Fish, chips, rain: Gibraltar belongs to England for a Reason

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So yeah, on Saturday Brad and I went to Gibraltar which was pretty cool. it´s like a 2.5 hour bus ride. the weather was like misting and rainy but it was still really cool. the rock is enormous, it looks so random since there is just flat plains all around and then the sea is flat and there´s this just massive hunk of stone purtruding up from the flattness. the customs there, since it technically is a seperate country were so informal. i literally did not stop walking as i flashed my passport to the customs agent for a split second. he just kind of waves everyone through. our tour guide was from gibraltar which means the weirdest mix of andalusian and british accent that i have ever heard. the St Michael´s caves were the first place we stopped and it was crazy. i only have one super blurry picture of them but it felt like we were in the goonies. the cave is so big that they literally have an auditorium inside and a stage. kind of random. we saw some monkeys too. i guess that they were brought from morrocco as pets but now there are like 250 of them just wandering around on the rock. a bunch of people got pictures with monkeys on their heads, which was pretty funny. i chose to pass on this. the monkeys are so crafty, they would like try to unzip zippers on girls´ purses to look for food. there was a cool random waterfall also, there´s a few pics of that. and then we had fish and chips with carlsbergs for a true english lunch. all in all and despite the fact that we couldn´t see africa because of the rain, i was glad i went.

also, i appreciate the massive package of food from holly that should kept me beyond well fed. thanks, al, for the music offer but it´s kind of a mixed blessing since now i listen to the spanish music on the radio more so i might just ride it out with that for now and then i have everything backed up when i get home for summer.

i threw on some random pictures from around sevilla that i took on friday morning too. i just went for a wander through plaza nueva, past the cathedral and alcazar to the jardines de murillo.

the badgers have 3 more conference game and the only one that worries me is MSU but at least it´s at home. i´m considering making an effigy of drew Neitzel this week some time.

also juno won the oscar for best original screenplay, nice to see a solid indieish movie get some props.

my next blog will be after the canary islands, hopefully the beach doesn´t claim another camera!

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Photos

Welcome to the Rock
pardon the sean connery quote, but it´s friggin huge

me and a monkey
brad took this pic

blurry cave
this didn´t turn out at all but it looks kind of cool. as i said, it looked like the goonies.

a monkey
this is the only picture i have. brad has some better ones that i´ll try to steal soon

a waterfall
pretty self explanatory.

giralda from juderia
this is from my friday morning wander

giralda from the base
it´s pretty tall, i guess

a sillar from italica
this is one of the roman era stones that the moors used to make the base of the giralda. you can even read the latin inscription on it. god, i´m a nerd

one side of the cathedral
u pretty much can´t take a picture of the whole thing without a helicopter. this side shows a lot of the gothic pinnacles

another side of the cathedral
the style of this side is more like rennaisance supposedly

plaza nueva
you can see the statue of fernando tercero in the middle. the building to the left is the ayuntamiento, aka city hall

fernando tercero
this king of castilla pushed the moors of the almohade dynasty out of sevilla in 1248. he´s actually a saint and he´s burried in the cathedral, like 2 blocks away

the super skinny streets of santa cruz
they call them kissing walls since they are so close together. behind me when i took this picture is the wall of the alcazar constructed by the moors. the palace is nuts

plaza del museo
it´s right next to el museo de bellas artes and the dude in the middle is murillo. i took the picture from behind since the view of the palm trees was cooler

los jardines de murillo
no where near the statue of the guy, but right next to barrio santa cruz and el alcazar. i have no idea what kind of tree this is, but it was enormous. it looks like something out of the jungle book or something.

Comments

[ian]

Waterfall not quite self explanatory
Just a short explantory note on the "waterfall" picture. This in fact is just a result of the process of a Military desalination plant which is situated above where the water is emanating from. Gibraltar obtains all its fresh water from desalination plants. This is excess salt water used in the process.