Cruise Day 13: Gibraltar

Day 13 of our adventure found us in Gibraltar.  Our magnet features Gibraltar's most prominent feature, the rock....with, of course, Mickey Mouse doing a little rock climbing! :)

We were excited to be in Gibraltar because we'd been here once before on our last TransAtlantic Cruise and really enjoyed it.  The views from the top of the rock are amazing and the world famous Barbary Apes live all over the top of the rock and the roads in the area.  They are a small species of apes that have lived here for a very long time and, while not domesticated, are relatively used to humans and so, as long as you don't try to touch or annoy or FEED them....they are cute to look at and take pictures of!

So the plan for the day was to meet our excursion group on the ship and then we would be escorted off the ship to the cable car station, ride a cable car up the rock to the top, spend a little time taking photos, touring the area, watching the apes and then head back to the ship for lunch and to enjoy the rest of the day in the sun.  We had planned on not doing too much more than that to continue the theme of relaxation for this leg of our journey......

...sadly, our luck with the weather had pretty much run out.  Up until this point, as I mentioned in a previous post, we had nearly perfect weather every single day.  Our morning in Gibraltar was just icky, however.  It was dreary and cold and windy and cloudy and they were predicting rain.  Nonetheless, Jason and I got up and got ourselves ready and met up with our group.  Our tour was supposed to be meeting and then leaving the ship at 9:15am....but at about 9:10am they came in announced to us that due to the inclement weather and high winds, the cable car was not operating----and since that was really all there was to our excursion off the ship, that it had either been cancelled OR that they would try to take us out later in the afternoon if the weather cleared up but there was no guarantee.  Ugh.

So what do you do when life gives you lemons?  You make lemonade, of course!!

Jason and I had already planned on only spending the morning and/or first part of the day to go into town and the rest of the day on the ship....plus we weren't too keen on waiting until afternoon to get of the boat and try to go sight-seeing because if the weather did NOT clear up (or got worse, even) then we'd really be up the proverbial creek without a paddle!   So at the recommendation of one of the many cruise staff who we really adore aboard the ship, Dave, we decided to just let them refund us our port excursion fee and to venture out on our own.

It turned out that another couple we knew from the DISboards were in the same boat (literally and figuratively LOL) and that our table-mates, Johanna and Kimberly, had been planning on the cable cars as a key component of their day...so we all 6 decided to go out and do an independent guided tour together by just hiring one of the tour-guides (replete with mini-van/cab) just outside the port terminal ((And in the long run this ended up being cheaper than the excursion we'd booked anyway...so that was a silver lining in the clouds hanging ominously over the rock! LOL)

As we emerged from the ship, here is what we saw (notice how you can't even SEE the top of the rock! LOL):

I have to confess, it was a little disappointing...but also kind of cool to see the rock looking like that just because it was interesting----AND because when we were there in 2007 it was GORGEOUS...so it wasn't like we'd never seen it on a beautiful day before (although I did feel badly for our friends touring with us because they had never been).

Our tour guide took us to see  really three four key areas:  the pillars of Hercules, St. Michael's Cave, the rock itself (and the apes who inhabit it) and the Great Siege Tunnels.  On our trip to Gibraltar in 2007 we had visited all of these points except the pillars.  When we'd originally planned our day for this trip, we'd really only wanted/needed to do the rock and apes again...but because we were touring with some folks who'd never been, we were totally fine with repeating the caves and tunnels.

 The first stop was the "Pillars of Hercules"----this is really a lookout point and a pretty simple monument....created in here because myth has it that Hercules actually created Gibraltar apparently.  This was a good spot for some pictures.  Here are a couple of shots of the monument itself and then some landscape shots we took from the lookout point:

We then headed up to St. Michael's Cave.  This is a naturally occurring "cathedral cave" in gibraltar that they believe is millions of years old.  It is filled with stalagmites and stalagtites and is truly awesome.  During one of the world wars it was actually used as a hospital...and now it is used not only as a tourist attraction but as a performance hall.  It is called a "cathedral cave," I believe, because one of the largest interior spaces has a very high ceiling and is actually currently used as a theater and performance space!  The last time we visited the St. Michael's caves we had about 10 minutes total...this day we had 30 or so to explore...and we were really grateful for the extra time.  We thought it was even more impressive this time around.  Here are some pictures:

Our next stop was to drive farther up the rock (we could not access the "top" because the cable cars were not running so we could only go as high as road access allows).  The view was, sadly, really obstructed by the clouds...and it started to rain while we were up there (and with the high winds the rain was literally coming HORIZONTALLY----we had the van door open and the the INSIDE windows on the opposite side of the vehicle were getting wet! LOL)  we did take a few pictures up there and get some shots of the apes----so cute!!:

While were up in that area, we could also see down to where the boat was docked----I love this picture because it not only shows the boat and gives some sense of how high we were...but the clouds in the upper half of the pic look very cool, too:

t was wet and windy and cool up there---even the apes were trying to find places to hide----so we proceeded on to the Great Siege Tunnels.  Carved out of limestone in the 18th century, there are over 50 miles of tunnels in the rock that were created and used by the British in a war against France and Spain.  Only a small portion of these tunnels are open to the public, but they are cool.  There are "windows" carved into the walls of the tunnel that expose the outside and were used to fire cannons down on the enemy.  (We didn't take any pictures inside the tunnels---but the ship photographers were in there and took some....at the end of the vacation we'll get the CD and I'll post some of those.)

The entrances to the caves were lower on the rock and the weather was STARTING to clear up....so we were able to get a few more good pictures.

Once we were done with the tunnels, our driver took us down into the main town area as our tour was ending.  Kimberly and Johanna and our other two tour-mates wanted to stay in town for a little bit, but Jason and I were just as well to head back to the ship for (FREE) lunch and spend the day either relaxing by the pool or doing activities on the ship.  So we walked through the town with Kimberly and Johanna on our way back to ship----and while we walked, it caught my eye.....a Tigger statue that I don't already own!! (But is from a line of figurines that I already have a few)  We decided to stop in the shop and pick it up...so I got a new souvenir!! LOL  here is a pic of my new figurine:

We then made our way back to the ship and had lunch and then we played "Chip It Golf" in the ship lobby with Dave (the cruise staff we'd talked to earlier about our excursion).  It's similar to miniature golf except it uses velcro whiffle balls and you have to "chip" them (read---get them in the air...NOT rolling) onto a large "golf course" rug with varying point values.  It was fun (and we got to do it with our friend, Sandra, too!!)...although I was dreadful at it! 

Following that, we really just hung about on the ship...took some more character photographs, played some cards and then got ready for dinner.  Tonight's ties were princess ties (we saw on the schedule that several of the princesses would be out for photographs...and so, even though we'd worn princes tuxedos the night before, we thought we'd have another princess night---especially since our photos the night before had been lost...still annoyed and upset about that! LOL).  Here are the ties and also some photographs in them with some princesses:

Dinner was nice that evening and after dinner we decided to go to the movie theater on the ship and see "Alice In Wonderland" (the live action version with Johnny Depp directed by Tim Burton) in 3-D.  We really enjoyed it---actually a great deal more than we expected even! 

Upon returning to our room, we found this very elaborate towel (and blanket) animal awaiting us:

I will close this evening with some more photos that we took from our balcony in the evening.  One is of Jason looking out at the rock of Gibraltar, others are of the rock (you can see much later in the evening the clouds had almost entirely cleared) and the final shots are of the lovely sunset which Jason took: