A few Fridays ago, I got up early and got on the bus with about 40 other IES students, and we took the 3 hour trip to Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a British ... not colony, but sort of like that... in southern Spain
It's a mere 14 miles from Morocco, and you can see some of the mountains in Morocco, and according to legend, one of those mountains and the Rock of Gibraltar (Which is not, in fact, a rock. It's a mountain) are the pillars of Hercules, or something, which Hercules pushed apart to open the path to the end of the world.
Anyway.
Despite its vicinity to Andalusia, Gibraltar is ridiculously like England. Their currency is the Gibraltar Pound (like the Scottish Pound, it is legal tender in England but is regarded as sketchy there), and everything is English. The signs are in English, the people speak English (although they also speak Andalusian Spanish), the phone booths are English, they even have Zebra (rhymes with Debra) crossings. I loved it, because it reminded me of last spring and whatnot.
After crossing the border, we hopped on mini buses to take tours of the peninsula, including the Rock. We went to Europa Point, which I was told is the southernmost point of Europe, but I don't believe, because I've seen maps and Tarifa is definitely farther south.Our guide/driver, Robert, drove us through town, and through some tunnels in the Rock that were excavated quickly at the beginning of WWII. After Europa Point, we went up the Rock, from which there were some amazing views of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as the Spanish Coast, and, of course, Morocco.
The main attractions on the Rock that we went to were St. Michael's cave, which is the biggest cave in the Rock, and the apes. The cave is big enough to hold concerts in (although all the noise in such a confined and possible fragile space seems like a bad idea to me) and has some beautiful formations. And its gift shop had Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel, so that helped. The apes were sort of terrifying but also wonderful. Some of them were adorable, moms grooming babies and babies grooming other babies, and others were sort of menacing. I think one hissed at us once, and they would just pop up on the wall right next to you out of nowhere. They were used to people, thought, and mostly really chill, so I actually got close enough to one to take a picture with it. A few brave monkeys even jumped on people's heads or into the vans. Thank God neither my head nor my van were involved in that, because I would have freaked out.
The bus dropped us off near the main plaza... square?... where we had some free time. There was an optional hike up the Rock, but I was tired and really just wanted to find some Strongbow, so I opted out. I walked around the town a bit, bought cute postcards (seriously, one is adorable), bought some mini caramel eggs (oh how I've missed those), and had some Strongbow. We regrouped for dinner at a pub called The Clipper, where I got more Strongbow and some fish and chips. It was delicious.
The whole experience in Gibraltar was just beautiful, and made me miss London. Luckily I'll be there again in about 48 hours, for spring break.
and here are some pictures, from other people's albums. The link to my Gibraltar/Morocco album is in the next post.
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| delcious |
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| these things are just everywhere |
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| monkeys and me |
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| view of the Rock from La Linea, the Spanish border town |
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| me with Kassie and her very first Strongbow |
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