Okay so the title, Gibraltar isn’t actually technically in Spain, but today starts and ends in Spain so deal wit it.
We booked an excursion on a prior day to go to Gibraltar, it’s pretty far and impossible to get to if you are doing it on your own, but our resort offered a tour bus thing for around 22eur return per person so we took it, the bus was late of course, which was a bit of a slap in the face considering we had woken up so early for it (8am or so)
The journey was around 90 minutes, and actually involved showing passports to get through immigration into the country, Gibraltar is a small British colony off the south of Spain, and thus was kind of like being home away from home. Our tour guide talked pretty much the entirety of the way there, though I lost interest after approximately 20 minutes.
Gibraltar is best described as a gigantic cliff that people decided to live around, a tiny peninsula which with what may as well be mount Everest in the middle of the island.
We only had 5 or 6 hours to spend before having to get back to the bus, so we quickly set out for the main attractions of the island, while many of the other people on the bus were still slowly waddling around waiting for direction.
Grabbed the cable car up to ‘the rock’ (as they call it), it was another 20 quid or so per person (yes quid). The view was incredible as expected, at around 400+ meters high, the top of the rock is taller than the Empire state building, or 70 additional meters higher than the Eiffel Tower. We spent a long time just staring out at the visas from the top, looking back at the Spanish mainland, and to foreign continents (what we assume was Morrocco/Africa).
The mountain paths of Gibraltar are home to many macaques – fuzzy mountain Monkeys smaller than the knee, they were numerous and completely unafraid of humans. We had plenty of opportunity to photograph them, and actually saw a bunch of people sitting next to them and reaching out to touch them, though we didn’t fancy doing this ourselves as they are prone to scratching/biting/stealing. There were a few Monkeys just kind of clamouring onto cars as they drove past – the mountain paths are very hilly and thus the local taxi’s have seen an opportunity, even though the paths are tiny.
I actually had a monkey jump on my head briefly while I was photographing another, thankfully only a small one, as I imagine one of the larger ones could have knocked me off balance, with any luck I can finish this holiday without rabies or whatever they might carry.
Further along the mountain path was St Michael’s Cave, arguably Gibraltar’s largest attraction aside from the rock itself, a gigantic natural cave formation which descends a few stories down.
The inside of the cave was almost comically lit, with multicoloured lights coupled with dance music over the speakers in the main area, the music thankfully chilled out a little bit as you got further in, an the coloured lights actually really helped to prevent all of the pictures from looking the same and functionally were quite helpful as it made them easier to snap. The caves themselves were sadly over a little too soon, not quite as long as some of the other caves I’ve been to, though Gibraltar is certainly winning in terms of dance music
There were a few other attractions on top of the rock, they were some kilometers away, and the path was hilly and rocky, our time before needing to head back to catch the bus was soon running out so we headed back down the mountain to explore the town a little.
Gibraltar town is honestly a lot like it was described in our brochure, “the great British High Street, but with sun”, it’ worth noting however that it’s a good deal more scenic, with the sea on one side and an epic mountain on the other.
We wandered around and visited the cathedral before heading further north and exploring the plaza, we came across a glass shop with some really impressive stuff, and attached was a full glass blowing workshop with demonstrations. We stuck around for a while to watch the glassblowers do their thing, forming patterned bowls from glowing globs of molten glass dipped in what I can only describe as shrapnel.
Little more exploring later, and it was already back to the bus to go back to Spain. Of interesting note, we had to disembark at one point to walk across the border through immigration and customs – so I can technically say I’ve been to Spain by foot now.
Finally back on the resort after a nice little siesta, we took a long walk into Fuengirola looking for food. We fancied some tapas and so had a good search on tripadvisor and walked around for literally hours trying to find a place. The first was too expensive, the second was closed for refurbishment. We passed by a bunch of other restaurants, but our indecisive party didn’t want to make any real decisions, eventually we hit the third place and ate there, a nice selection of fancy tapas and a pizza. It was pretty late by the time we finished, as the food service was slow, so it was another long walk back to the resort and straight to bed ready for the next day.
