Wednesday 10 December 2014

Gibraltar – December 7, 2014



Today’s tour started at a place called Europa – it is the most southerly point of Europe and we were able to see Morocco from there.

Next, we went up the cable car (yes, Krista, I willingly got on a cable car for 6 minutes each way) to see the Barbary Apes. These are actually monkeys, not apes and they are tailless. They are quite the hams – they actually pose for pictures. They can also be quite mischievous – if you don’t hold on to your belongings, they might just disappear. These are the only free-roaming monkeys in Europe.

After visiting with the monkeys, we toured the Great Siege Tunnels. These tunnels were carved out of the limestone during the 1700’s in order to protect Gibraltar from being captured by the French. The Siege Tunnels are approximately 700 meters long.

During WWII, miles and miles of tunnels were also built both below and above the Great Siege Tunnels. They actually built a small city inside “The Rock”, including hospitals. The British wanted to make sure that Gibraltar did not fall into German hands.

The airport on Gibraltar is very different. It actually is owned and run by the RAF and the single runway crosses the major highway through Gibraltar. When a plane is coming in to land, barriers go down at each side of the runway to block the traffic from crossing the runway until the plane has landed.

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