Gibraltar Trip: Bloody Brilliant, Mate!

As most of you know, I'm going to be traveling around Europe for a month after my study abroad program ends in May. I'm hitting up nine or so countries, but I don't have the time or the money to make it to the United Kingdom. Luckily for me, Spain has a little chunk of the UK in its lower-right corner called Gibraltar. Double luckily for me, a day trip to Gibraltar was included as part of my study abroad program. That's simply smashing, love!

Note: I highly recommend reading this entire entry to yourself in a British accent.

Note 2: One of my goals for this blog post is to avoid using the pun "Gibraltar ROCKS". We will see if I can make it through without succumbing.

This past Friday, we loaded onto a bus and made the three-hour drive to Gibraltar. After going through the most laid-back customs procedure ever (wave your passport in the general direction of a guard who's barely paying attention), we crossed the runway* and headed to the Gibraltar Chamber of Commerce. There, we were given a PowerPoint presentation about the history and economy of Gibraltar from a very jolly British man. Delightful!












The rock of Gibraltar is incredibly impressive/foreboding in real life. I want to know who first saw that looming mountain and was like, "Yeah that looks like a great place to live!"















This overhead view of Gibraltar is a picture of a picture in the Gibraltar customs office. The population of Gibraltar is about 28,000 people and they live in about four square kilometers of land. As you can imagine, traffic is terrible.















*To get to the main part of Gibraltar, you have to walk across a runway. Yes, a functioning airport runway. You have to stop and wait for about ten minutes every time a plane takes off or lands. There are signs everywhere warning you not to drop anything because you could cause the plane to crash. Who designed this stupid island?















Not the best picture, but this is the delightful chap who gave us the information session. Even when he was talking about the volume of freighters that come through Gibraltar's port every year, I was still hanging onto every word because that accent is AMAZING!

A VERY Brief History of Gibraltar
In the early 1700s, some British sailors were returning from a very unsuccessful trip to Italy. Not wanting to come home empty-handed, they stopped at Gibraltar and claimed it for England. Though Spain technically ceded the territory in a 1713 treaty, they've been trying to get it back ever since, and neither side will shut the hell up about whose it is. Right now it is officially a "British overseas territory", and most Gibraltarians prefer that it stays that way.

After the information session, we had a bit of free time to explore the city. Unfortunately, our bus was late arriving that morning and there wasn't quite enough time to go up to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar. (So no monkeys on this trip, but don't fret as I've already scheduled a return trip in April. I'll hang out with some dang monkeys if it's the last thing I do!) Instead, we went to some museums and wandered around taking pictures.

Have you noticed a theme yet? Basically every place I go my initial plans don't work out, so I just mill around taking photos of everything. Hey, I'm not complaining, it's still awesome!















A dilapidated building built into the side of the rock. I don't know why, but this picture reminds me of Jurassic Park.




















We went to a glass-blowing museum and watched the workers there make a vase. Amazing! Considering that I can barely make a sandwich properly, watching someone craft molten hot glass into something useful was particularly impressive.















After the glass-blowing museum, we visited a small art gallery.















Obviously I was going to try honest-to-goodness UK fish and chips! It was everything I had ever hoped for. Note that the fish there, the one that is over a foot long, is a "medium". What's the large, a dolphin?




















The red phone booths actually exist in real life! How positively charming! (Also, can I just say that I'm looking forward to the weather improving? I'm so pale it looks like I'm emitting light in this picture.)















It's like they're just BRAGGING about how British they are, seriously.















This storefront is essentially a giant wall of alcohol (an "alco-wall", if you will). Since Spaniards tend to come here to buy cheap booze and cigarettes, the city is absolutely full of liquor stores. They have monstrous bottles of Jack Daniels that are the size of a fire hydrant, it's unbelievable.




















After spending a good amount of time in tourist shops, I can say with complete certainty that Gibraltar wins the award for most ape-related merchandise.

Overall, our day trip to Gibraltar was a lot of fun and I can't wait to go back and see everything I didn't have time for. I give it a solid B+, with the option of grade revision once I see the monkeys and all of the other tourist attractions on the rock. Oh, and this blog post is dedicated to Ramya's parents. I'm really excited to meet you both!

Visiting Coastal Spain (It's Tarif-ic!)

Ok, as you may remember from my most recent post about Morocco, Ramya and I spent a few hours in a Spanish city named Tarifa before taking the ferry to Tangier. (On second thought, if you remember all of that without me reminding you then that's pretty weird.) I neglected to describe our adventures in Tarifa in my last post because it was already practically novel-length, but the time has come!

We arrived at Tarifa and spent about three hours wandering around downtown before heading to Tangier. We quickly realized that the trip would not go as planned, seeing as everything that we planned to visit was closed. For once I'm not exaggerating. There were three things we wanted to do in Tarifa: two castles and a museum. The first castle was technically open that day but closed for siesta the entire time we were there (Spaniards avoid working at all costs), the museum didn't exist anymore, and the other castle wasn't open at all. Luckily, we improvised and managed to have an excellent time. (This turned out to be a good warm-up for Morocco.)















This is a statue of Guzman el Bueno outside his castle. He must have been a pretty cool dude to get the title "el Bueno" because there are a bunch of people in Spanish history with names like "La Loca" (the crazy) and "El Bajo" (the short). Unfortunately, since we couldn't actually go inside all I know about him is that he's blue... da ba dee da ba dai. Late 90s song reference, anyone?




















Undeterred, we then visited the ayuntamiento (Tarifa's main government building), mainly because it was close to the castle and there were signs showing where it was. As you'd expect from a Spanish government building, it was cool-looking but not terribly exciting. We quickly moved on.















This lovely work of architecture is Tarifa's public library. Oh, come on! Add this to the list of "libraries in Spain that are infinitely cooler than Old Quarry". There's even a small movie theater inside of it!















I think these are supposed to be candy representations of Spongebob Squarepants (aka Bob Esponja) but all they do is give me nightmares. Yeesh.




















It just wouldn't be Spain without a humongous, ornate church surrounded by bars.















The ancient Puerta de Jerez, sandwiched between normal buildings on a busy street.




















I'm hanging out in the middle of the Puerta de Jerez. Behind me: the most inappropriate depiction of Jesus I've ever seen. My body is obscuring all of the business, don't worry.















An aerial shot of the awesome plaza we stumbled upon. To take this picture, we climbed on top of a dilapidated old building that I'm fairly sure we weren't supposed to be climbing on. REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE.















The aforementioned building.















On our way back to Sevilla, the weather was even nicer. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday so everything was still closed. We took the opportunity to take lots of pictures of the outside of the Castle of Santa Catalina.

Ok, that's about it for Tarifa. Next up: Gibraltar and Granada.