The Rock and Los Monos (Monkeys)

  This past weekend we had a four day weekend because of Dia de Adalusia.  So some friends of mine and I decided to take a trip to Gibraltar and then on the way home stop in Malaga, Spain for a few days.  I didn't really know much about Gibraltar before I went except that there were monkeys there so I decided to check it out.
  Apparently there must have been some sort of force attracting me to birds this past week.  (Update on our bird...it died...three days after we got it.  It was very sad and our Senora seemed heartbroken.  Unfortunately, it never got to sing.)  On the five our bus ride to La Linea (the town in Spain right next to the Gibraltar border, where we were staying at) there was a guy sitting in front of me, who was traveling with his pet bird.  A bird on a bus is not a good combination.  First of all, it smelled like bird.  Secondly, there may be a 18-20ish year old man who likes to provoke the bird.  The bird would whistle and then the man would whistle.  For three hours!! At first it was very entertaining, but after awhile it got a little old.

The Rock of Gibralter

  We got to the bus station in La Linea around 9pm on Friday.  We have the address of our hotel, but we don't have directions so we ask a girl near us if she knew where it was.  Her response:  Andando o en coche? (Walking or by car?)  We say walking and she says: "Ay, muy lejos!" (Very far!)  She then just tells us to take the cab by us.  We don't want to pay for a cab so we just started walking.  We then decide we have no idea where we are going to we go back to ask the cab driver for directions and to see if it really is that far.  His response: Andando o en coche?  We say walking.  So he gives us directions ( turn right at the next street, walk till the end of the street, turn left and then turn left at the second street)  and says that it should take like 2-3 minutes.  So we walk...to the end of the street (it's been like 8 minutes by now) and turn left.  We're in like the residential area of town.  Probably no right.  So we ask an older lady who was taking out her trash, but she didn't have her glasses on so she couldn't see, so she asks a man working on his car.  His response: Andando o en coche?  Really?!  We have large backpacks on and are carrying other bags.  Of course we're walking....we say walking and he goes: muy lejos!  And gives us directions back to almost where we started.  So we walk.  We end up walking by a police station so we as the lady sitting in there, she says: "Andando o en coche?  Again, walking, but this time the directions seemed like we were close.  Now we're by a take out pizza place and a man is leaving so we ask him just to make sure.  He tells us to go down two more streets and turn right.  So we walk, but about a minute later a women is getting out of her car, coming towards us like she wants directions.  We don't even know where we're going!  It turns out she was the wife of the guy at the pizza place and he gave us wrong directions.  So we end up getting to our hotel finally after about an 1 1/2 of walking, when really...our hotel is literally 2 minutes away from the bus station!  It was an eventful night.

  Saturday we walk across the border to Gib, it's like five minutes away from our hotel.  There is barely any security, and you literally just walk right across.  You even after to walk across the Gibralter runway to get into town.  Pretty cool!  We ended up taking a taxi tour of the rock.  We got to go into a cave that was used for a emergency hospital during WWII and we went into a tunnel.  We also got to see monkeys!!!  Not only did we see them, but they sat on our shoulders and heads!  Our cab driver has names for them all and know which was a nice or not, so he just picked them up and put them on us.  I had one on my shoulder and all of a sudden a not as nice monkey(Richard) jumps off the roof of our cab and onto my head!!  It was terrifying!  I was done with monkeys on me after that. :)

Me and the Monkeys

Phone booth fun!

 Then we had good ole fish n chips in little England at Roy's.  It was pretty good.  After lunch we went to a glass blowing exhibit.  It was really neat! And it looked difficult to do. Then we hung out in the botanical gardens and took pictures in telephone booths.  We went back into town around 6 and everything was closed there where no people around at all!  It was a ghost town!!  We managed to find a place open for supper, Made in Mexico...in Irishtown (the name of the street)...in Gibraltar...five minutes away from Spain. We got done eating and when we back outside, still no one to be found.  The square was even deserted.  I don't understand where all the people went to.  Again we found a pub that was open and we had ice cream sundaes and watched the futbol game.  When the game got over...the pub turned into a karaoke bar!  It was pretty fun to watch people go sing, but the best part was the glass blower from earlier in the day came in!!  Very weird!  He came over and talked to us and then he gave us his and his son's YouTube links because they are in a band!  It was all just very strange!  I haven't checked out the links yet, but I'll put them up here soon too so you all can see who we met.  Maybe they'll be good too.

 We walked back across the landing strip and the border and made it safely back into Spain.  Sunday we were off to Malaga!