Europe Adventure

We recently got back from an Adventure in Europe. We first packed, then we drove to a bus station. At the bus station we parked and got on the bus to Boston. We got off at the airport and discovered someone had taken our bag. We went to terminal E and took a Aer Lingus flight to Dublin that lasted about 5 hrs & 20 minutes. We did not have that one bag, but the bus company was searching for it. In Dublin we took a taxi to a fishing village , saw a castle there and ate at a cafe. We had about 4 hr layover so then we took another taxi back to Dublin airport. The currency in Ireland was Euro's but they drove on the left side of the road. So they had a bit of English culture left from the time Britain ruled Ireland. The taxi drivers did not really like England and one played a Irish rebel song when we asked him his favorite Irish music. We took another Aer Lingus flight from terminal 2 to Inverness Scotland. That flight was only an hour and a half. In Inverness we got a Mercedes rental car that turned off when you stopped ! We drove towards Skye after we got some food from a market. There were sheep and green hills everywhere!

 We stopped on our way and hiked up a hill and had a picnic on it. There were many small rivulets running through the hills too. We saw plenty of sheep on our way to Skye. We stopped at some castles like Eileen Donan and Urqhart

.  We also went to a town called Strontian, where strontium was discovered. In Skye we slept in a cottage, and explored many places, including Portree ( the capital ), and the fairy springs                  

next to the Cullens ( a mountain range ). Then we went down to Stirling, and saw Stirling Castle. After this we went down to Edinburgh and the surrounding towns. We saw Edinburgh Castle

and went to church in DalKeith. We also went through a flower field ( around North Berwick )                        

. We hiked up a The North Berwick Law ( or just the Berwick Law ), in North Berwick , it is a hill that has a whale's Jawbone ( now a replica , added in 2008, after one rotted away , and was removed in 2005 )  on the top. It also has ruins of an Iron age hill fort and military bases of many wars, including the Napoleonic and WWII. I got lost on it but, We found each other later. After this we had a Flight booked for London, but when we stopped on our way to the Airport , Our Sister's lip got slashed on the concrete. We went to the airport , and they told us that we should get it stitched, ( by the way the medical agent there was not very helpful ) But they couldn't do it, and there was a hospital 7 miles away or so. So we went to St Johns hospital and waited forever in the emergency room. Then after some more waiting in a patient's room, there came a facial surgeon and he stitched our sisters lip up. We had missed our flight from Edinburgh airport, and drove around, after getting some food at Tesco's, to find a hotel to sleep for the night. We went to hotel one hotel, they said no, then another ( that they recommended to us ), that said no , and another ( that they recommended to us ) , that said NO. But , finally we found one that said yes! and we slept there during the night. There was a deal if you book flights the day before them , before midnight, then they are cheaper. Our dad booked our flight to London , like 2 minutes before Midnight. We slept there that night, and then had a Breakfast there , for they had breakfast served there. That day we flew to London, we had lost some time, so we did not go to Oxford. But we took a bus tour of London, and saw Big Ben's tower              

, Parliament , and other buildings. We then flew to Bergerac, France, and then drove to Beynac.

There we slept in an old ( about medieval ) stone cottage of the hill that had the castle. The Cottage was refurbished on the inside for modern needs. We explored much of the Dordogne

, and some of the castles around it, I got my Sword in one of the Castles.

After this we drove to Paris in a rental car we had gotten in Bergerac airport. We lost a wallet at one of the tolls, but finally, after some 6 hours, we made it to Paris. In Paris we explored

, and saw Notre Dame

 ( there was a statue of Charlemagne near it, and many pigeons  ) , The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower

( I touched the base of this one ). From here we flew to Dublin, and after a 2 hour layover ( that was delayed some more ), we flew to Boston. It was great to be home, and we had a great time in Europe.

Thirty years war

the Spanish general  Don Ambrosio Spinola

Ferdinand the second holy roman emperor  

The thirty years war was a conflict between most of Europe .it started out as a religious war and ended out as a war for power and land .here's how it started . There were many German states in the holy roman empire and some of them were Protestant or Luther and some were Catholic .so there started to be tensions between the states and it seemed they were going to fight each other .so the holy roman emperor ( a devout Catholic ) quickly made a law that said all states can worship whatever they want. but that didn't work because in 1618 the bohemian ( now part of the czech republic ) revolt began. the Protestant bohemians did not like there Catholic rulers and a group of them threw two catholic noble men or prague castle window ! what they did was called the defenestration of Prague which means throwing someone out the window . after that the bohemian noble men chose Protestant Frederick to be there king and he became allies with the ottomans by sending Ambassadors to Istanbul . The ottomans in return send ambassadors to prague . The ottomans attacked Poland won a few battles then lost one and withdrew from the war after that they stopped there alliance with bohemia . Catholic holy roman emperor Ferdinand became emperor in 1619 and send his army to bohemia . in 1 year defeated the bohemians .Frederick fled to Protestant Netherlands .now bohemia was Catholic . Spain entered the war in 1621. (Here are the reasons they enters the war . #1 because Ferdinand the II war a member of the Hapsburg family which included Spain and Austria #2 because they wanted power and they thought if they helped the holy roman empire he would give them some power ) on the empires side and attacked the Netherlands in 4 years Netherlands asked Denmark and England to help the English could not help much because they were in the middle of a civil war . Under Christian IV Denmark attacked the northern holy roman empire and took some land .Then Denmark asked France to help even though France was Catholic it helped Denmark because it's enemy's were the Hapsburg's the combined army of the French and the Danes took more land . So Ferdinand the II holy roman emperor made Tilly and Wallenstein his generals and Tilly marched towards the Danes while

Gustavus Adolphus

Wallenstein marched towards a Protestant German army . The Danes were defeated because France were in a civil war ( the war with the Protestant Huguenots ) and England was also in the middle of a civil war . The Germans were also defeated at the battle of Dessau bridge . The swedes enters the war under Gustavus Adolphus  ( here are the reasons the swedes entered the war • Gustavus wanted to become Holy roman emperor
• the swedes thought that the Hapsburg's were to powerful
• the swedes wanted to help the Protestant cause ) and won many battles there biggest victory was the battle of Breitenfeld but at the battle of Lützen Gustavus was killed and the swedes withdrew a year or so later . After that the French kept fighting they lost to the Spanish at the starting but defeated them later the .Danes helped the Spanish fight the French after they were conquered by Tilly . The war ended with the peace treaty of Westphalia . after the war France became the most powerful european nation . Many people died during the war not only the soldiers but civilians to . The war nearly halved the population of most German states .

Cardinal de Richelieu of France 

Wallenstien the Catholic  general