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The last few days we have been staying in Algeciras. It's a small town at the southern tip of Spain. There is not much to do in town, but we stayed here so we could head over to Gibraltar. Gibraltar is a piece of land (6 km wide) at the tip of Spain. It is actually part of the UK. We had to take a bus to the border and walk through "customs." It was a joke. Most people didn't even need to show their passports. Of course, I (yes, amazing they didn't think I was Spanish) had to. Anyway, we made it. The town sits at the base of the Rock of Gibraltar. We got into town and ate. It was so weird. Everything was in English again, and we were back to paying with pounds. We came full circle. It was nice to be able to order without pointing and making gestures (hopefully not bad ones). After, we took the tram to the top of the rock. You can see Africa from there. We went up the stairs to the viewpoint, and sitting on the stairs was a monkey (well, an ape, barbary macaques, but they looked like monkeys). No joke, a real monkey just chillin on the stairs enjoying the view with the humans. Come to find out that's Dana. She is known for hanging around the stairs and pickpocketing the tourists for food. She's the most overweight monkey in the town, go figure.
Gibraltar is home to these native monkeys. They are free-roaming, but have gotten used to the humans. The town does put out food at the top of the rock to discourage the monkeys from going into town. They are everywhere. Momma's and papa's and babies. The toddlers (smaller than the adults and bigger than the babies, I'm guessing, terrible twos) would jump on you. They were so cool. We walked around the rock and visited a lot of old war memorabilia. There were tunnels and caves all throughout the rock, used during the war (up to WWII).
This hostel doesn't have AC, so we are back to sweating. Today is a long, long day of travel. Because we only booked four towns in Spain and Portugal, they are very spread apart, so there's been a lot of travel in the last week or so. Today we take a train back to Madrid (5ish hours), then get on a night train to Portugal, arriving in the morning for our last day in Europe.
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Joyce Mazalewski That monkey looks familiar...I think that the same one was on my head a few years ago!! :-) I was there on their national holiday which was fun. Glad that you are having such a great time. See you Old Home Day!