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Hi Mrs. Sutherland's Class,

As most of you know, I have moved to Germany for a couple of years for my dad's work.  We moved here on July 6th and since the German kids weren't out of school yet, I had to start school right away and finish out the year.  That was kind of dumb since I had just finished my fourth grade year in Colorado and had to start school again in Germany. The kids here get out of school the last day of July and have six weeks of summer vacation.  The principal at my school, Herr Thumair, calls it, "the Great Holidays".  When I got out of school on July 31, my family and I decided to go on holiday like most Europeans do in August. Some of our friends from Colorado were on a family vacation in Europe and we drove to meet them.  We stayed for a week and had a great time.  See if you can guess where we visited.....

Here are a few clues:

1.  We live in Herrsching am Ammersee, Germany.  To get to our vacation spot we drove west from Herrsching towards Lindau, skirted Lake Constance through an 8 mile tunnel in Austria.  Then we entered into Switzerland through St. Moritz across the Alps (through another 8 mile tunnel) into Italy through Como and skirted Milan to Genoa, then drove the coast into another country where we visited some of the most beautiful sights in Europe.  Here are a few pictures and see if you can figure out where we vacationed.

2.  This is me doing a backflip off the cliffs by Castle Hill.  Earlier we climbed up Castle Hill to view the city and the sea.  At the top were the remains of the old fort.  After climbing the hill we were very hot and decided to jump in the sea to cool down.

3.  We ate gelato almost everyday.  It was really good here, but not as good as in Italy.

4.  Our friends from Colorado were staying in Monaco.  While visiting them, we saw this cool car.

5.  We visited this factory for a tour one day.  I bought some shower gel called "Dessert".

6.  On our last day, we visited the castle at Eze.  This is the view from the top.  We were staying near here in a larger city.

Can you guess where we were?  If you need another hint, on the way home we stopped at Lake Como, Italy for lunch..