Day 4 of my cruise was to Gibraltar, which I knew little about before visiting.
Gibraltar is a British Overseas territory. Their currency is the English pound and the official language is English. Though most of the people I spoke to, their first language was Spanish. There's a local dialect which is a mix of English and Spanish called Llanito.
The euro is widely accepted too so it's really not all that English. On my walk into town I ran into Lacey and Ken who were both on my small group tour to Marrakech the previous day. We ended up grabbing a bus (which turned out to be a really hot van we stood in the back of 🥵) up to the Moorish castle.
It was closed for construction, but Ken asked if we could take pictures so the worker actually opened the gate for us and took us on our own mini private tour, which was cool. The castle was a fortress built at the top of the hill to defend and protect Gibraltar. There was a really old canon there and our ‘guide’ showed us a piece of a cannonball he and his friends found on the beach. He let us hold it. It was supper heavy and not even 20% of what the entire cannonball would have been.
The castle was also used as a prison as recently as 2010.
I parted ways with Lacey and Ken because I wanted to check out the WW2 tunnels and they had a tour to the tunnels scheduled for later in the day. It was nice hanging with them a little bit. Ken looked out for me on the busy streets of Marrakech the day before and asked if I was okay in a potentially uncomfortable money exchange experience. It's nice traveling with friends. Though it's also nice to be on my own and feel like I can go where I want.
The British have controlled Gibraltar since 1713 following the war of Spanish succession. Spain and France tried unsuccessfully to reclaim it while the British were fighting the Americans in our revolution. Since the Brits have been in charge, they've been expanding the tunnels in the caves near the fortress.
During WW2 the British used the tunnels for storage and worked on a huge expansion to be able to use the tunnels in the event of a prolonged siege. Gibraltar was an important location in WW2, as it helped the allies access the Mediterranean. Spain was controlled by Franco who had ties to Mussolini and Hitler, so Britain made sure to fortify and keep their territory. Spain was still recovering from their civil war and Franco wasn't willing to fully join the Axis powers and remained officially ‘neutral’ though his leanings were axis.
Several decades after the war, the citizens of Gibraltar voted to remain a British territory in the late 60s, so it's still a British territory.
There are two large hills in Gibraltar known as the pillars of Hercules. The story is about one of the famous 12 labors, was the charge of splitting the Atlantic and Mediterranean, creating the strait of Gibraltar. Though another version says he split the two mountains / hills of Gibraltar instead.
There's a famous cable car ride up to the top of the rock of Gibraltar, you can ride it for a few euros. There's a restaurant and a nature reserve at the top where you can apparently see Barbary macaques. I went to the cable car to check it out but they told us the line would be at least 2 hours, so I skipped it.
Instead, because I was in a British territory, I went to Piccadilly Garden Bar for some fish and chips.
I then headed back to the ship to escape the heat.
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