Spanglish

We took an organised trip to Gibraltar today. There were English and Dutch speaking people on the coach and the tour guide spoken both languages with impeccable ease.
It took around 2 hours 40 mins to get to Gibraltar but then time was added for the incoming flights. The main road into Gib crosses the runway, fortunately there are only 7-8 flights a day to/from the UK but we had to wait 20 minutes whilst a couple of Easy Jet flights landed, the BA one was cancelled!

Gibraltar if full of historic stuff, I did smile to myself when I over heard someone pointing out that “Trafalgar was buried in that cemetery”.

Of course one of the main reasons people visit is for the amazing variety of tax free shopping. I’d persuaded Tom to come away on holiday with the promise of tax free cigars - Stag bros, did not disappoint. There’s a mixture of Spanish, British, Moroccan, Maltese and Gibraltar’s, here plus other ethnicities. There is also virtually no crime, although I imagine an odd bottle of spirit or perfume may make its way over the border.

Lots of different accents and languages to listen too and almost every sort of food you could possibly eat. Fish and chip restaurants seemed to be very popular but we went Italian at lunchtime.

We’d booked a mini bus tour of the rock and war tunnels after lunch. Our driver was Peter, he had an amazing posh English/Spanish accent with Michael Caine euphemisms smattered everywhere, most amusing.

We visited Europa point first and could clearly see Morocco. The Rock was obviously steep and somehow the mini bus made it up as far as it was allowed with first gear screaming now and then. We met the apes - I didn’t fancy getting to close but my goodness do they know how to pose.

The tunnels were mind blowing to think of men digging them out then firing canons out of the holes in the rock, nice and cool inside and no apes! Peter took us to the marina where we saw a couple of super yacht’s moored up, they were huge and looked like they belonged to the Crown Prince of  Saudi Arabia.

It’s been a good day out and I’m looking forward to a shower and dinner when we get back to the hotel.