Spain and Gibraltar Pictures

Overnight train from Paris to Madrid.

Hams in Madrid.

The inspiration for the Yertle the Turtle book!

Real Palace, Madrid.

Hotel in Algeciras

Banana tree in garden at Algeciras hotel.

Austin on Gibraltar's main street.

The view from half way up Gibraltar.

More typical tourist pictures, this time from Spain (Madrid and Algeciras) and Gibraltar, a British overseas enclave at the tip of Spain.

Austin and I took the overnight train from Paris to Madrid, leaving the Gare Austerlitz train station in Paris fairly late in the evening and arriving in Madrid at 9 am.  The overnight train was pretty great -- we had our own little private cabin with two bunks and the restaurant train meal that was expensive but very good (steak!).

As always when moving from France to Spain, the border is a demarcation point for vegetation -- green with rain on on the French side, and brown and dry on the Spanish side due the mountains.  On the Spanish side, the ground was mostly dry wheat, now cut back to stubble, with some olives and sunflowers. 

This county is the stuff we all saw in the "spaghetti westerns" of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood -- a perfect stand in for the America southwest.  Expansive vistas with nothing too modern to break the frame:  rock outcrops, a few cactus, an occasional olive tree, steep panoramic hills, and sun-burned grass that looked perfect for a feral horse or a Longhorn.  Not much water.

In Madrid, we arrived at the Chamartin station and took the metro to the Tribunal station and then got out and walked, hitting the Opera, Puerto del Sol, the Real Palace, the Plaza Mayor, and generally walking the streets having coffee, sandwiches, and window shopping at the ham stores.  After about 5 hours of that, we eventually made our way to the Atocha train station where we were a bit amazed to find a massive tropical garden with and pools of water packed with hundreds of turtles stacked one on top of another, basking in the sun. 

The  train we caught at the Atocha station took us south to Algeciras. The most notable part of this section of the trip was how incredibly rough and picturesque the land just north of Algeciras is.  The rivers here have cut deep and steep canyons.  I have seen tough country, but the stuff I was looking at here was among the hardest I have seen in terms of traversing by foot or horse.  Vehicle?  Forget about it.  I have no doubt the river at the bottom had fish and big ones -- the  climb down would take ropes.

As we came into Algeciras, the vegetation of my youth came back -- date palm trees, bougainvillea, and hedges of prickly pear cactus with their green-going-to-pink fruit.  It seemed every transmission tower had an extension on top specially built to house a stork nest, and the storks had obliged.  Most of the nests were empty now (it being August), but a few had birds squatting on top.

In Algeciras, it was a short walk to our hotel which turned out to be a terrific place with a beautiful 10-acre garden, a swimming pool, air conditioning, a terrific restaurant (breakfast and dinner included in the price of the room), and real charm at every level (as well as free Internet!).  Austin had a swim, we both answered a few emails, and we ate until our eyes bulged.

The next morning we got up and headed to Gibraltar which turned out to be a longer (and more expensive) taxi drive than I imagined.  We were herded through customs and immigration and back onto British soil, and then we took a bus to the town which is really just one long street packed with shops selling a melange of English and duty-free stuff (cigarettes are big business).  We bought a packaged excursion to "the rocks," and loaded into a small van with four other people for the drive up the side of Gibraltar to see the Barbary apes, St. Michael's cave, and the siege excavations and canon placements.  The cave was more impressive than I would have imagined, and the siege excavation was truly worthy of the Romans in the difficult and quality of the work done.  The Barbary apes, of course, are an ancient import from Morocco and they are quite tame, if still wild, and will scramble up on top of you if they think it might get them a half a peanut or a carrot slice. 

Momma Macaque.  Lots of babies were around.

A youngster figures Austin is a good perch to explore.

Sign inside concession shop, Gibralter.

A pensive moment to reflect:  Evolution or devolution?

If he only had a boat he could get off the damn rock!

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