I recently spent the day in Gibraltar, which is essentially a giant rock with a British town on one side, some beaches on the other side, and some monkeys on the top.
When I say monkeys, I mean Barbary Macaques, and they live on top of the forested rock which is over 400 metres high. The town itself, especially the main street, looks like it was lifted straight out of small town Britain, complete with the same litter bins, postboxes, and high prices of rip-off Britain. The exception being tabacco produce, which due to tax regulations of some kind is even cheaper than Spain.
You can walk from La Linea in Spain over to Gibraltar , pretty easily in about 10 minutes, which is handy seeing as food and lodging is way cheaper over in Spain.
One very unique thing about Gibraltar is that due to a lack of space, the airport runway is built jutting out into the sea, and in fact crosses the only road in and out of Gibraltar. This means the runway has a pedestrian crossing on it, and all cars/people entering/leaving Gibraltar, need to cross the runway. This also makes for very good views of planes taking off and landing.
The views from the top of the rock are very good, and if you go up via the public footpath, you avoid the cable car/nature reserve/generic crap tourist attraction fee that they charge an extortionate fee for, which covers 'entrance to all the rock's attractions'. Ridiculously, you cannot pay separate entrance fees for where you want to go. It's all or nothing. In my opinion I would opt for the nothing, and just enjoy the views. You can see Africa you know!
Pictures of Gibraltar (taken by Tom)
Posted by paul at December 24, 2003 07:18 PM
yeah. Rip Off Britain. I hate Rip Off Britain.
BTW, that 'nature reserve' is supposed to cost 2 quid to enter if you're a pedestrian. However, there seems to be little way of them charging this considering the amount of paths that lead up onto the rock. I have now twice been into the nature reverse without paying. So sue me.
Posted by: Tom at December 26, 2003 09:27 PM