Travelog for: Charly6

Hi Mum,

Well today I said goodbye to Mr Shaun and Suomi-boy

got my things together

but before I go there is a special package that arrived in the mail

we had a look inside

and found

Fabler Bjorn
He is here for a holiday in Australia!
Now I am off to sunny Spain!!  Ole!! 
See you soon

Love and hugs
Charly
xxooxx

Hi mum,
It was a very long trip, luckily I had some very good chocolate for the trip.
When everything stopped moving I heard many animal noises: a bird, a monkey a bear and a mouse!:

They are all ToyVoyagers, Graham, Alberto, Sir James and Elliot and they are very nice. But they mentioned I should go out and see Granada as soon as possible.

So here I am, out in the street:




This fountain is called the Fuente de las Batallas

and behind it is the Isabel la Católica theater (you can see her statue on top of the building)

It was nice and refreshing to stand near the fountain.


This is the Mariana Pineda square, she was a famous activist from the XIX century.


And in that square there's a very famous and old coffee shop, Café Fútbol,  where they sell churros


Anyways, after that quick snack we kept on walking in the city center



This is the main post office.


Look a local police car:


This is the City Hall:


From close up:


It is located in the Plaza del Carmen, look at the pretty street signs they use in Granada:

On top of the street name there is a picture of a pomegranate.

This is the Navas street which is a famous place to go and have Tapas:

Tapas are small portions of food that come included with each drink you buy. They are very good!

Here I am in the Bib-Rambla square, the tower in the background is the Cathedral's church tower.



This is the front of the Cathedral:

It is very large!.

Nearby there are many small streets filled with typical arab stores:




And this is the city's main street, the Gran Vía, as you can see it was very busy with pedestrians:


At one end of it there is a statue of Columbus asking the queen for money, as it was just outside of Granada where Columbus got the money for the expedition that lead to the discovery of the American continent, while the kings were trying to reconquer this city.


This is the Corral del Carbón and it is the oldest monument still left in the city, it was built in the XIV century.

And this is the building's interior:


There are many examples of antique architecture throughout the city:


It was a nice walk out today,
Cheers,
Charly

Hi mum,
Guess what?
I'm on the road:

Or should I say on the air?
Here I am in the Málaga airport:

Any ideas were I'm headed off to?
Love,
Charly

Hi mum!
If you guessed that I was going to an archipielago in the coast of Africa, you were right!
Here I am leaving the Tenerife Norte airport:


And here I am with my friends getting ready to get into a salt-water pool:

The views in the island are amazing!
And the sea is cristal clear.

Love,
Charly

P.S.: So with Europe, Asia, Australia and now Africa, I only have two more continents for my life mission!

Hello mum,
Check out how cute I look with my good friends:


We went out on a night to the city center, here we are at 100 montaditos pub:

It's a very nice franchise here in Spain were you can eat a large variety of small sandwiches for very little money.

And here's a pretty colonial style church:


We walked by the port:


I don't know why, but being around Graham makes me a bit hungry:


Anyways, here I am waiting for the tram:


I was a bit tired on the way back home:

Love,
Charly

Hello mum,
Today we went to a very nice salt water pool called Parque Maritimo, it was very relaxing:

The park is very large and beautiful and was designed by an architect  called Cesar Manrique.
A lot of people were having fun and enjoying the water and Sun.

And from the park you could see a beautiful theater designed by famous Spanish architect Calatrava. Also an small black castle and the beautiful crystal clear waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

We had a very fun day at the pool.
Love,
Charly

Hello mum,
Here I am back in the Tenerife North airport... and about to get into this airplane you see behind me:

Those are the airplanes of the local airline called Binter, and it took us to La Palma!

We wanted to go very early in the morning to see the sunrise from the highest peak in the Island which is called Roque de los Muchachos:


Like all the peaks in the Canary Islands, they're dorman volcanoes, here you can see the crater during sunrise:


This mountain is home to many of the best telescopes in the World!, look how beautiful they look above the clouds during the sunrise:


And the air was so clear that you could see the shadow of the mountain on the clouds!

It was amazing how perfectly triangular the shape was.

After the sunrise we went to see some of the telescopes close up.
Here on the far right is the biggest optical telescope in the World!, the GTC:


And these big mirrors out in the open are called the MAGIC telescopes, they look for very high energy astronomical events:


Being above the clouds was very nice, and everything was very quiet. Simply amazing.


On the way down we stopped several times to see the island, it was very beautiful.


Here's a view of the main city, the port and on the background the airport.


What an amazing day this was!
Love,
Charly

Hello mom,
Today we went to another pool park, this one called Lago Martianez.
It is also a very large salt water pool designed by Cesar Manrique that uses volcanic rocks.

It's very nice to relax here in Tenerife with so many pools and beaches.

The park had many sculptures including these dried up tree trunks.

Love,
Charly

Today we went to the Nature and Man museum in Santa Cruz where they had a beach themed cafeteria indoors:


There was a room with drawers for many insects and specially butterflies from around the world, look at the beautiful wings they have:


When we left we took a picture in front of the Concepcion Parish:


Love,
Charly

Today we went to the Teresitas beach:

It's a beautiful beach with white soft sand brought from the Sahara desert:

The water was crystal clear and very refreshing. And the scenery of the mountains and small boats was beautiful.
Love,
Charly

Today we went around the whole island!
To start we went to the Roque de Garachico:

It is a small island that is a bird sanctuary were several protected species live and some migratory birds also stop by.


Then we went to the Punta Teno lighthouse, which is the westernmost point in the island.
To the left you can faintly see the Gomera island.


The water sea here in Tenerife is beautiful:

Afterwards we drove through the mountains and arrived to a small town called Santiago del Teide:

Apparently they had their local festivities during these days which are related to the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage.


Then we went to the Costa Adeje where there are many large beaches and resorts:

It was very touristy.

Finally we stopped by the Cathedral of La Candelaria:


Where there are very large statues of the 9 Menceyes (or kings) that ruled the islands by the time the Spaniards invaded them.


We had a very fun day today and saw many places around the island.

Love,
Charly

Today we made way to the highest mountain in Spain: The Teide volcano!.
Here we are with the Teide on the background as well as the La Palma island:



After going through a dense pine forest we came into a desert that looked very much like the surface of Mars!

In fact they use this area to test robots that NASA and ESA will send to the Red Planet!.

We stopped for a drink, it is very important to drink a lot of fluids here in the desert, and the view was like that of an American cowboys movie.


Look at the weird structures the rocks make here:

Love,
Charly

Today we got to ride in a submarine, and it was a yellow submarine!:

It was amazing and we got a big window all to ourselves. Here we are just below the sea level waiting to go down


Here I am at 30 meters below sea level:

We saw many fishes of many different types, even several stingrays.
They also explained to us that the red light from sunlight does not reach so far down, so that's why everything looked so blue and I look so dark.

It was absolutely amazing!
Cheers,
Charly

Today we went to a volcanic beach were you can see a big cliff drop called Los Gigantes:

The indigenous people used to call these cliffs the Wall of Hell.

Today we went to Loro Parque, which is a famous Zoo in Tenerife,
there we got to see many animals, and it was so large we barely had any time to stop and take photos.
There were many parrots throughout the park since they have the largest sanctuary of these birds in the World.
There I saw a show with 7 Orca whales:

And another with sea lions:


It was a very fun day!