And so begins the adventure...: Gibraltar

Just one comment before I go on about Gibraltar. That "lovely" road we took on our first day in Tarifa - I failed to mention that it had several steep sections, several muddy spots and the car we had was an standard transmission!

Ok, enough on that. The next day we drove to Gibraltar. This is a narrow peninsula ( three miles by one mile) and vurtually the entire peninsula is dominated by the steep-faced Rock itself. I said in an earlier blog that we had now seen all of the UK but I had forgotten about Gibraltar. Now we have completed the UK. It was so strange to be in Spain and then in the UK for this tiny little bit of land. Yes we had to go through passport control and customs but we didn't get a stamp in our passports. Crossing the frontier (as the border is called) was a piece of cake for us. In fact, the guards hardly glanced at our passports. There were some folks in front of us that had a lot of problems because some of their group had a Shengen visa but the others did not and they were denied entrance without the visa. They were able to apply and have a visa issued at the border, just took more time and more money.

We cross through and are suddenly in a bastion of England everything is in English. We went to a pub for lunch and had a pint of beer and fish and chips (for me) and a half chicken for Ernie. We kept saying si when answering a question or greeting in Spanish. How confusing!

We walked through town to the cable car (couldn't talk Ernie into walking up the Rock! Actually, I wouldn't either). After almost an hour wait to purchase tickets, we finally got into the cable car for our ride up. They only had one ticket window open and there were two cruise ships in port. The lines were horrendous! I couldn't believe the inefficiency of this operation - appeared more Spanish than British. Oh well, we made it to the top and it was amazing.

I didn't mention that one of the other interesting aspects of Gibraltar are the apes - actually tailless Barbary macaques - about 200 of them. They hang around the park at the base of the cable car and at the top of the Rock.

Got to admit, the people watching here is amazing.