So I just got out of my time at the school, so I'm still a little bit in Spanish mode here and would love to keep it that way. But I can't! I must tell you all about my adventures last weekend. Boy, were they adventures!
Primera:
Friday morning I woke up bright and early to head over to Gibraltar. The bus ride was about 4 hours long, we left at around 9:30 and arrived at around 1:30. We made a pit stop on the way there to Malaga, and that's really it. But the whole bus ride I only slept for a short time, mostly read and looked out the window at the marvelous views outside my window. My profe was right when she said driving here on the highway is more fun than in the U.S. There are gorgeous rolling hills to look at, windmills, barns, animals. So many different things, although I do miss my mountains. :(
So we arrived at Gibraltar at around 1 and had to be dropped off at the "airport" to go through security. To those of you who don't know, Gibraltar is actually it's own country and part of the U.K. I certainly didn't know that, it was pretty cool. So we had to be dropped off, walk through security to show our passports and then walk across......the runway. haha yup, it's the only run way you can walk across. But this is the lovely view that I got to see. It was slightly over cast, so unfortunately it wasn't the best day around. I was just hoping I'd still be able to see AFRICA. We finally arrived in the city center at around 1:30 and had a little over 2 hours to kills before it was time for our guided tour around the rock. Luckily I had my bocadillo all set and some friends and I just sat around, ate our bocadillos and then wandered around the square for the rest of the time. There were nice cute little shops to go into, so when it started drizzeling/raining we were able to take cover in the stores. My friend was even able to buy a shirt for 1 euro at one of the stores, 1 euro!! It was nice to see cheaper prices, and like really nice dresses for proms or formals were only about 25 euro...what is this wonderful place I stumbled upon. We basically just wandered around the square for those two hours, I was able to buy some really nice pieces for gifts and even got to see some freakily human like mannequins posed as people blowing glass. Those guys were actually just creepy, I kept thinking they were going to jump up and scare me.
After my two hours of wandering it was time for our tour. Now in case you didn't notice, you don't really want to walk up that rock..so we took a nice little short bus tour of the rock. When I saw short bus, I mean the buses were really short, like the short buses at home. They were tiny little things, but were skinny than that and had to fit through very very very narrow streets, talk about scary driving. At one point the driver had to stop and a girl walking along the street literally had to go into a doorway so the bus could pass. haha that was comical.
First we stopped at Europa Point. This is the highest point on Gibraltar and you can see Africa, and Spain from it!! Gibraltar also has a really long and complicated history. Spain obviously wanted the land, but the lost almost every time they went to war for it. Gibraltar was a military base during WWII and they actually evacuated the whole country because they needed the space for housing soldiers and equipment, and obviously it was dangerous. So Spain fought multiple times, and finally conceded, it belongs to the U.K now and it's most inhabited by Spainish and British people who fluently speak Spanish and English. They can easily have a convo in both languages, switching the between the two, they speak Spanglish!! :D
So there's mee!! And behind me, if you look carefully, is AFRICA! It was a bit cloudy, so you couldn't see very well, but I swear to you, the point of Africa is behind me. It was pretty cool to see actually. I didn't realize how close this country was to the southern tip of Spain, but it's freakin' close. It actually freaked me out a bit. I love the traveling, but it always gives me a slightly unsettling feeling, realizing that the US is not the whole world. From there I could also see the highest point of the Gibraltar rock. We toured around the area and learned some more interesting facts, like there's only 30,000 people in the country, and made our way up to St. Michael Caves, and to play with monkeys!!! Yup, there are over 300 wild monkeys in Gibraltar, and a few of the packs like to hang out by the caves are and hang out with people. I think they just like the attention they get by all the tourists. :) So we drove out to the caves, and immediately when we got to the are where the monkeys are, they started jumping onto the bus curiously and one even climbed in the window with the bust driver. Granted, he was feeding them a bit of food, but they still willingly jumped right up, not afraid at all of the bus.
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| My friend with a monkey. Clearly she kept her composure. |
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| Me with a monkey on the bus! He totally looks like he's posing for the picture, doesn't he look happy? |
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| St. Michael Caves |
Now, I loved the caves, and I know this is going to sound harsh, but the caves weren't all that awesome. I know I've found everything amazing so far, but to me, the caves were just mediocre. Maybe it was my family trip to the Luray Caves in Virigina that did it for me, but these were merely mediocre. They were cool, they had cool colors, and they hold concerts in there sometimes. All of those things are pretty neat, but they were very small in comparison and just over all unimpressive. I'm sorry AIFS and others who loved it, but I thought the monkeys and Africa was cooler.
After we exited the caves we proceeded to play with the monkey's once more until they told us we have to leave. Which was a sad time indeed. I was also later informed that we got gyped in the monkey department because last semester they went to two monkey caves. Oh well, it was all good fun, and I really enjoyed it. We drove around some more, saw some old ports that were used in WWII, famous houses that people got married in, and more small little streets. Unfortunately this is such a brief description because I don't remember much more than the monkeys, lol. Some girls asked if it was worth going to Gibraltar, and honestly I would say, but only for the monkeys. The people are really nice, but there's not much to do there but see the mediocre caves. We then ended up getting stuck in traffic and had to walk the rest of the way back to the border. We once again walked across the border across the runway. By the way, they hardly look at your passport, which was slightly disconcerting. haha
Over all, it was a great day. The Hotel, as always was really nice, turns out it was def a 4 or 5 star hotel. Thanks AIFS! The next day I went around Sevilla, but that's in the next installment. Sorry, I'm tired of writing for the day. Time to read El Codigo Da Vinici, yup, The Da Vinci Code en espanol. :)
Until next time <3 Bonnie
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