Gibraltar

We are back in Spain now for a final ski vacation before the snow season is over. We decided that this first season it would be good for the kids to have one more trip to consolidate their skills before they have to wait until next year. So we came last week, skied for a few days, and then took a break on the coast over the weekend while the resort was really busy. While there, we went to Gibraltar for an afternoon. We all enjoyed it, if we ended up walking a bit more than the kids would have liked. (We parked the car on the Spanish side, having heard the traffic over the border could be bad.)

To get across the border you have to actually walk across an airport runway. Justin thought that was pretty fun.



As we got closer to the English side we could see the iconic rock of Gibraltar looming ahead.


We didn't have very much time there, having gone swimming in the morning at our hotel. So we walked (a somewhat circuitous route) to the cable cars and got one of the last trips up the rock. We were all glad we did, because the views were pretty spectacular. Somewhere out there is Morocco, but you can't see it because of the weather...


The kids also loved seeing the famous Gibraltar apes. They roamed all over the top of the rock, and one even jumped on the back of the man in front of us as we exited. We had to keep all plastic bags inside our backpacks because the apes have come to associate them with food. My favorite scene was a mother with a baby on her back, but they were too far away to get a good picture. Here are a few that we got close enough to. Eric got a video of some very angry apes vying for dominance. It was quite a scene, and quite a ruckus! At one point several even jumped into our cable car. Fortunately, they were all too preoccupied with each other to bother any of us. (Apparently, they sometimes bite.)



We took the gondola back down, and then walked through a botanic garden with a playground, and through the old central part of the city.


And everywhere we went, we saw signs of being back in Britain, rather than in Spain!


The botanic garden was really beautiful, and the kids loved the playground.


They especially loved the trampoline embedded in the ground.


The center of the city had a very old European colonial feel to it, with narrow streets and high buildings on either side. From here, we headed back to the border, and back home. All of us were tired, but we're glad we went! 


I want to go back someday to explore more of the history. There were siege tunnels that looked fascinating, carved into the rock by the British, and used by the military through World War II, as well as several old houses to explore. But for just a quick afternoon trip, we saw quite a bit!

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