s third largest city after Tokyo and Yokohama

  I woke up with my best friend Catrin, her sister Alexa and Bella in Osaka on my 9th birthday and we all jumped for joy on the bed!

  

  

  The view from our bedroom window

  As soon as I was up and dressed I raced to Mummy and Daddy.  First I opened a small lovely present that was some washing tape with cats on.  Then we all bundled down to breakfast. I had toast with lots of nutella on it. The breakfast table was covered with glitter and ‘happy birthday’ confetti, and a big 9 balloon.  

  

  As soon as I finished eating I opened all of my presents except for one that I saved for later.  One of my favourites was this gorgeous charm bracelet from Catrin.  Mummy and Daddy gave me a card with dancing kittens on it that sang Happy Birthday out of tune!

  

  

  

  First I went shopping in Gap with my birthday money.  Catrin was a really kind friend at helping me choose things and letting me know what suited me and not.  

  Then we went for a crepe lunch, and an ice cream for dessert in a big crazy shopping centre with a big green bear outside.  

  

  After lunch I went to a shop to get some new glasses which I put in cool case which Mummy and Daddy had given me at breakfast time.

  

  

  After that we went to an arcade place and me and my best friend went in a funky photo booth where you take photos and can then play with images adding stickers and other cool  things. 

  

  In the arcade we also played mario cart which was a crazy driving game.

  

  When we got back to the hotel we had a cake that was a pile of giant chocolate chip cookies with candles in it.  Then we (just the children!) ordered room service and watched 2 movies and had a midnight feast.

  

  

  

  

  Happy Birthday Emily!

  But it didn’t end there!!!!

  We moved to a different hotel the day after my birthday.  I woke up and I was so excited to look out of the window and see rollercoasters whizzing round and Hogwarts in the distance.  

  

  

  When we arrived at the park I could see the spinning globe which meant we were at Universal Studios AT LAST for my birthday treat!

  

  The first world that I went to was Harry Potter world.  As we walked in we saw Stone Henge from England.  We walked down a long path until we eventually saw Hogwarts.  We walked past all the shops in Diagon Alley and went into Ollivanders Wand store. We also saw Honeydukes, and that crazy plant shop (Noltie’s Botanical Novelties), and the toilet had Moaning Myrtle roaming around it.  The first ride we went on was Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, and you basically went on a 4 seater and zoomed round the Quidditch pitch, and there were dementors, and spiders and Aragog spitting at you with actual water, and the dragons from The Goblet of Fire breathed hot air/fire at us.  After that we wandered around, posed by the flag of our favourite house, and then went for lunch at the Hogs Head. We had a goblet of butter beer each. It tasted like apple juice with cream at the top. Next we went on the Harry Potter Flight of the Hippogriff rollercoaster. We got the very front carriage which was epic.  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  Dad dragged us to Water World, and we watched a crazy show with lots of fire, shooting, jetskis and old boats.  This part of Universal Studios I didn’t particularly like.

  

  There were tonnes of crazy rollercoasters everywhere, including an upside down one (that Bella and Daddy liked) and a backwards one.

  

  

  When we went past a model of Jaws, Mummy and Daddy posed in its jaws.  

  

  We walked past Minion fountain and a dog petshop before getting to a ride called Minion Mayhem.  The car moved around and it was trying to transform us into a Minion ourselves. It was a 4D experience and it made Mummy feel sick but the rest of us really liked it.

  We all walked by a shop that was selling Snoopy ears and decided to buy a pair seeing as me and Bel had recently fallen love with Snoopy (who is Rachel’s (Catrin’s mummy’s) favourite).  

  

  

  

  Overall it was exciting to spend a Birthday in Japan and go to Harry Potter world in Universal Studios which I had been wanting to all my life.  It was especially good because the Lewis Banks family could be there on my actual birthday.

  

   

   

   

   

   

   

  | 6 Comments

• Monico madness Part I

  Posted at 10:50 pm by Milly, on January 12, 2019

  BIG NEWS!  Auntie Lella came to visit!  We welcomed her at Santa Marta airport with flying banners.  When I saw her I burst with excitement.  I gave her a million hugs and a thousand kisses.  We had her to ourselves for the first weekend because Mummy and Daddy went away to a music festival.  We went to a place called Palomino (on the Caribbean coast of Colombia), and stayed in a little villa on the beach.   It had a big swimming pool, lots of hammocks and a bed for swinging on.

  

  

  There was a massive iguana that lived in the tree and every time we came to the car there was a massive splodge of kaka de iguana on it.  Mostly we chilled that weekend, and Bella and I made our special home made guacamole and nachos to celebrate Lella’s arrival with a glass of passionfruit juice.

  

  

  The beach was wild but beautiful.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  On the beach we played in the sand and dug big holes.  We even did some maths lessons on the beach.  The game was that we had to work out the sum before the wave crashed over the question.

  

  

  

  

  Auntie Lella sometimes helped out with literacy at school.

  

  Rob walked to our house every day from the local town and crossed a river on the way.

  

  Rob’s river crossing

  On an early morning walk, Mummy saw this man fishing with a net which was really cool.

  

  

  

  

  On Thursday we had a school field trip to go and see some indigenous people.  We were only expecting it to be a 1 hour walk, but it turned out to be a 3 hour walk, in the blazing heat with a rubbish guide.  He wouldn’t tell us anything interesting about the forest we walked through, or the people we were visiting, and he kept taking loads of selfies of himself . One time he said the word ‘foto’ and so we handed him Mummy’s phone thinking he wanted to take a picture of us, but actually he was asking us to take a picture of him with the indigenous children.

  

  

  The chief of the tribe gave us a friendship bracelet as a greeting present.

  

  

  

  

  

  Bella and I gave up 2 of our small toys and gave them to 2 of the younger boys because the big kids weren’t sharing our gifts with them.

  

  

  

  We were a bit surprised (but not surprised at the same time) to see a solar panel and a few electronics, especially since they didn’t wear shoes.

  

  One afternoon we all set off to a horse riding stables.  We got our horses.  Mine was a skewbald called Pinto (!!!). Lella rode another skewbald called Ciara.  Bella’s was a chestnut called Pepino.  Daddy rode Shelby who was a dapple grey with pink flecks.    Mummy rode a bay arab called Nellie who was a bit nervous.  First we crossed a river and the water got right up to our knees!  It felt cold but amazing.  After that we cantered across the beach right in the breaking waves at sunset before heading home.  It was an exciting ride.

  

  

  

  

  Another afternoon we went tubing down the Buritaca river.  Most people go on the Palomino river (which gets really crowded), but we had our river to ourselves.  We went quite late in the day so it got a bit cold, and we had to hike up carrying our tubes which was hard work, but it was worth it!

  

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  And here is us in our hole to finish!

  

  What a hole!

  | 8 Comments

• !🎅Christmas Extraveganza🎅!

  Posted at 9:23 pm by Milly, on December 26, 2018

  

  

  We spent Christmas in a town in Chile called Valparaiso.  There were lots of hills (thats what the town was known for) and there were these funny little lifts all around the town that help you get up the steep hills.  Valparaiso is famous for these lifts and protected because of them.

  

  

  At night it was amazing because the whole hill would be lit up by sparkly lights of all shapes and sizes.

  

  

  In the mornings it was always foggy and you couldn’t see much out of the window, but when you got outside and it started getting a little later it was actually very colourful and I liked the flags in the streets.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  This street art is not as good as the art in Buenas Aires but it was still cool to see all sorts of artists and the artworks they had done.  My favourite was the ostrich because its quite funny and its colourful.

  

  

  We did our own self-guided walking tour with a digital map and Bella and I navigated.  We kept getting distracted though by cute animals. I found a really lovely orange tabby kitten who was sitting in a mans lap outside a fruit stall.  I was allowed to pick her up and stroke her.  She bit a little because she was teething, but it was a kind of tickly not hurty.

  

  We tried to go to church and listen to some carols on the 24th but we didn’t end up doing it because it wasn’t really like English carols.  It was more of just listening to some very loud noise that they were making and blasting through the speakers for half an hour.  There was a beautiful crib so we ended up saying a prayer in front of it and then bailing.

  On Christmas day everybody work up and rushed into our room (Dinnie and Grandpa were with us as well as Mummy and Daddy) because I guess we HAD all been nice after all.  We jumped into bed and started taking it in turns to open our stockings, starting with the youngest (me!!!!), and then going to the oldest (Grandpa!!!).

  For lunch we went to a lovely restaurant with an amazing view over the harbour.

  

  

  Before lunch we ate we opened 2 presents each and played Exploding Kittens.  I got this game from my best friend Catrin.  You needed to have a good strategy and it was very fun and funny.

  

  Grandpa got these face jigsaw pieces in his stocking that you could hang from your nose and have crazy faces.  You had to get the right size and skin colour for it to be really funny.

  

  

  

  

  We went for a quick walk to the docks in the afternoon and filmed the twelfth day of Christmas for our 2018 jingle, and then vegged out for the rest of the evening watching the Queens speech and a movie.  Dinnie had brought mince pies (which were really good) and were a great addition to make it feel more Christmasy.

   

   

  | 10 Comments

• A surprising event for Argentina…

  Posted at 1:04 pm by Milly, on October 31, 2018

  This event is Halloween and people in Argentina don’t really celebrate because in Carrefour they were skipping it and going straight to Christmas.  There wasn’t much to buy but we DID find this funky skeleton who’s really got the moves:

  And then we decided to make our own decorations.  We made bats, spiders and pumpkins and lots of other games to play at our party.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  We are living in an estate and we have some lovely neighbours and we invited them over for our party.  There were 2 twin boys at the age of 6 and a mother and father. Their names were Martin, Nacho (who are the twins), and Tatiana and Eduardo (who are the mother and father).

  Our family dressed up and Daddy was a a crazy gaucho:

  

  

  

  Mummy was wicked witch:

  

  

  Rob dressed up as a scary skeleton

  

  Bella was a villainous vampire

  

  And I was a spooky black cat

  

  We hid the games in our bedroom (until it was time to play), and scared off invaders with our spider corridor trick:

  

  These are some of the games we played and made:

  The slime bath we made was sticky and icky and it was very Halloweeny because it was bright green.

  

  

  

  

  We did bowling which was very cool because we made the skittles ourselves.  We made them out of beer cans, black card and chalk. I made Daddy, and Mummy and Rob drink a lot of beer to get enough cans to make the game!

  

  

  

  We paid some traditional games like pass the parcel, musical statues, pop the balloons, apple bobbing, tube stacking, and stick-the-spider-on-the-web.  We got candies as prizes for all the games.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  We made a game where there were 3 different compartments in a box and you had to stick your hand in and guess what was in the compartment while your hand was in it.  We put ketchup water in one, mushed banana in another and dried pasta in the last one. Everyone said “euwwwww, thats disgusting!”

  

  

  

  

  The last game we played was donuts-on-strings where you have to eat the donuts without using any hands.  

  

  

  

  After that we had a wonderful candlelit dinner that Daddy cooked on the Asado.

  

  

  

  After dinner our final game was toilet papering people to make them look like a mummy.  It was very fun and toilet paper went everywhere.

  

  

  

  

  

  And guess what happened the next morning to the 3 donuts that were left over:

  We love you Pinto!

  | 3 Comments

• 🇦🇷🖌Arty Argentina 🖌🇦🇷

  Posted at 9:47 pm by Milly, on October 8, 2018

  I’m going to explain about 3 different kinds of art that I experienced in in Argentina so far.  

  The first one is Street Art.  People do it because they are interested to show what they think about what is going on in the world.  And if you see street art on a very fancy building, its not because its not fancy, its because the owners don’t want people writing really scribbly graffiti, so they get a street artist to draw something nice on their building instead.  If you see a drawing on a random building, don’t think its only grafitti from cans, it can also be oil pastels, or stencils, or paste up (which is sticking bits of paper from magazines or newspapers onto walls).

  My favourite one from Street Art is this one:

  

  Here are some other photos I took in the streets near where we were staying:

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  The second type of art that I want to tell you about is sculptures.  In La Boca (a very colourful place where there are houses of all sorts of colours), we went to a museum about sculptures/art.  There was an amazing exhibition all done by Alexander Calder. The art was mysterious. It was put together in loads of bending twiddling ways.  He was a sculptor and an engineer because there was something you could wind up but there wasn’t an engine in it.

  My favourite one was this one:

  

  Here are some other photos I took of the exhibition.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  The third type of art I want to talk about was at a big art museum and it was Fine Art from stage to stage like old art all the way through to modern.  We drew pictures of paintings we saw that we liked.

  Here we are:  

  

  | 8 Comments

• 🏎🏍One racing afternoon🏍🏎

  Posted at 8:04 pm by Milly, on September 24, 2018

  One afternoon we were walking around trying to find something really fun to do.  We found somewhere where you could race cars that looked really cool and we went inside.

  There were 3 tracks.  One easy, one getting harder and the last one was MEGA.  We went straight for the mega one.

  

  

  My car was white, green and red and it went super fast around the bends.  I had one of the best lanes because I was in the middle.  If you are in the middle you don’t get too tight turns, but not too loose turns.

  

  The track was really well decorated with people by the side with multicoloured clothes cheering, made out of clay.  There were also teepees on the fields, and a helicopter, and cars filling up with petrol.

  

  There was a big screen where you could see what scoring you would get.  So red would say (for example) 33 laps, and yellow would say 20 laps.  And at the end the lady would announce the scores.   Although it wasn’t a race, but we raced anyway.

  

  The lady was really nice, because whenever we by accident crashed off the track she would rush to help us.  When we stopped to have a toilet break,when we came back she was holding out lollipops for us to take and suck.  At the end she gave us a biscuit.

  

  When I went into the Scalextrix, to myself I said WOW that is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.  When you had your car on the track, whenever you overtook somebody you would feel really good inside because you had overtaken them.

  

  | 11 Comments

• 🕷🕸Creepy crawlies 🕸🕷

  Posted at 1:55 am by Milly, on August 17, 2018

  Every night we go on a night walk. And every night we would find another creepy crawlie. One night I found a millipede. I named her Squiggley. She was very tickly when she crawled from my hand to hand.

  The next dark night we found a cricket. It was as big as a ruler and related to the lobster family.

  The scariest night animal I saw was a big and hairy tarantula. It had made itself a nest on a type of tree.

  The best camauflaged creature was a wonderful and surprisingly strong stick insect.

  There were social spiders. They were yellow which was surprising and they were as small as a pencil lead. They live in colonies of thousands and hunt together and share their food.

  

  Surprisingly strong stick insect

  

  Speedy scorpion spider

  

  Tangy tarantula

  

  Giant cricket, part of the lobster family

  

  Squiggley the millipede
  | 12 Comments

• 🐶🐒 Adorable Animals 🐊🐎

  Posted at 9:38 pm by Milly, on August 6, 2018

  Here in beautiful Brazil we have seen some exotic and amazing animals. First we saw a cool lizard 🐊 camouflaged in a tall palm tree. I also saw some adorable puppies🐶🐾 playing about with each other. When we got to Jericoacoara we all took a horse 🐎and cart to a river estuary. All of us took a boat to an island called Vassouras and there were there most adorable monkeys 🐵🐒 in the the world.

  

  horsey cart

  

  mule cart

  

  cool lizard

  

  adorable puppie

  

  adorable puppie

  

  cheeky monkeys

  

  cute monkey
  | 13 Comments

• Kite surfing dream

  Posted at 7:07 pm by Milly, on July 25, 2018

   

  

  Emily fly’s with Estafania Rosa

  

  James being held down by Clayton

  

  Bella steering with Clayton

  Kite surfing is excellent fun. If you want to try it in a different country this is what you do and then you might get an idea if you actually want to do it. It doesn’t seem like it is going to be excellent fun but it actually is. This is how you do it: you have a harness around your waist which attaches to a kite and you first learn how to steer the kite and then you go in the water and you try to get on a board. After fully you can stand up on the board then you can move the bar and go on the sea. And you can move the bar up and down and learn to jump. 👅😎😃😀🏙

   

  

  Charlotte brakes waves with Estafania, the youth world champion.

  | 2 Comments

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