Gibraltar

I loved Barcelona, but Gibraltar is a competitor for favorite part of the trip. I wouldn't have even thought about going but Husband had read about it and thought it would be cool. He is always right.

We had the best of luck with parking spaces. We found one close to the border (driving over can take hours depending on Spain/England relations. They use the wait times to punish each other) and during some parking difficulty the people in the car in front of us came and left. What are the odds! And the parking machine was broken or it was a holiday or something because it gave us our permit and our money back. Little miracles.

Typically I always say no to people to approach and offer anything, but this lady was offering a taxi van tour of Gibraltar and since we hadn't really researched what to do or where to go, we went for it. Since it was during Christmas break, her 8 year old son was there too and it was fun having a third kid driving with us. The best part was not having to drive or decide where to go. Our first stop was a look out point.

Everybody wave to Africa! It's the mountain across the strait. It was a pity my parents couldn't leave the country, or we would have visited Morocco.

This is part of the Spanish Coast

Next up with a cavern that acted as a field hospital in World War I and now is used for concerts and state dinners.

We had fun making scary monster shadows.

Then we headed up to the top of the rock and visited the monkeys. Churchill brought them over and now there are something like 250 of the semi-tame creatures about.

It may be because of Diego and his numerous animal friends, but J didn't get all that excited about being that close to a monkey.

I don't trust monkeys and had a hard time even looking at the camera when one was that close. They are devious creatures. I like to keep them where I can see them. We didn't have any contraband food so they weren't particularly interested in us, but one did jump into the van and steal our guide's coffee cup. It was kind of awesome. You can see his bum as he flees.

This guy just decided to hang out on top of our vehicle.

 The next look out had more stellar views. We were happy to have such a clear day.

So I was sort of enamored with the monkeys. I don't trust them, but I really liked taking pictures of them. Sort of like the three dudes in Aladdin singing "lWhere's the monkeys? Let's see the monkeys!" and doing a jig.




Here you can see the airstrip dividing Gibraltar from Spain. Without it, Gibraltar would be an island.



There is a little playground for the monkeys up there.

Next we went into the tunnels. There are 34 miles of tunnels in the Rock and the whole country is only 2.4 miles long. The military still hasn't released some of the tunnels. They have been excavating them for 200 years. Whomever controlled the Rock pretty much controlled entrance to the Mediterranean so it is a very strategic military point.

After the tour we went to the main square and had fish and chips.

Miles was sleeping for the majority of the trip and woke happy and refreshed.

Then we walked across the airport back to get back to Spain. They have big crossing barriers like for train tracks, only it's to keep you from crossing when the planes land. Crazy, eh?

We had a pretty good wait getting back into Spain since it was a Friday evening and most of the workforce was in line with us, but they let families with little kids cut the line. As in the police officers led us up to the front. All the native Gibraltans have really fun Spanish/British accent too so I loved hearing any of them talk.

Gibraltar was seriously cool and we get to debate if it means Husband has now been to England.