Trip to Gibraltar

Gibraltar was one of the most unique places I have ever been. For those of you that don't know, Gibraltar is a British colony on the Southern tip of Spain at the Gibraltar Straight. 

It is an extremely tiny bit of land- you can walk from one end to the other in just about an hour. But it was also extraordinarily gorgeous. We actually stayed in Spain because it was cheaper, but it was only a five minute walk across the border, which is open 24/7 and has very little security. They didn't even check my passport picture, I just had to show that I had a U.S. passport. I also thought it was interesting that after we went through customs, we had to walk across the airport tarmac to get into Gibraltar- apparently it isn't a very busy airport. Here are some pictures of the Rock of Gibraltar as we were walking toward it:

Yes, that is a BP gas station and yes that was on purpose. We wandered aimlessly into Gibraltar around 7 pm on Friday, after a four-hour bus-ride from Sevilla and a quick check-in at our hotel, with the intention of finding dinner. We walked into a bar for directions to an ATM or money exchange center because we needed Gibraltar dollars. The bartender, Antonio, was Romanian and he loves Americans. In fact, he told us that as soon as we walked in. We ended up talking with him for over an hour about Chicago and our favorite places to visit in the U.S. He decided not to go to university in Romania because he wanted to save up his money and go to school in the U.S. with the goal of getting a green card and staying there. Ideally, he would like to move to Miami or Los Angeles. He also speaks five languages, including Romanian, English, Italian, Spanish and French. 


While we were there, the entire area of Gibraltar had a power outage. Apparently they're becoming quite common because the city uses a excessively large amount of power, so they just shut it off for random amounts of time- sometimes hours, sometimes just 45 minutes or so. We were lucky that it was out for less than an hour. After the power came back on we headed out to Roy's for fish & chips on Antonio's recommendation. Roy is originally British, but has been living in Spain and commuting to work in Gibraltar for 25 years with his Spanish wife. He also makes some fantastic fish and chips. Below is a picture, with Alyssa, Katie, Roy, me and Matt from left to right. He was also incredibly friendly and chatted with us over dinner for at least 30 minutes or so. 

On Saturday, after a quick breakfast in Spain, we headed over to Gibraltar again for some sight-seeing. The rock of Gibraltar has been controlled by the Moors, the Spanish, and obviously the British and therefore has remnants from each of these groups. There was a Moorish castle, and a cave system built into the rock during World War II as a defense mechanism. There were also some extraordinary views and lots of stairs. 

Of course, my favorite part were the Gibraltar apes. Apparently they really like blondes.

We finished up the day at Europa point, the separation between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic with the mountains of Morocco across the water.

After a quick nap, we did dinner in Spain and then we found ourselves at a karaoke bar with a bunch of Brits, including a bachelorette party. There were some pretty entertaining renditions of Greased Lightning, Queen, and Michael Jackson. After another bus-ride on Sunday, we were back home in Sevilla. Which was strange, because it did feel like arriving home- I guess that means I'm really getting settled in. Don't worry Mom and Dad- I'll make it back to Chicago eventually! But I may be bringing a monkey with me.