The continuing diaries of an Englishman abroad visiting such exotic places as Spain, USA, Malta and heaven knows where. Tagging along are his wife Pauline and daughter Emma.

Everything you are about to read is based on true events and real people. It may have been embellished beyond recognition for a cheap laugh but everything happened to a greater or lesser degree. Apart from the bits I made up. OK, and apart from the jokes. And apart from the fantasy sequences. But all the characters are real, believe me.


Exciting isn't it?


Sunday, 15 January 2012

Spain 1999 - Day 4


We want to go to Granada at some point to see the Alhambra and we also want to tour around a bit without hiring a car so we made our way to the local bus and train stations to check out times and destinations. While we were there we bought some tickets for a coach trip to Gibraltar tomorrow.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I discovered I had a huge gap in my geographical knowledge about Gibraltar. When we asked about tickets for the ferry to get us over to the Rock once we were there, the man looked at us with a surprised expression and told us there was no ferry. You don’t need a ferry; you just drive into Gibraltar, its part of the Spanish mainland.

Well I’ve always been under the impression that Gibraltar was a small British colony off the coast of Spain, just a big rock surrounded by sea, but its not. It’s a big rock stuck on the end of a Spanish peninsular. No wonder the Spanish aren’t happy about us owning it. Somehow the thought of us owning a small piece of rock stuck in the ocean off the coast of Spain seems more acceptable than us owning a small piece of Spanish mainland

Still, we do and we’re not letting the greasy dagos have it back, so there. They can whinge all they like but we’ve spent too much money on Gibraltan red pillar-boxes and English policeman uniforms to let it all go now.

Back to the hotel pool for the afternoon, stopping off on the way at our local bar for lunch. You know we still haven’t stumbled across that first bar we found two days ago. Emma and I think we must have somehow wandered into the Twilight Zone and that the bar will only materialise on a Wednesday. We’re making plans to go out next Wednesday to look for it again and we expect to find it immediately. And when we do find it, we’re going to stay in it until midnight to see if we disappear. We’ll get Pauline to stand outside though, just in case we need help in getting back.

We’ve decided to visit Granada next Tuesday and Wednesday. Pauline’s booked us into a hotel for the Tuesday night so we can spend the next day doing our sightseeing bit. The hotel is practically opposite the Alhambra, so they told us, so should be easy-peasy to get tickets on the Wednesday morning for admission to the Alhambra that day. No early morning traveling involved, just stroll out of the hotel and we’re there. We’ll travel by bus or train but haven’t found out the options yet.

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