Oh My Gibraltar! (OMG!)
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Gibraltar, Britain
And now my friends, Gibraltar.
I honestly think Gibraltar was my favorite part of this trip. Gibraltar is essentially a giant rock on the tip of Spain, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Because of its strategic positioning as the gateway to the Mediterranean, the British decided they wanted it in the Spanish succession and took it. (Anyone who was anyone was involved in that war, but basically the Spanish king up and died and left the crown to a Bourbon, and then all of Europe was like, “NO! That gives France too much power! ATTACK!” and it extended to the colonies and the west indies it must’ve been fun. Please don’t quote me on this though.)
So anyway, Britain has Gibraltar. Then the Spanish were like, “Oh no you don’t!” and they laid siege on the rock for four years! Do you know what the history books call that? The Great Seige. So the Brits meanwhile, you know, kept calm and carried on, and tunneled into the rock to shoot at the Spanish from the safety of their little hidey-holes. They won and kept Gibraltar, and in WWII expanded those tunnels to use for idk something (this isn’t a history blog). Meanwhile, the Spanish are still salty. So they close up the border between Gibraltar and Spain. And so for almost 30 years, until the 1980s, you could only reach Gibraltar by air or ocean. (Thank you very much, this has been history time with Cristiana, don’t quote me on any of that.)
That way to Spain, folks
Luckily, the rock has its own airport. It’s runway actually intersects the main road into town, so anytime a plane lands, they have to CLOSE OFF TRAFFIC and let the plane cross the road. Dad was pretty into this so we stuck around to watch one land. It’s wild. So essentially, it’s this tiny little British town on the tip of Spain. They use pounds, and have red phone booths, and speak English… And… They have monkeys! Gibraltar just keeps getting crazier and crazier, right?! Right.
Obligatory phone booth pic
So nowadays, the border IS open (thank you #blessed) and you can just up and walk across to Britain, as long as you have your passport. Blew my mind. We took a taxi tour up to St. Micheal’s Cave, that was originally set up to be used as a hospital during WWII, but now hosts a whole bunch of concerts?!
From there we went into the Nature Reserve to see the monkeys. Ya, these guys are pretty darn tame for being in a nature reserve, and will often come right up to you. Our guide told us that the monkeys might touch us, but that as long as we didn’t reach out to touch them, we would be fine. This totally rocked my world because hello, I got to hold a baby monkey! Until I remembered 24 hours later that AIDS originated in monkeys. (Note for the anxiety-ridden among us: Don't listen to a podcast about disease right before going to a new country. It was a dumb idea.)
Spelunkers!
Concert set up
From there we went into the Nature Reserve to see the monkeys. Ya, these guys are pretty darn tame for being in a nature reserve, and will often come right up to you. Our guide told us that the monkeys might touch us, but that as long as we didn’t reach out to touch them, we would be fine. This totally rocked my world because hello, I got to hold a baby monkey! Until I remembered 24 hours later that AIDS originated in monkeys. (Note for the anxiety-ridden among us: Don't listen to a podcast about disease right before going to a new country. It was a dumb idea.)
Baby monkey!
Cuddly monkey <3 p="">
Next, on our tour, we hit up Great Seige and WWII tunnels. They are about what you’d expect. Some nice tunnels dug into the rock. They had some lovely and completely random and inconsistent wax figures in there to illustrate the different jobs inside the tunnels. By random and inconsistent, I mean that some of the little alcoves had them, some didn’t, some were really theatrical, and some were just a statue that didn’t really serve a purpose… All good things. It was crazy being in those tunnels, thinking about how they would have built these in the 1700s!
Now, there is some debate over the best way to see these sites. (It almost caused a great schism in our family!) We ended up choosing a taxi tour because while there is a cable car up the rock that’s cheaper, it does not include entrance into the nature reserve or any of the sites. So if you want to see the cave, tunnels, or the reserve, you have to buy a separate ticket. By the time you do that, it’s about the same as the taxi, but it will be quite a walk to get to all those places. You can also just straight-up hike the rock, which would save you the transportation cost, but still, cost you to get into the reserve. To my knowledge, you can’t just drive up the rock unless you’re one of the taxi tour guides. We decided to leave our car in Spain to avoid the long traffic lines getting back and forth between Spain and Gibraltar.
So in conclusion, Gibraltar was weird and wild and blew my mind. And well worth the trip!
xo,
Cristiana
Cristiana
