Warmer Weather

Hello, and welcome to the world traveling monkey blog! The last leg of our journey took place in Italy. I still don't think I ate enough gelato! We sure will miss all the delicious food available in this wonderful country. In this episode, I am going to tell you all about our amazing adventures in the beautiful cites of Barcelona and Marbella, Spain, as well as the unique city of Tanager in Morocco.

After leaving Italy, we had to find a way to get all the way to Spain. If you look at the map below, you can see that the two countries are pretty far apart. Do you think we drove all the way from Italy to Spain (route 1), or do you think we took a ferry across to Spain (route 2).

If you answered route 2, you are correct. We decided instead of wasting many hours in a car twiddling my monkey thumbs, we were going to take another overnight ferry! I love overnight ferries! Looking out the window and only seeing water for miles gave me feelings of excitement. Also, I heard that this ferry had a swimming pool. Sadly the pool was closed because it is winter. After traveling across the Mediterranean Sea, we finally reached Barcelona.

The first word I said, when entering the city was WOW! Barcelona was one of the prettiest cities I have ever seen. There were palm trees everywhere and a huge beach, right near our apartment! Have any of you been to Florida? Barcelona is like a newer Florida. The streets were very clean and there were new structures everywhere. We spent three days wandering around and seeing the sights. My favourite part about visiting Barcelona was seeing a HUGE church called Le Sagrada Famillie. This church was created by a Spanish architect named Gaudi. The church looked modern even though it was started almost 100 years ago! The most amazing part was, that it is not complete and still has anywhere for 30-80 more years until it is done. The church will be absolutely stunning when it is done, and I will have to remind myself to come visit it.

The next stop on our journey was Marbella, Spain. Marbella was also a very beautiful city. We spent most of our week relaxing and visiting the many beaches along the seashore. One day we decided to go over to Morocco in Africa. The tip of Spain almost touches Morocco, and the ferry ride is only 14km. One of the highlights of our day was watching a snake charmer. Do any of you know what a snake charmer is? A snake charmer is a person who can charm snakes using music. We saw a snake charmer dancing a cobra. It was pretty scary, but also very cool. Another highlight of our day here was riding a dromedary (which looks like camel but with one hump). Have any of you ridden a horse before? That is what riding a dromedary feels like, but you sit much higher up! I can’t believe I actually got to ride one!

Well, I better get back to my family, they will wonder were I have been. We have to get packed and ready to drive to Portugal!