Gibraltar

After leaving the Alhambra we grabbed some quick and easy dinner--how thankful I was for McDonald's.   We then headed south--and in the right direction--towards Gibraltar.  We spent the night in Spain, just across the border, in Algeciras I believe.  (This wasn't our hotel, but it was just across the street and we thought it was a pretty cool building.)

We arrived there late in the evening and as we drove in we could see the Rock of Gibraltar all lit up.  We didn't get any pictures of it at night, but it was pretty cool to see.  We spent Saturday morning, May 11th in Gibraltar, which is a British overseas territory.  It was funny to see street signs in English all of a sudden. And of course it was fun to see the iconic red phone booths!

 Thankfully we didn't have to drive on the other side of the street.:D  That would've been confusing.  As we drove from Spain into Gibraltar, we drove across the airport runway.  Seriously.  That was the only way to drive into that territory.  (Google Map Gibraltar and you'll see the way we went into the country.)

We drove around the lower town a little bit as we made our way to the Rock.

Then we headed up the Rock.  We were surprised that we could just drive right up to it.  And that there were houses right along it too. I know that for me, my idea of the Rock of Gibraltar was a free-standing rock out away from the land a bit.  I guess I had never seen a picture of it.  But there we were, driving right up it.  We got to a point where we had to get out because we couldn't actually drive to the very top.  As we got to the parking lot area, we saw all of these semi-wild Barbary macaques.  They were all over!  They would climb on the cars and along the fences.  We were amazed at their balancing abilities!

We had quite the adventure with some of these macaques.  We parked the car and headed over to go inside the cave.  Glenn had started eating an apple, but didn't quite finish.  So I was holding it-not even thinking about it.  And before I knew it, one of those macaques had come bounding up to me and jumped right on me!  It wanted that apple.  But there were signs all over telling people not to feed the monkeys--and I didn't want to pay a fine by feeding them.  I tried hiding it, but it was climbing all over me in the process.  Paul was a few steps ahead of me and so I threw it to me.  But we had attracted the attention of all the macaques in the area, especially the large male.  Once he started bounding up to Paul, Paul threw it right to me.  There was no way he was going to let that large male climb all over him.  So we did feed them, but it wasn't our intention.  There was a guard who saw the whole thing, but didn't issue us a fine or anything.  It was quite the adventure!  I wish we had had it on film or at least a picture of it or something, but I was holding the camera...and my mind was on other things at the moment--like not getting bit by a wild animal! :D

So with that behind us, we headed into St. Michael's Cave.  We didn't even know it was up there, so we were excited to go explore it.  It wasn't a tour-guided cave, so we could explore and just follow the paths and be there as long as we wanted.  As we walked in there was a large opening.  It wasn't like any other cave we'd been in.  It was turned into a sort of church.  They had seats and an pulpit.  It was pretty cool.  They also had colored lights shining on the different formations, and choir music playing throughout.  It was a really awesome experience inside.  Glenn loved it in there.

After exploring the cave, we wanted to hike up as high as we could to get the views.  We loved seeing the blanket of fog coming in.  It was incredible!  So thick!

We climbed as high as we could go--without paying another fee--and took some pictures from up there.  We could see Africa from where we were!  That was pretty incredible too!

And more pictures from on top...

These two pictures show one path to get to this point.  We didn't take the one on the right--it was a lot more dangerous looking.  The last picture show the paved path that we did take from the cave entrance.  Much easier and safer-just the way I like it.

We had some incredible views from up there and we were glad we hiked up.  After coming back down, we wanted to see some of the other things on, or I guess IN the rock.  The Rock of Gibraltar was very strategic in many wars and we got to go inside some of the tunnels that had been dug during those wars.  It was pretty cool.

 These are remnants of the original ropes that were used to shield the windows and cannon holes.

 And this was the large room or hall where they had displays about what it was used for during wars.  I guess I really didn't know much about the Rock of Gibraltar and it was really interesting to learn about.

After being up on the rock and seeing what we could see, we made our way down and out and back into Spain.  Some more views of the Rock and of the town of Gibraltar itself.

We were glad we made this extra trip down here to see these amazing things!