We made it to South America; hello from Colonia, Uruguay

Time has been going by very fast since we left Italy. We spent two more weeks in Europe before flying to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We just left Argentina and are now in Uruguay. I had never even heard of Uruguay before I left on this trip. It is a pretty cool place. Today we are headed to the capital and biggest city in the country: Montevideo.

Since I last updated my blog we have been very busy. After having an amazing time in Italy, my new favorite country in the world (besides home), we headed off to Barcelona. We went from Italy to Spain in one day which was not easy. We were on 4 different trains and an all night bus. We had an 8 hour layover in the French city of Marseille. We had a great time cruising around the city and I really enjoyed the old castles (3 of them). We got on the all night bus and woke up at 6:00 a.m. in Barcelona, Spain. We got on the subway to the airport and met our friend Terri who flew in from SLO.

We had 2 fun weeks in Spain. While we there we spent one week at a timeshare resort on the beach (thanks to my grandma) and had a blast. We had a fridge loaded with good food and Terri had brought a lot of great snacks from home, and my dad's work friends sent a bunch of tasty stuff as well. We had a feast for a week. It was like being at home. My dad and I tried to watch the Super Bowl from Spain and had planned a big party. We woke up at midnight only to discover that the sports channel was showing a boxing match from Japan. That stunk! We went to bed and watched the highlights the next day on CNN. I was happy to hear that the Giants won.

We also rented a car that was a lot better than waiting for late buses and trains and we could get places a lot faster. While staying at the beach resort in La Pineda, we explored the ancient Roman city of Tarragona, cruised to the country of Andorra, went to Barcelona and saw cool stuff, and checked out a lot of cool beaches.

We then left our nice beach resort and spent a week on the road traveling to Madrid, Spain. Between La Pineda and Madrid we saw some great places. We went to Granada and saw the Alhambra. We stood in the room where the Queen of Spain said she would pay for Christopher Columbus to search for another route to India and he ended up in America. We went to the Rock of Gibralter (a little part of England at the bottom of Spain). While in Gibralter we saw some of the city built on a big rock, some cool cannons and other guns, and a bunch of wild apes. We almost made it to Africa. We were going to take a boat to Morroco, but the winds were too strong and they cancelled all the boat trips. We also went to Portugal briefly before heading onto Seville, Spain. Next we spent the night inside a fort in Cordoba. The next day we went to Toledo which was my favorite place in Spain.

Toledo, Spain, is a fotress on a mountain top. The old city where we stayed is completely surrounded by the old city walls and looks like a castle. We had a great hotel right in the middle of the fortress. We got to see one of El Greco´s most famous pieces of art. That was o.k., but what I really liked was that Toledo is the place where they make some of the best swords in the world. I bought the coolest sword I could find and sent it home with our friend Terri. I also got a cool little statue of a guy in armour with a sword. They are the best souvenirs I have gotten yet.

We arrived back in Madrid in time to explore the city before catching our plane to South America. We flew from Madrid, Spain to Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was a long flight, over 12 hours long. It was cool because we got to see three movies and one of them was the most recent Harry Potter movie. Also, they fed us good food. We arrived in Buenos Aires at midnight. We had a hard time finding a place to stay. We went to over 10 places before we found a hostel with a room for 3 people. The next day we were all very hot (it is 88 degrees here) and tired. My dad surprised me again by getting a room at the Hilton. It was very expensive ($362 a night) but also very cool.

Yesterday we caught a boat from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Uruguay. We cruised around and explored on bikes and had pizza for dinner. Today we are headed to Montevideo. Send me an email at Kylearoundtheworld@gmail.com.