The beach!!

Hi, this is Jan! The blog part in quotations is the entry Erin started but she fell asleep mid-blog so I'll finish it off. The beach at Sitges today was beautiful and lot's of fun. People stroll the beach selling all sorts of things. Cold drinks and beer out of make-shift coolers, sarongs, clothes, sunglasses and even DVD's! It was a full on beach shopping spree! Erin was very excited to get her hair braided. We have mastered the subway system which is a great way to get around. We headed off on a late night adventure yesterday in search of the famous night show of the 'magic fountain' only to get there and find it drained and under renovations. :( Erin wanted to mention about Spain winning the world cup semi final tonight in football. Kaley's room is on the 9th floor with a balcony so we headed out there to watch fireworks around the city and listen to the all the excitement and activity. It's fun to be here for it! The photos of the statues are a couple of the many very cool live human statues you see along Las Ramblas Boulevard. Check out the guy without a chair???? We are off to Paris tomorrow for the tail-end of our holiday. Thanks again to everyone, for following the blog and for your comments. Erin checks it frequently and we all enjoy keeping it up.

"Kaley met us in Barcelona. She is staying in Scotland for the summer. Yesterday we went walking along Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea. We accidentally went to a nudist beach. I did NOT get nude! Neither did Kaley or Donna or my mom. We swam and went to the Hard Rock Cafe for supper. Today we went down the coast to a town called Sitges and went to the beach there. It was soooo beautiful and very hot! I have bought a couple of bathing suits because when you shop for a bathing suit you buy the top and the bottoms separate so you can always mix and match them."

Barcelona

Here I am in Barcelona, Spain. We walked down the very crowded main Boulevard on our way to check out the Mediterranean Sea. There were some really cool sand castles on the beach and we saw a man making one. The water was warm but I was shocked at how people litter the beach. At night they clean it up!

We went on a bus that you hop on and hop off when you want to. We saw lots of famous buildings designed by the architect Gaudi. They were very fancy. My mom took a funny picture of this sign, Later we went to the aquarium. I loved it and I learned a lot about what lives in the Mediterranean sea. Donna and my mom are scared to swim in it now but I am excited. The one picture is of some really cool "Weed Seadragons".

More pictures....

I wanted to add some more of the pictures I took at Alhambra in Granada. It was so beautiful there and the garden was amazing!! The water in the fountains runs from the mountains and there was fountains everywhere!

These are the pictures of my friends off our tour. We had so much fun together and I hope I get to visit them all some day in Sydney and Alice Springs, Australia and Seattle, USA!

At the train station in Madrid there was a huge rainforest that had a pond around the front. The pond was full of turtles! It was very cool. The train station is beautiful and very organized. We rode a bullet train that got us to Barcelona (700 km) in less than 3 hours.

Goodbye Morocco and back to Spain!

We finished up in Morocco, staying at Rabat. We visited a huge Muslim Mosque and the mausoleum of King Mohammed the fifth and his two sons. Their tombs were inside. Then we caught the ferry and crossed back from Northern Africa to Europe! Back across the Strait of Gibraltar, or in Arabic.... مضيق جبل طارق !

We left Granada, Spain today and came back to Madrid. In Granada we visited a beautiful fortress called Alhambra. The gardens there were so pretty too. It's hard to believe that the mountains have snow and ski resorts at the same time as the temperature in town is 30 degrees and you can be at the beach on the Mediterranean Sea! We also saw where people live in caves built in the side of the mountains. Mostly gypsies. There are a lot of gypsies in Spain and especially in the area of Granada. Spain won their football game tonight in the world cup series so the streets of Madrid are very noisy with celebration!!! Our tour ended today so we had a lot of fun visiting our last night with some of our friends from the tour. We headed downtown and I got to visit with Jess and Pete from Australia, Georgie and Adam and their parents from Australia, and John and Dan and their dad and uncle from Seattle. We had so much fun! Tomorrow I will put up some of the photos from tonight. We leave on the train to Barcelona tomorrow.

Marrakesh and on our way to Rabat via Casablanca!

These pictures are when we were in Marrakesh and on our way to Rabat where we are right now. In the town square in Marrakesh it is crazy!! Everyone comes to life at night!!! There are booths set up with orange juice, henna, restaurants, monkey tamers and snake charmers. When there is snake charmers there, people come up and put a snake on you. It's really freaky! The picture of me with the monkey on my head was kind of weird because the guy just grabbed my arm and put the monkey on my arm and then on my head. People were coming and grabbing me and pulling me every direction at first and one man said I was worth 2,000 camels! Which is a lot. There was also so many beggars coming up and tapping on our arms wanting money. Saying "madam, madam une durham?" Which is the Moroccan currency.

Woman have few rights in Morocco. Sometimes they can't even leave their houses and sometimes they wear the full burka with their face covered and black gloves so they have no skin showing at all. Also in Morocco a man could have four wives at one time but if one wife has something ALL the wives have to have it so they are all equal. The men pray in the mosques and the women are not allowed.

Morocco is famous for it's spices so they are everywhere here. Even in the grocery store they are piled up and you scoop them into a bag.

Last night we went to a Moroccan show and dinner. We saw snake charmers, belly dancers, singers and acrobats. The snake charmer was very cool. He charmed a cobra snake and made it dance. The acrobats were amazing! They were doing flips over each other and doing ten cartwheels on the same spot. They were AMAZING! The belly dancer was very good! The food was.... interesting. I would mush mine up and spread it apart so it looked like I ate it. I tried couscous while we were there and loved it!! It is a popular Moroccan dish. In the picture I am eating with Georgie and her brother Adam, from Australia and John and his brother Dan from Seattle.