Day 2 - Gibraltar

Most holiday apartments that we've rented over the years have a coffee pot with coffee and sugar and a few other things to get you by.  This one had NOTHING!!  Ok, well...it did have a microwave and a stove, but that was it!!  I was getting a little more livid as time went on.   First stop....McDonalds!  We needed coffee and a McMuffin is always an added bonus!

We then started our hour and a half journey to Gibraltar.  I was looking forward to it.  Jerry had taken a trip there when he worked in Seville at the World's Fair in the Summer of 1992.

A British colony tucked away in a very small corner of Spain.  Spain has wanted this prime piece of property for hundreds of years and England keeps fighting hard to keep it.

We parked in Spain and walked through passport control (we heard this was quicker and easier). There were hoards of people.  What a sight!  As soon as you cross over the border you then walk along the main road that goes smack dab through the middle of their airport runway!

 Gibraltar played a significant part in World War I & II.  A runway was build during the WWII and is maintained today with just a handful of flights coming and going each day. 

We decided to spend the day taking in the English speaking atmosphere (can I just say “Ahhh!”)  By this point it was time to get lunch.  We ventured to the main square trying to figure out where to eat when I spotted it!  “It” you ask was Pizza Hut!!  I was so excited and my mouth started to water!  We headed that way only to find that they were closed for remodeling! Phooey!  It just seemed to be the way this trip was going!!  We headed to Subway instead.  After eating we meandered through the very busy streets.

 Then headed towards the cable car to take us to the top of the rock of Gibraltar.

What breath-taking views!!!  It was gorgeous!!

 Did you know that there are Barbary monkeys on the rock of Gibraltar?!  As soon as we got off the cable car we were coming up some stairs and a monkey came up over a railing and started rummaging through the bottom of a stroller.  The parents tried to keep the monkey from getting in, but it was not to be detoured. The monkey found a package of cookies and helped him/herself to the whole bag.

 We took in the view and within a few minutes we saw the monkey going back for more in the same stroller!  This time it found 2 apples!!  What a stinker!

 The monkeys roam all over the rock among the people.  It's a little too close for my liking.  Had it been just Jerry & me, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.  We had a little bit of a scare when we were observing one of the baby monkeys.  The mama got a little too far from baby.  When the baby realized mama wasn't near it started screaming and the mama came running.  I only realized it when I heard someone yell “Watch out!”  very loudly.  I was thankful for their warning and held Reegan back a bit.  I was carrying her water bottle (it was on a strap) and I was ready to go swinging at a monkey if I needed to!  Luckily that wasn’t necessary.

We came back down the cable car to find the streets were almost bare compared to earlier.  We wondered if we were suppose to cross back in to Spain at a certain time or something, but we didn’t think that made any sense.

When Jerry had visited Gibraltar he had quite a tale of arriving in town with no place to stay and some event going on in town making all the hotels full.  He decided to sleep in the great outdoors and figured it would be safe near a church.  So, we went looking for the church.  The area had changed a bit, but the church was still there.

We decided to get some dinner before getting back on the road and stopped at a British pub for some grub!  Our waitress took our order and I was very curious about her name.  It was obvious she was not British.  After we ate we got to talking to her and learned that she was from Czech Republic!!  I thought her name sounded Central European!!  We had a nice little chat with her about Czech Republic and Gibraltar and how she had lived in Scotland for a while.

It was getting late and we still needed to check about getting the stamp in our passport.  We walked back over the airport runway (I should have brought my pedometer....we walked a ton!).

Look at that line of cars to enter Spain!  Good thing we didn't have to sit in that!

 Once we crossed the border we stopped to speak with a Spanish border guard.  We explained what we needed and off she went to check on it.  We thought she’d be back any minute with a stamp.  We waited...and waited some more.  She then came out and after trying to explain to us in Spanish, which we didn’t understand, she grabbed one of the Gibraltar guards to translate that she did not have the right kind of stamp.  I felt defeated, kicked and stepped on!  Why was none of this trip going as we’d hoped?!  My dream of a nice little getaway in a nice little place by the beach and a quick trip for a stamp in our passport was not working out.  I know, God has a reason for everything but I just couldn’t understand it.

I was getting really teary eyed as we crossed back into Spain.  I was dreading the fact that we were going to have to take another road trip going further south and figure out how to take a ferry to Morocco.  I knew nothing about Morocco.  Only that it is a Muslim country and to be careful what you ate or drank because you could get sick.  Sounds like a really fun trip with 3 kids!!!

On the way home I told Jerry that we should take a break the next day, go to the beach, do some research on how to take the ferry and just enjoy the day.  It was also going to be our 16 year anniversary!!  We got back to our holiday apartment LATE!  The kids fell asleep in the car, they were exhausted!  It was a bit of work to get them out of the car and into bed with lots of whining and crying, but we made it!

We were a little concerned when we checked email to find that Jerry’s dad had still not woken up from surgery.  The doctors didn’t know why.  The surgery had gone well although they found that his right side was not responding.  When we heard this news I just lost it!  It had been a long couple of day with lots of disappointments and now this.  Jerry was about ready to drive to Seville (the closest airport) and get on a plane for home to be with his family!  It had been some high stress days and we knew we needed a break.

And the rest of the story to come soon!!