Gibraltar

Hola!

So, I haven’t updated in a bit. I think I’ll write a bit on Gibraltar for now and save the first week of classes for a little later (as not to overwhelm you too much, you lovely people).

There is exactly one creepy hostel and one potentially non-existent (as we never actually saw it) motel on the island of Gibraltar. Consequently, we stayed in the nearby Spanish town of La Linea de Concepcion in a nice, quiet hostel. The walk from La Linea to Gibraltar is only about 15 minutes, so it’s very conveniently located.

Things you may not know about Gibraltar, or, rather, things that I didn’t realize until they confronted me:

1. Gibraltar is a 15-minute walk away and you legitimately just need to show that you’re in possession of a passport (you don’t even need to show the picture) to get into the country. However, it is, in fact, a small British island in just about every way. Being used to Spanish eating schedules, we looked for a place to eat at 10pm. After wandering to several restaurants where the cooks had gone home, we found somewhere with a late night menu. However, as most of the restaurants become bar/nightclubs after 10pm or so, there was a pretty rowdy crowd all around us.

2. The only path to get into Gibraltar has a landing strip running across it. If you’re thinking, “why, how very characteristically European to be so space efficient and, yet, simultaneously so horridly inconvenient,” you and I are on the same page. When planes fly in (which happens fairly frequently), they close down the one means of exiting and entering, trapping you on Gibraltar for at least 15 minutes per plane (which isn’t too bad unless you have to get to your hostel in time and two planes are landing). 

Those were the two big points. Oh! Also, Gibraltar takes several kinds of currency: Euros, pounds, and dollars (just for kicks, I suppose, as I can’t imagine it’s too handy to wander around in Europe-let alone a really tiny island off the coast of Spain-with large amounts of American money).

And Gibraltar most certainly is small. MJ, one of our well-loved directors, said that after two hours in Gibraltar, you’ve seen Gibraltar. In fact, the tour of anything interesting to see on the island takes approximately 1.5 hours. However, it’s a pretty fun 1.5 hours. The monkeys are terrifically adorable and the babies are particularly endearing. I couldn’t help but continuously snaps pictures of them doing things that are completely and totally mundane in the monkey world (like eating orange slices and sitting still) because they were so darn cute while doing them. They also climbed one of my friends and sat on her shoulder/head.

Other than that there were some caves and tunnels in the rock. Fun fact: There are more roads in the rock than there are on the rest of the island. Overall, it was a good trip (besides the part where I lost the little receipt to get me home and had to buy a new ticket, but I’m just going to roll with stuff like that).

Anyway, hope all is well wherever you are and that you're having adventures of your own!

Love,
Natalie

I thought this little guy was pretty entertaining.