Barra Goes Abroad

Chase and I just got back from a weekend trip to Seville and Gibraltar. Seville had tons of exquisite tile work, and at one government building they had a series of tiled alcoves with benches in them representing most of the cities in Spain.

The Cathedral in Seville was massive, but we didn't get a chance to go inside, since the ticket lady wouldn't buy Chase's story that he had forgotten his student ID, so we just got to admire the exterior.

The next morning we caught a bus to La Linea, the Spanish town that's just over the border from Gibraltar. The Spanish countryside along the way was covered with windmills and orange trees, most of which weren't yet ripe. We had a lengthy debate at a bus station about what type of citrus fruit was growing on the trees, finally deciding that they were unripe oranges.

As we came around the last bend in the road and started descending toward Algeciras and Gibraltar, the rock came into view - it's pretty spectacular. The land all around it is super flat, ande then Gibraltar just rears up out of the sea.

We stayed at a hostel just across the street from Casemate's square, the landward terminus of main street. It wasn't nearly as ritzy as the hostel in Seville, but at least we got 2 pieces of toast with butter and tea for breakfast. We spent our first day in Gibraltar hiking the Rock. It's very steep, so even though it's not all that high, it takes a while to get up and down.

From the top of the Rock we could see Africa across the straits of Gibraltar, but it was a hazy day so we could just barely make out the shape of the mountains.

The Barbary Macacques on the rock are very used to human presence, and didn't seem to even take notice of us. They treated passing cars more as playground equipment than a threat.

Gibraltar itself was a strange mix of Spanish and English cultures - the police, phone booths, and signage was straight out of England, but almost everyone spoke both English and Spanish, and we heard people mixing the two a lot.

Gibraltar seemed to have almost an island atmosphere, despite the fact that the border was pretty low key. It definitely lived up to our expectations.