Another visitor arrives! Lori, our fourth, and probably final visitor, met us in Madrid and we spent a few short days in Spain and Gibraltar. Even though we were only in the country for about three days, we did our best to see a few things as we passed through and still had time for tapas and three pitchers of sangria.

In Madrid, we walked around the city center area. Puerto del Sol, the Grand Via, Plaza Mayor, and the royal palace were all great to see. The royal palace was especially impressive with all of the beautifully painted ceilings, and the extensive clock collection of Charles IV. They even had an old pharmacy museum in a part of the palace. Across the street there is a cathedral, this one is not 1000 years old though, it was only finished in 1993. It was interesting to see the difference in art and decorations between a new cathedral and some older ones we had just seen in Florence. We also spent an afternoon on a bus tour of the city, it was nice to sit down and relax for a bit while driving past the highlights of Madrid.

As luck would have it, our day in Madrid happened to coincide with a somewhat significant political demonstration. In protest of the government’s response to the unemployment problem in Spain, several big unions organized a general strike and encouraged everyone to skip work for a day. The result for us was that we were stuck in town for another day because the buses and trains weren’t all running and roadblocks caused some big traffic problems in the city. We also got to see some of the demonstrations in the main plazas. There was a big rally in the morning to kick it all off and another at night. Luckily, from what we could tell, it was generally peaceful.

The day after the strike we rented a car (which was cheaper than the train) and drove south, all the way to the end of the country. After passing through some beautiful countryside and past thousands of olive tree orchards, we arrived in Gibraltar. Some of the views reminded us of the golden hills in California.

Gibraltar is a tiny speck of a country, barely squeezed in between the giant rock and the sea. We even had to drive across the runway to get into the city. It is a nice little town though, and very British. We walked though the main streets for a bit admiring the old city walls, cannons, and other relics from its long history. There was still a bit of time before sunset so we took the cable car to the top of the rock. The top featured great views of the city, Spanish towns across the bay, and a bit of Africa across the strait. There is also another attraction at the top, monkeys. Apparently Europe’s only wild primates, a group of Barbary Macaques lives in the nature reserve and inhabit the ruins of old military bunkers. Luckily they were not as aggressive as the monkeys we encountered in Bali and it was fun to watch them jump around for a bit before heading back down to town. There is no shortage of pubs in Gibraltar, and we sat down to a nice hearty meal and a proper pint of good English ale.

On our last day, we woke up early and saw the sun rise from Europa point, then headed back to Spain. We had a bit of trouble finding the rental car return place, but eventually dumped the car and walked over to the port. From there it was a short bus ride to Tarifa where we caught the ferry to Tangier.

Tags: beer · car · Gibraltar · history · museum · Spain · wildlife