Gibraltar! Hilarity ensues...

I apologize to all my readers for the delay in updating my blog. I have been in an area that either the internet was extremely slow, or no internet at all.

In the last post I left off that I was in Algeciras, Spain. We were only there really to be close to Gibraltar. Now Gibraltar is known for the Straight of Gibraltar, which is the entry into the Mediterranean sea from the Atlantic ocean. Anyways Gibraltar is just this HUGE rock where everything is built on top of... It also belongs to the British after they took it from the Spanish a while back.... Spain is still pretty mad about it. After passing through the border and customs we were in.... So this place is so small BUT it has a full length runway for planes to land on it! However the main road runs right smack through the middle of the runway..... So when a plane is coming to land they stop traffic on either side and let the plane land. Then they let it go after the plane is at the terminal....That is the runway there as we are crossing it.

The quickest way up the rock is via cable car..... So of course you know that is what we are taking to the top. After buying our tickets and waiting for a huge group of teenagers om a field trip to go, we headed in and up. Now there are two reasons to go to the top of the rock. The first is for the view, which is pretty amazing. You can see across the straight and see Morocco, and also get a great view of spain. It is REALLY windy up there being that it is right on the water so you get all of the crazy sea breeze.....

Anyways the other reason you go up the rock of Gibraltar is to see the Macaque monkeys. They are pronounced "Muh - Kack." They are the main draw. They have lived on the rock especially at the top for 300 or so years. They are so used to people that you can walk right up to them and stick a camera in their face and they do not mind. They also tell you not to feed or eat food around them because they love to steal the food right out of your hand. After I first got up I started to take pictures with my camera..... After walking around the top a bit we headed towards the other side and watched as a monkey was dragging a kids backpack along the road as the kid screamed at it. Now this is one of the only times I did not have my camera running unfortunately. However I did get a picture of the monkey pulling his bag. The monkey kept pulling at as he tried to open the bag with his fingers to get at the food inside. The teacher finally ran up and scared the monkey off the kids bag. But after they got the bag back on his back and started walking up the hill, another monkey jumped onto one of the girls backs that the kid was walking with trying to get her bag off of her. All I had handy was my camera and I got just a picture.... However after that I quickly pulled out my video camera, and hilarity ensued.

But before the videos there were a few pictures.....
Oh and if you know me well, which most of the people that read this, then you know that I do not follow the rules very well and that I love to stir up shit. So you can imagine that this sign....
Did absolutely nothing to stop me from doing this.....
Especially when you make friends like this......

And then have staring contests like this.....
But anyways some videos I took which really capture the fun I had.

The first video is of me taping a mother cleaning her babies fur. I was just shocked at how close I could get to these monkeys literally 6 inches from their faces and they did not mind at all. So as I am watching this cleaning take place, the mother just rips ass.....Take a watch....


Then things started to get interesting. The next video shows a monkey not letting people pass and then getting very upset and chasing me because I was getting too close to her baby....As you can see I ran away quite quickly......


Now the monkeys are not afraid of people at all and will steal food right out of your hand. A little boy learned the hard way as his Pringles were stolen out of his hands. Unfortunately I did not get the theft taking place but I got shortly after. As the monkey munches on his new prize, his buddy does not like me taping too close. Then out of nowhere a bigger monkey swoops in and takes the Pringles from the smaller monkey.....


As we walked away from the center, a fight had broken out. Two monkeys had attacked a rival monkey that had wandered into their territory. I of course egged them on and ran closer to get a better look.....


Next I broke both rules, I touched and fed the monkeys. Then almost got into a fight with one. I gave one monkey the remainder of my sandwich in the container and when he was not looking tried to grab it back. Then one monkey doesn't like me getting to close and keeps acting like he was going to attack me. And finally he gets really pissed and takes his baby away after I touch the baby......


Then a car came down the road and the monkey would not move. Then he jumped up on the car and took a piss.....


And that folks was basically my day in Gibraltar. We had lunch after that, then crossed right back into Spain to our hotel. That night we relaxed and had some local fare for dinner again. The next day we were headed to Morocco!!

Spain

If you read the last post, you will know that we did not sleep all night in anticipation for the flight. We left Manchester at 715 in the morning and took the 3 hour flight to Malaga, Spain. After sleeping the whole flight, we still felt like zombies. We then had to wait in a line for one hour for the rental car, and finally headed off to Algeciras. The plan was to get near to Gibraltar and that is where Algeciras is. The drive from Malaga is 1 hour.

Here was some random gondola on the way to Algeciras going up the mountain...Once we got on the road though we realized the address was not able to be found in the GPS. So once we arrived in Algeciras we had no idea where the hotel was.

Time for me to dust off my spanish. I asked a random lady who toldus to follow her. She then pointed us down a road that turned out NOT to be where the hotel was. Then I spotted two policemen who I asked and was able to get directions from. After another 30 minutes I asked some random Spaniard's that were having coffee and they were finally able to point us in the correct direction. The reason we could not find the hotel was because it was brand new, as in 1 month old! We got there and decided to take a nap being so exhausted. 5 hours later we realized that we just slept the day away. It was 9pm and we headed out to get some food. We had some local Spanish fare and headed back to the room. Tomorrow would be an amazing day filled with Cable Cars and Monkey's. I will update that one next!
Tomorrow the Monkeys!!!!

London day 2

So the next day in London was packed FULL of things to do. We started out the day heading to Middlesex University in North London to register for the British medical boards which I am going to take in a few months. After grabbing some lunch, we checked out of the hotel and headed to see some of London's sights!

We headed first to Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen of England. We spotted some "Bobby's," otherwise known as British policemen....And then stared at the palace through the gates.... There really wasn't anything special about it...
AND I saw the Queen's royal guard! Usually they wear red but today they were wearing grey...
Next we headed to The Tower of London. Now it is not really a tower, but more of a castle where the first kings of England set up shop, and where the queens crown jewels are...There were more royal guards there guarding her crown jewels....
Also right outside of the Tower of London is the Tower Bridge. This is not London Bridge, but the Tower Bridge....
I tried on some old fashioned hats...
Next we headed to the river Thames to get on a ferry down to Parliment and the London Eye.
Along the way we passed London Bridge...
Which was not anything special.

Then we came up upon the London Eye...
Which is the biggest ferris wheel I have ever seen in my life! I think it is the biggest in the world. It was not time to ride it yet though. We had Parliment and Big Ben to head to...
As we approached Big Ben...It was clear that Parliment and Big Ben were beautiful! Such amazing architecture....
We then went into Parliment where they had arguments taking place. We had to check all of our electronics so we could not take pictures. We watched some arguments taking place. It was quite entertaining. Each person gets 6 minutes to talk and it goes from one side of the room to the other. Each side is a different party. There were snide comments and screams from the other sides during everyone's arguments or speech. Much more fun to watch than C-Span.

Then it was to the Eye, which I was the most excited about. It is a gigantic ferris wheel with these egg shaped pods that you go into. It takes 30 minutes to complete a full revolution. It gets very high up about 440 feet I believe. The pods rotate as the wheel rotates so you always have an unobstructed view.

Here is after we just got on and they closed the door...
Here is a view of the pod in front of us so you can see what they look like....
Here is the pod that was behind us and the view while we were nearly at the top...
A view of London...
A look at the wheel when we were at the halfway point....
Another London view....
Me looking out...
Me in the London Eye....
After the eye, we headed back to the hotel to get our bags, and it was back on a train to Manchester. We rode a Virgin train, which is the same company that has Virgin airlines, Virgin mobile, records, galactic, etc.... The train was another fast one and we got back to Manchester in 2 hours. We got in at about 11pm and had a flight the next day for Spain 7 hours later! We decided to stay up all night and pack and catch up on things instead of sleeping. I will tell you all about Spain in my next post!

London!

After a long and eventful day in Paris, we had gone to sleep and woke up and headed for the train station. This would be my first experience on high speed rail AND going through the Chunnel! The Chunnel is the tunnel that goes under the English Channel. Arriving at the train station in Paris, the first thing you notice is how busy this place is! It is just as busy if not busier than an airport.

After going through customs, we headed to our train.....We took our seats, and a short while later we were off! The train goes very fast. I am talking 150mph fast. As we blazed through the French countryside I sat back in comfort in my seat. The trains are very comfortable and very quiet. They have a bar to buy drinks and snacks from and bathrooms that are bigger than airplane ones. I had a chicken and rocket sandwich... You can travel from car to car easily.

My excitement built as we approached the Chunnel. My infatuation with the chunnel comes from when I was young watching a documentary about it. Ever since I had wanted to travel through it. I pulled out my video camera to document my journey. Then, without warning, we had entered!!! I anxiously peered out the window excited to fulfill my childhood desire....However all I saw was darkness...That was it, the chunnel was just a dark tunnel. Nothing more nothing less. Such disappointment I felt. Watch it here...

Feeling dumb I went back to reading my magazine. Then we had emerged in the UK! shortly after we were in the London train station. This train station was also huge!
We said farewell to our train...We then headed to the underground subway to our hotel. We had had an exhausting few days. So we decided to take it easy the rest of the day and just relax and get some food. Tomorrow would be for the sights of London.

However on a side note, for dinner that night we went to a British Pub and had some authentic British fare. Fish and Chips, and Bangers and Mash! The Fish and Chips were good...
But the Bangers and Mash were not so good.

I will post about London tomorrow!