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Touring the Rock |
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Our day on "The Rock" started with a minibus tour which took us around the peninsula and to St. Michael's cave. St. Michael's cave is quite large. It has an ampitheater in which concerts are held, and it was used as a military hospital during World War II.
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Surprising to us, we discovered that the Rock of Gibraltar is not at all as "solid" as old sayings--and one well-known insurance company--would have us believe. In addition to limestone caves which sheltered neolithic man, some 30 miles of tunnels have been carved into the rock, mostly for military purposes. In our tour of the cave, we were introduced to some of these tunnels.
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The summit of the rock consists of a ridge with three peaks. A cable car takes visitors to the central peak where there's a restaurant and an observation point.
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There's still a British military presence on this little piece of land. There are many naval facilities and a very active airport. The only land access to Gibraltar Town is by crossing the airport's runway--so, besides air traffic, there's also vehicular and pedestrian traffic across the landing site. Soldiers perform a ceremonial guard duty at various government buildings.
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Apparently, there's a casino in Gibraltar Town. If we were near it, somehow Dot must have managed to distract me because I totally missed it. I would have stopped in for a visit if I had seen it.
It's hard to figure how something might be missed in Gibraltar because everything is really squeezed in rather compactly. Even the parking lots employ a very unusual parking pattern to maximize space. In the United States such a pattern would almost certainly guarantee a plethora of bashed fenders! But, with typical British respect for rules, the unusual parking pattern seems to work for the citizens of Gibraltar.
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Gibraltar is close to Trafalgar Bay--where British Admiral Nelson defeated a combined force of French and Spanish warships in 1805. Some of the sailors who were killed in that encounter are buried on Gibraltar.
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Nelson himself was killed in the fighting--but his body was returned to Britain. To preserve the Admiral's body during the voyage, it was immersed in a barrel of rum. As the story goes, after the body was delivered home, the British sailors didn't let the rum go to waste!
What a rowdy lot those sailors must have been! In memory of that occurrence, liquor stores in Gibraltar sell a brand of rum known as "Nelson's Blood." We purchased a bottle as a souvenir. The next day (day 17 of our tour) we departed Gibraltar for Lisbon, Portugal.
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