Day 6

Wednesday 15th February: Port of call today was Gibraltar, a colony of the U.K. and the place I was most looking forward to visiting of the cruise. You can tell it's a U.K. Colony because of the weather, lol!! It was very misty and overcast when we docked and there was rain in the air, typical British weather! We got off the ship and decided to take a shuttle bus into town. The driver kindly told us they'd had a constant 2 weeks of sunshine before today, I kind of thought, thanks, we didn't need to hear that, lol! We were dropped off right in the centre, it was quite a funny feeling walking along the shops and seeing a BHS, Next and La Senza to name but a few, they even have a Morrisons supermarket! We continued along the main street towards the cable car when an almighty downpour of rain started! We found a shop that sold ponchos so could then keep a little drier (we did bring Charlie and Courtney rain coats but seem to have lost them somewhere, we think it was when we had to change planes.) We found the cable cars and paid to ride, we joined the queue and only had a shortish wait, the next cable car arrived and we were just short of getting on it so were first in the queue for the next one. But after that one left that was it! It had got too windy to run it safely and they closed it down!!! The silly thing was as we were first in the queue we ended up being last in the refund queue! Time was getting on by the time we got out from the cable cars, we had to be back on the ship by 1:30 and it was then 11:30. Thankfully there was a group of taxi drivers taking advantage of the fact the cable car had closed and they offered us a good deal to take their tour, we would see more than what the cable cars could take us and then would return us to the ship in time! For what we'd paid to get into town on the shuttle and the refunded cost of the cable car, it only worked out a few £'s more so did in fact turn out to be a very good deal. We were taken to the Pillars of Hercules first where we saw our first beautiful panoramic view. We could see the coastline of Spain and Africa in the distance. The rain had stopped by this point and it was clearing nicely.


Our next stop was the cave of St. Michaels. It was very interesting in there, I don't think I've ever seen so many stalagtites!


Outside the cave was our first glimpse of the apes who live on the mountain, they live in separate colonies at several spots on the mountain and a little further along we stopped where there were quite a few! One took a liking to Courtney's cardigan and it tugged at her sleeve, she giggled at that! Both Charlie and Courtney enjoyed watching them!




Our guide, Stuart, then encouraged one to sit on my shoulder, too cute!

We drove a little further and went past the summit of the cable car, it still wasn't running and the people at the top had been waiting over an hour for a bus to collect them to get back down. I really do think things happen for a reason and we were very lucky we didn't actually get the cable car after all! Our last stop was to the Great Siege Tunnels, a string of tunnels (which were steep in places) telling the story of war. There were models and a commentary.




We were then returned to the ship in perfect time!
Once back on board we went up to the Bora Bora restaurant for a light lunch but it seemed everyone also had the same idea and we couldn't find a table, instead we headed up to the 16th deck and waved bye to Gibraltar.

Look at that cloud!

We got to see the lighthouse right at the tip of Gibraltar so that was a nice thing to see! By the time we went back to the restaurant it had quietened down. Mid afternoon we made our way to the the Club 33 disco bar to watch a demonstration on carving fruit and vegetables. We didn't have a fantastic view but did enjoy what we could see. At the end of each demonstration the entertainment team held up the creations. At the very end we got to go up to the table to take photos. They were amazing, very cleverly done!

We decided to have afternoon tea and then watch a Mexican cookery demonstration at 5:00pm but after returning to our cabin briefly we decided to actually stay there and relax a little before dinner. Tonight is another Gala dinner and we decided as the last one was only a couple of nights ago to skip this one and go to the less formal buffet dinner in the Bora Bora. Before we ate we went to the photo area to look at the Captain's photo and Valentine's one and ended up having them both! (We bought the Captain's photo but as the heart shaped balloons were clipped off they gave us this picture which was very kind of them. I personally don't mind too much, you get the general idea of the balloons and it's a nice photo of us)


This evening's show didn't appeal to us so we returned to our cabin after eating.