Rock me, baby

Another early morning, stretch and abs with Jesse. He’s pretty much just going through the motions, but he had some good exercises – one where you’re on your side, up on one elbow, leaning back. You do a set of both leg raises, then rasie and lower just the bottom leg, then hold – it’s a good one to remember. Then off to the Lido for breakfast, down to the cabin to change, and off to the Vista Lounge to wait for our tour to be called. Dave had made a discovery that both of had a complete misconception about where Gibralter was in relationship to the rest of Spain and to the African continent, but we were excited to go anyway.

We ended up in a small bus with 22 other people and our guide Charlie, who started out very quiet but slowly built up to being informative and funny. He repeated almost everything twice, so you didn’t need to be paying strict attention. Everything was spectacular and amazing in his descriptions, and in fact he was not far off. We started by driving to the border with Spain. To get there you have to go across the runway of the Gibralter airport – they close the road to traffic and pedestrians when a flight is arriving or departing; otherwise you just go right across. On the runway itself, not over or under it. That may have been Dave’s favorite thing on the whole cruise. Then we continued to tour around town, going through a couple of very narrow tunnels. There’s a fairly big city here. It’s only 50 or so years old and is built on land built up from the sea. The rest of the rock is surrounded by a big wall.

We got stuffed into the cable car like sardines and rode it up to the top (there are actually 3 peaks, and this one is the lowest. The middle one had antennas on top and doesn’t seem to be accessible. You can walk to the top of the highest one, but we didn’t have time on this tour). We hung out up there for a while. Unfortunately it’s was cloudy, so we couldn’t see Africa, but it’s still very cool up there, both literally and figuratively. Then we headed down to St Michael’s cave, avoiding taxis and enjoying monkeys (Macaque – everyone called them Barbary apes, but according to Bettina our Hungarian tour guide, they are actually tailless monkeys).  The monkeys are quite tame and actually something of a nuisance; there is monkey poop everywhere and they’ve learned to hitch rides on the side mirrors of the taxis and steal anything that looks like food, or looks like it might contain food, from tourists. We got lots of monkey pictures.

The caves are in fact spectacular and amazing; they’re huge limestone caves with the classic stalagmite/tite thing going on. There was one that had fallen over, and they had cut and polished the end and side of it – absolutely gorgeous. When you first come in there’s sort of a natural amphitheater, which they’ve turned into a concert hall holding about 500 people. For reasons nobody understands, the lights change color and brightness in a seemingly random pattern of reds, greens, purple, blue and so on. This was just irritating on the eyes, as well as making the footing more uncertain as the color and intensity of the light changed. Weird. There are 3 levels of the cave, getting more challenging and less developed as you go lower. The lowest level is too technical, but it sounds like the middle one would have been fun. This tour didn’t go there though. We got back in the van (Bettina, our guide for the walking part of the tour, kept having to yell Group 13! Group 13!) and drove to our next stop, but there was a pause after we arrived there because an airplane was leaving the airport and we all wanted to watch it go.

Eventually it left, and we moved on to go into the famous siege and WWII tunnels. The siege tunnels were built at the end of the 18^th century to defeat the French and Spanish who had clubbed together to try to get Gibralter back from the British. They would use a chisel to make a hole in the rock, and then use dynamite to break it open. They dug out the roads that way too, and it left really cool blast marks in the limestone. The WWII tunnels were built to plan secret missions into North Africa, and there are about 35 miles of them – pretty impressive given the rock itself is only about a mile wide and 3 miles long. To go with the odd lighting in St Michael’s Cave, they had stirring martial music playing in these tunnels, and several dioramas. The music, while less hazardous, was just as annoying as the lighting. Also one of the side chambers had a door on it that looked like a cell door and a motion sensor so that a British soldier would say “Halt! Who goes there!” every time someone walked by. If you went over and peered through the barred window in the door, you saw the soldier in front, and behind him there were two cloaked figures sharing a bottle of wine at a low table. There was, oddly, no signage at all to tell you what you were looking at.

By now Dave and I were pretty tired of being on the tour, so when we were told we could head back out of the tunnels  we did. We did stop at Princess Caroline’s battery (1904), where we were able to get good photos of the ship and Dave was able to make a bad joke about wanting a battery named after him, maybe a AA. We got back on the van and that was pretty much the whole tour, except for Bettina singing the national anthem of Gibralter in the van. You could be dropped off in town or go right back to the ship. We chose the latter because we were starving, so we got back and went up to the Lido restaurant to take care of that. I found the bread pudding, which would be a problem if we were going to be eating lunch in the Lido often, but I’m hoping this will be our last time as I think the food’s not that good and I like to sit and chat and be waited on. Final word on Gibralter – no tour is necessary. Take a cable car to the top, walk up to the highest peak, go to the middle cave, and maybe check out the siege tunnels. Diane and Keith said they found very good fish and chips as well.

After lunch we went our separate ways for a while, which is one of our favorite things about cruising. Dave went up to the gym to work out, then off to the culinary demo, and then outside to watch the ship that had been refueling us move away. Meanwhile I wrote for a while (what, you think this writes itself?), and then went looking for a place to do my one last practice run for Feeling. The Loft was locked, the nightclub had music, the gym had music, so I ended up doing it in our cabin, which is just barely big enough. But then I thought, if I can talk and dance and pay attention to not running into the furniture, then just talking and dancing should be easy! So that was good. Then I also went up to the gym to do part of the BodyFit workout. The good news is that the theraband version kept me in good enough shape. Afterwards it was rushing back to the cabin and showering and stuffing all our laundry in a bag and heading off to dinner. We pulled out of port just about the time we sat down to dinner – it never cleared up enough for us to see Africa, so we’re going to have to come back. By midway through dinner you could feel the difference in the ship between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic – we have that nice slow roll that we love so much.

Our table continues to delight; tonight Pam brought up her idea about us all going to the Pinnacle (fancy dining room) together to Paula and Jim, and they were just as excited as the rest of us were last night. So she’s going to get us a reservation. Everybody at the table has done a lot of cruising, and we’re guessing everybody has been at a bad table, so we are all on our best behavior in a good way – focusing on the positives and telling funny stories. Jim had the best story tonight, because a monkey jumped on his shoulder on its way from point a to point b. They move incredibly fast, and they do bite, so everybody is a little nervous.

I don't know why this is sideways

After dinner we picked up a couple necessary items in the shop, and then went to the show, which was an Olympic gymnast – Lance Ringnald – doing a routine with juggling, piano playing, and the silks that you hang from. It was surprisingly enjoyable. Afterwards we wanted to go for a walk on the promenade, so we went back to the room to get some warmer gear (it’s over 70, but there’s a stiff breeze) and the daily program was on the bed and guess what? My Nia class is in the program!!! It made me hop and squeak. A lot. Periodically I had to hop and squeak while we were out walking on the promenade. In heels.

When we’d done the full circuit we went in to pick up the last two songs of the BB King band, and they were both dance-inducing, so I took my hopping and squeaking out onto the dance floor. Afterwards two people came up to compliment my dancing, and one even said I had a great sense of rhythm. Just imagine, three years ago I couldn’t find the 1 in a barrel, and now I have a great sense of rhythm. We stayed through the second set, and then it was time to go back to the room – the BB King band is awesome, and as they get over their jet lag and more comfortable with each other they get more awesome, but they are just too loud for our poor ears.

I’m on the program!

Tonight’s towel animal: lobster