Around The World – Algeciras, Spain And Gibraltar
My goal on this leg of the trip is similar to Seville, a one-night stop in Algeciras finally gets me over to Tangier. I also make a quick dash over to Gibraltar in the morning because you just can’t pass that up.
In the morning in Seville I packed up and took the local city bus 20 minutes to the train station, arriving about an hour before my train to Algeciras. And here’s my first real travel glitch. Since I mysteriously lost the Internet connection on my phone, I manually set it to Portugal time while I was there, which is the same as the UK. Spain is one hour ahead of Portugal. So I walked into the ticket office just as the train is pulling away. Ugh. Thanks to the flexibility of the Eurail pass, I got tickets on the two connecting trains down to Algeciras leaving in about 3 hours. Due to the aforementioned crap trains here, I have to make a kind of ?-shaped route via Antequera but at least it’s not a bus!
I asked at the train station Information desk where the First Class waiting room is. He looked at my ticket and said, “No, no food on your trains.” I asked again using different words and he said “No, don’t have in this station.” OK, so I made a loop around the station looking for comfy chairs in a cafe or something, when I came to the door of the First Class lounge. Hmmm. I walked inside, showed my pass and settled in. A Wifi connection, hot chocolate, bag of chips and a Diet Coke later I’m good. I’ve learned to never take the first answer I get at any train station, especially from the people sitting at the Information desk. The train was really past its sell-by date, the interior color was the same as our old avocado kitchen appliances and the seats were just terrible. Ugh.
I made it to the station in Algeciras still alive and rolled my bag about 15 minutes, uphill of course, to the Airbnb. It’s run by Felipe and Kevin, a gay couple. Felipe is from this town and Kevin is from Scotland and if you close your eyes, he sounds exactly like Ewan McGregor. My room was on the 4th floor, of course, small but cosy and a nice soft single bed. After dropping off my stuff, I went back downstairs and wandered through the neighbourhood, twisty streets full of cafes and little shops and very lively at 10 PM, the Spanish are just getting started on the day it appears. Back to the Airbnb and I discover that they also own the bar on the ground floor, called Limbo. It has nice seating on the patio so I have a couple of big beers while I discuss life with Kevin.
The next morning I’m up with the alarm at 8AM because I have a very busy day. I walk back down to the bus station and catch the 45-minute ride around the large harbour to the Spain/Gibraltar border. Since Gibraltar is currently a “British Overseas Territory”, you actually go through immigration and customs on your way in and out. But I have to say, it’s the most mellow immigration I’ve ever been through. Everyone just walked through a hallway, holding up our passport page as the clerk waved us through. No check, no stamp, no questions. I suppose there’s not a lot of illegal immigration, the place is the size of a small town and you actually have to be pretty rich to live here.
I decided to skip the tour bus thing here and just walk around. Then I discovered it’s the size of a small town which is actually pretty big if you’re trying to walk it. The first thing you do after non-immigration is walk up to the famous airport runway that cuts right across the road, or the road cuts right across the runway, depending on your point of view. Actually, planes always get right of way. Luckily, they dropped the gates and put up the chains just when I got there. About 5 minutes later, an executive jet screamed past us and out across the Med. You can just barely see it in the picture. 15 seconds later there was a beep and everything opened up and we all strolled across. I took a couple of fast pictures because I didn’t want to get arrested or anything. Pretty bizzarre.
As soon as you get across the runway, The Rock is towering above you, just to the left. It’s certainly big, really tall and impressive but it’s not as, say, craggy and solid-rock and Doctor-Evil-lair as I was expecting. Kindof a big hill with a steep bit on one side and some shrubbery growing in places.
So, into town I go. I noticed that even though this is technically part of the UK, they drive on the right side. It’s so small I suppose it doesn’t make any sense to switch the driving sides and buy cars with the steering wheel on the other side.
My first priority, strangely enough, was to see the new Star Wars movie. Now it was released yesterday but the cinemas in Algeciras only show dubbed Spanish versions and, Senor McAuliffe notwithstanding, I didn’t want to miss anything, so I thought, hey, Gibraltar is English and they probably have a theater for all of the English folks, I’ll see it there! I find a cinema on my GPS and off I go, only to find the first showing is at 4PM, way too late for me. Argh. So I continue walking, now trying to find a way to get to the top. I stop at a travel agent and she tells me the only way is the cable car. Nope, not happening. Alert readers may remember the “Hello Kitty Traumatization” I had in Taipei last year. By this time I really need to get back home so I walk back towards the runway and around the east side of The Rock. It’s so tall at the base that you just can’t get it all in one frame. I walked across the runway, zipped through immigration and back into Spain. I had a DC and a bag of “Cool Cream Cheese” Doritos. And yes, it’s identical to Cool Ranch. Oh god they were good.
Back on the bus back to Algeciras. Next stop, Tangier and northern Africa!
