Travelling in Andalucía: Gibraltar

The second day of our travel started pretty early at Marbella. We headed southwest towards this huge rock known as Gibraltar. A small city in the south end of Spain… Except that it is not part of Spain, but the UK instead! While driving there the view was – again - more than nice and it got better all the time we were closing Gibraltar! When we were almost at the border, a huge queue of cars started to gather ahead of us: I guess it is popular for Spanish people to go shopping in Gibraltar as they have no VAT (ALV) at all in there! And so then we stood in the queue for an hour or so…

Gibraltar, here we come!

Finally, we reached the border and the Spanish customs officers who couldn’t care less changed into these very polite British “Bobbies”, which was funny and also a nice change at the same time! After the customs we encountered something interesting! You see, Gibraltar is a pretty small piece of land and most of it is covered with the “Upper rock” – a huge rock that you can’t build houses on – so there is not a lot of land to use in there. And so the weird thing was that when we were driving the road leading to the city we came across an airfield… Like literally: drove across a fully sized airfield! There’s not enough room otherwise, so they just made an intersection right in the middle of the field!

A road crossing the airfield? I would say that DON'T pass when the light is red!
Also, a pointer for the pilot when landing: do not break late! :D

After getting through the airfield we got our first look at the city of Gibraltar, home for some 30,000 British and also some Spanish (I think). Altogether, Gibraltar didn’t differ from the Spanish cities a lot. The streets were as narrow, there were as many scooters, people were driving on the “right” side of the road and architecture was pretty much the same. Anyway, it is still another country and for example all the signs were in English, the currency was pound and so on. By the way, the prices were the pretty much the same as in Finland, except that they were in pounds! So basically a beer was 4,50£ which is like 6 Euros!

So after having some f*cking expensive beer we decided to head up to the Upper rock! There are a lot of things to see up there! First of all, the view in there is amazing! You can see all over to Costa del Sol in the northeast, city of Alcerigas in the north and Morocco, Africa in the south!  Besides the views there are some cool caves on the rock, including some old British fortresses. And then of course the Makakis, the little monkeys! :D Those little fellas are really a fun to look at and even hold in your arms!

I will definately recommend anyone visiting Andalucía to also visit Gibraltar, it is quite amazing!

Sun is up
Move your body
I got moves and all the night I will not sit, yeah.
I came up
For this party
I wont stop till mr.dj stops the beat, yeah sun is up.

Inna - Sun Is Up