The Rock of Gibraltar
Lots and lots to report since I last wrote. This past weekend I undertook my first big travel weekend since Christmas break. January was spent relaxing and preparing for the upcoming months of crazy travel and visiting new and interesting sights. Anyway, I've been busy the last week and a half because my parents were here to visit!!!! I have been looking forward to their visit for a while so I could show them around my new country. I mean, you can tell people about your new town, the people you hang out with regularly, and everything. Describe it in intricate detail and still, they have to actually experience to understand what life is like for you. So I had a great time introducing them to Spanish cuisine, the custom of eating tapas instead of dinner, and the oddity of the Spanish siesta in the middle of the day.
They drove down to Baeza from Madrid on a Wednesday and Thursday after school, we packed our bags, loaded the car, and set out for a great adventure along the southern coastline of Spain. Our first stop was Malaga, a huge port city southeast of Baeza. We stayed at an awesome hotel outside town up on the mountainside. Had a few moments of anxiety as we tried to coax our car straight up the mountain along small twisty turny roads. We enjoyed a delicious dinner at the hotel and the next day took a taxi into the city center where we wandered around all day. We walked through the Alcazar (spanish fortress) and then walked up to the Gibralfaro Castle, settled on the peak of a mountain. And yes, we did walk up there. We were planning on searching out the elevator that supposedly goes from the Alcazar up to the Castle, but for some lunatic reason we got carried away and decided to do the climb under our own steam. A half hour later, after mulitple stops, we arrived at the top, struggling for air, to the welcome sight of a little store selling much needed refreshments.
Later we wandered down to the beach where we had lunch at a cafe while watching the waves roll in. Then we stopped by the Cathedral and the Picasso museum before snagging a taxi back to the hotel, which was interesting because we talked to many different drivers before finding one who even attempted to figure out where our hotel was. For a bit, I was almost panicking, trying to negotiate with the drivers in Spanish with my parents looking on expectantly, more than ready to sit down and rest at the hotel. It all worked out though. Whew!
The next day we continued our journey, stopping in the tiny village of Mijas thirty minutes outside Malaga. It's a total tourist town, but gorgeous at the same time simply because it is a traditional white village perched on the side of a mountain looking down toward the
Mediterranean Sea. Then we went on to Algeciras and our hotel where we checked in and then caught the bus to the border between Spain and Gibraltar. Walking into Gibraltar was crazy. It was as if a posh London burrough was dropped at the foot of a huge rock in the south of Spain. There were English pubs, upscale British stores, and the signs were all in English. A shock to the system after 4 months of living in a little Spanish town where people rarely speak English and signs are never in English. In order to reach the city, we had to walk across their airport runway, since the whole place is so compact. I don't know what I was expecting at Gibralter but I definitely didn't know it was such a big city. There are 30,000 people living there, packed between the water and the foot of the Rock. We took the cable car up to the top of the Rock, where we were greeted by curious and very bold Barbary apes, Europe's only wild apes. They were just milling around up there, ready to make friends with anyone who was foolish enough to offer them food. And if you even reached for your bag, they thought you had food, something Mom learned when she went for her camera and an ape tried to stick his hand in her purse! We toured the town, had a traditional English dinner of Fish and Chips and headed back to our hotel, which was built originally for British travelers on their way to Gibraltar. So we were keeping with tradition.
We got a good night's sleep and the next morning, as is our pattern, we drove further west to Cadiz. On our way there we went through fields and fields of windmills whirling industriously from the wind blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean. The wind continued to blow all day while we were in Cadiz, occasionally making it feel as if you were battling for every step you took. Our hotel was in the new part of Cadiz, but we walked into old Cadiz, along the waterfront, enjoying the sunshine. We walked through the ruins of a Roman theater. I didn't know before I visited the city, but Cadiz is one of the oldest cities in Spain, founded by the Phoenicians, a maritime civilization, in 1100 BC. We explored two of the three castles built along the coast as fortifications against attack since Cadiz is in a very strategic location near the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. We had the opportunity to watch the inhabitants getting ready for Carnaval, which is actually this weekend (Feb 20-22), putting up decorations, posters, and generally preparing for a time of crazy partying in which a huge amount of Spanish tourists descend on the town, ready for a good time.
Sadly, then our road trip was at an end, since I had to be back in Baeza for an inconvenient thing called work. But I showed the parents around Baeza, and Ubeda, the town 15 minutes away. That was actually a fun thing to do, since after living here for 4 months, I still hadn't actually seen the historical parts of Ubeda. Tragic, I know, but now that is remedied and I was amazed to discover how much there is in Ubeda that I didn't know about. But today, my parents are on their way back to the good ole United States of America, I'm sure ready for a vacation from their vacation.
As for me, I'm just gearing up for some more travel. This Thursday is the beginning of a long long weekend in Andalucia. We get five days off, so the Baeza crew is traveling to Belgium to see Ellen's homeland where they eat french fries and chocolate every day and wash it down with a glass of beer. Then it's March and I get to look forward to more visitors! Abby and some of her friends from med school are coming to visit for a week so I'm planning some fun little trips for us. Woohoo! So much to look forward to!
to see some more pics from the trip go to this website : http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049633&id=11400089&l=e102c
The view from our hotel in Malaga
