Jen and Rebecca Monkey Around

As soon as we could check out of our room and get our massive deposit back, we hit the road for our next destination, in fact a whole new country.  We were heading for Gibraltar, the very controversial  and legendary territory on the most southern point of the Iberian peninsula in the possession of Great Britain since the early eighteen century.  As Anglophiles, all three of us were super excited to be in a subset of Britain even for only a few hours.

Gilbraltar from the airport runway

We secured parking on the Spain side of the border and walked through border control into Gibraltar where we joined a taxi tour to the top of the Rock, Gibraltar’s primary attraction that we could see for miles as we approached.  Despite Jen’s spilling coffee on herself in the mini-bus, we enjoyed our trip to the (near) top where we could see Africa across the water, got a history and culture lesson from our tour guide on the way up, wandered through the St. Michael’s Cave (which was cool, but lit with cheesy colored lights with musak playing in the background), and finally the highlight, we got to not only see the famed apes of Gibraltar, but our tour guide got them to sit in our out-stretched hands.  We held monkeys!  It was pretty darned cool, and the monkeys were pretty darned cute.  Our tour guide even knew them by name.  Adorbs. 

Rebecca's holding a monkey!

Jen's also holding a monkey!

As we headed down, we walked to the very end of the Siege Tunnels site, a segment of miles of tunnels cut into the rock for military maneuvers from the eighteenth century through WWII.  From this vantage point, we also saw a plane land on the Gibraltar airstrip which actually crosses the one road leading into Gibraltar from Spain, which we later got to walk across to exit the country.  It’s a little wacky, but so is this entire British enclave.  Upon hiking back down the rock after leaving our tour, we found a lunch of fish and chips, quiche and chicken-mushroom pie at a local Brit Pub.  It almost felt like we were now vacationing in London, except it was way sunnier and way warmer, despite the wind.

Jen's almost excited about fish and chips as she was about holding a monkey.

Once back in Spain, we sped a little bit in order to get to our appointed 5:00 tour at the Tio Pepe Winery in Jerez (but I assure you we were not the fastest drivers on the Spanish autovia.)  Rebecca picked this tour because they have a train that takes you around the winery complex, but we also got to learn about their history and sherry and brandy making facilities.  Apparently they have this blending process so that there’s always some old and new sherry in the barrels.  This tour was interesting until we actually tried the stuff.  Turns out that sherry is really not our thing.  Anna is a white wine gal and Jen and Rebecca both prefer red wine.  Sherry is really neither.  But because Rebecca is no quitter, she drank all four samples she was given in their entirety.  Victory!  Good thing we had also ordered the tapas to nibble on between sips.

Way more sherry than non-sherry-lovers need.

The drive to Sevilla was uneventful until we actually got to the heart of the city looking for our lodgings.  Somehow one wrong turn led us onto streets that were never meant to hold cars.  Anna was a trouper and maintained her calm as we got good and lost (and blue dot wasn’t keeping up).  At one point, three people from a café came out to help us get the car turned in a very narrow passageway without scratching the hell out of the car.  Another victory!  But this whole experience exhausted Anna, so she opted for bed in our super fancy penthouse apartment instead of having dinner once we got settled.  So Jen and Rebecca ventured out into Sevilla on their own, finding a heavenly dinner location that locally sources and changes its menu daily, called Fargo.  The owner chatted with us throughout our meal, making it both entertaining as well as delicious!  It was a marvelously positive note to end the day on.

They set out sherry with ladders for the mice at Tio Pepe to keep them drunk and happy.