Day trip to Gilbraltar

Blogger just erased all the text I wrote for this post, so now we're going to do the short and sweet version.
Gibraltar is maybe the weirdest place I've ever visited. The rock is much bigger than expected (that's not what makes it weird).




















Chris and Sawyer marvel at its bigness.






















Welcome to the strangest cradle of history ever.






















Chris and I renew our vows (one of our wedding pics is in a like booth).





















The weather was much more clement than expected, but we did have to fight some serious winds during the day.





















On one of the Rock's peaks is a Moorish fort, built and rebuilt from the 8th to the 14th century.





















Here our gregarious guide William shows us the pre-Colombian conception of the world; the Straits of Gibraltar used to be the last known outpost of charted ocean. William, a native Gibraltarian, was quite a character and said things like "come 5 o'clock, it's all choc-a-block out there!" and "Me? I have salt water in my toilets! It's how I live!"





















One stop on our tour was the St. Michael's caves. The rock is full of caves, but these are the most impressive.



























And they have very unfriendly monkeys that hang about preying on people like me who keep crackers in their purse. William promised that later he would take us to the nice monkeys that we could 'play with."





















The marvelous stalagtites of St. Michaels'.








































It's so caverous inside that they've installed a concert space. Bring your rain poncho and your galoshes, it's very wet inside.






















Next stop was the highest point of the rock, with a view down on the coast.





















The highest point is where we met the friendly monkeys. But they were too busy contemplating eternity.





















And there is the highest point itself.





















Oh, now they're ready to play. Sawyer didn't really want to be near them then, but has talked of little else since.





















They really are friendly little creatures. Or at least they'll do anything for a peanut mnm.





















We thought this whole series of pics of Glenn with his favorite son was truly hillarious.



























































Now Chris has a turn.





















And a mama with her little monkey.





















They even stake out your car and have been known to break in and steal your 'sweets.'





















Second to last stop was the tunnels of the Great Seige. They were built during the 1779-1783 seige of Gibraltar by the Spanish--a failed attempt to get the rock back, one of 14, I think.





















Great views of the city, but not a very cozy place to live for 4 years.





















And very, very, very wet. There was even a great hall where one of the commanders gave a dinner after the seige was over. This is not the great hall, but the great puddle.




















Gibraltar has its own airport, and seeing as how the whole thing is so small, the road that enters the city bisects it. So when you're coming into town there's a sign that says that you're crossing a runway and so be quick about it! They close it every now and then to let planes land and take off.





















You can see the holes in the rock where the canons in the tunnels shot from.





















The last stop was another Moorish castle built by a honey for his lover, but now it's the local prison. And apparently it's really bad. William said that human rights groups have been on them for years, and so they're finally building a new one with soccer fields and such. Sawyer had a great time frolicking on the roof.






















That boy love to run!

Marbella...in the rain

On Monday afternoon we went into Marbella to see the Casco Antiguo, aka old quarter. Starting the wet journey out of the parking garage:




















Just south of the Casco is a fabulous little park, and a paseo Dali where loads of his sculptures make their way down to the sea.









































Here's an adorable little park bench in the rain--





















--and one of the lush, tropical corridors.





















Entering the Casco Antinguo...




















One of the narrow white streets so common in the coastal and hillside towns.




















A handsome little square...





















The old church (with, it must be admitted, some seriously creepy mannequins in the chapel installations).






















Chris and Sawyer frolicking in the square in front of the church.




















Some vestiges of the old fort still surround the city.











































Looking down on the Plaza de las Naranjas




















Sawyer checks out the goods in a local boutique.

Spain-bound

Later that afternoon we caught a Ryan Air flight into Madrid, where we stayed in THE sleekest 59 euro hotel anyone could ever conceive of. Seriously. It's called the Tach, if anyone is looking. The next morning we picked up our wee rental car (a Citroen Nimo) and made the drive down to Malaga.




















About an hour out of Madrid we went through a small national park with amazing views of rocky precipices.






















Driving through La Mancha was great for two reasons: the whole region pays hommage to its hero, Don Quijote, which means loads of windmills, statues of him and his pudgy sidekick Sancho, and references galore. In a restaurant where we stopped for lunch they were selling local sweets with this sentence written on the box: "En un lugar de La Mancha, cuyos dulces no quiero olvidarme..." That should be hilariously funny to anyone who's read DQ recently...
The second reason why it was great is because of the olive trees! The whole landscape is COVERED with lines of olive trees, as far as the eye can see, and they go up and down the hill sides and in and out of all the craggy cliffs of the mountains. It's hard to imagine how people harvest them, the slopes are so steep.




















More blankets of olive groves as we enter the Granada province.






















It's pretty amazing--or at least it seemed amazing to us--that we told Glenn and Judy that we'd pick them up on a street corner in Malaga on Saturday at 4pm, and it actually worked. We were about 10 minutes late, due to there being virtually no street signs in Malaga. Anyway, after getting loaded up we drove to our timeshare destination and got settled in, enjoying dinner at the restaurant that night.






















On Sunday we had a mellow day: took a stroll in the environs and let Sawyer explore a little. Made a great little dinner in the apartment kitchen and played some serious games.


































Sawyer is completely obsessed with the muppets right now, and putting some of their music on an mp3 player was one of the ways we got through the long flights (this was a genius idea, thanks, Brigitte). He had a little trouble with the ear buds though, so Gram and Gramps brought him this old school set of ear phones.




















But they were a little too big; we're still working on the perfect solution to make them fit properly.



















The next day we took a very rainy but beautiful and fun trip to Marbella; pics will be up soon. That night we dined at an Italian place down the street where the waitresses were sitting on their tushes looking for something to do (major off-season syndrome); their solution was to fall in love with Sawyer. They looked for every excuse possible to come by the table and talk to him--sneaking him bowls of potato chips, making sure he had a napkin or a tiny fork, asking compulsively if we had everything we needed, etc. One of them even said, "I love you!!" as we left. He gave them both huge kisses.


































It was possibly the happiest night of my life because we ordered some croquetas. Sawyer, suprisingly, amateur de toute friture, did not like them. More for me.