Back in the UK briefly
Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Fri 18 Jul 2008 20:47
It's difficult to
decide what we think of Gibraltar. It is an odd place. We have done
some of the tourist stuff - been to the top of the Rock, seen the monkeys, been
in the caves and tunnels. The main street is lined with shops, many of
which sell booze & tobacco, perfumes or cameras. The same stuff, repeated
time and time again as you walk down the street. It is oddly familiar in
places as you pass M&S, BhS, Next, TopShop and of course, Subway (yes,
Kerrie, they have them here too!)
Three days in a row
big ocean liners came in and the main street swarmed with their
passengers.
Everywhere you look,
there are new buildings in differing stages of completion- it's like one big
building site. The marina itself is being developed, and soon the boats
will be completely surrounded by buildings. It sounds like a building site
too, from early in the morning. The other day it rained, and when it
stopped the boat was filthy.
It has been
interesting to visit, but it's not on our list of places to go back to - other
than for an overnight stop if needed when passing.
One positive - the
marina fees are half those of Spain, so we left Scott-Free there and flew back
on Wednesday to the UK to sort out Steve's Dad's estate. We just
hope it doesn't rain too much there while we are away!
We arrived
at Gibraltar airport in good time to check in (it wasn't exactly far to
go!), then sat in the departure lounge and watched as the incoming flight tried
twice to land then gave up and flew off. Some time later an announcement
told us that the plane had landed at Malaga, and after a further wait we were
told we would all be bussed to Malaga to take off from there. Eventually
the coaches came in a convoy, and we all piled in. At the border, two minutes
from the airport, we all piled out. We had to take all our luggage through
passport control and customs on foot - fortunately we had not bothered with
duty free - and then pile back on the coaches again the other side. An
hour and a half later we arrived at Malaga where we waited half an hour for
Easyjet to open check-in desks and we went through the whole check-in process
all over again. And passport control and customs for the third
time. We eventually took off at 23:00. End of story? No chance
- we waited for an hour and a half at Gatwick to get our bags, and then
discovered that the hire car office in the North Terminal closes at 22:00 so had
to go to the South Terminal to collect the hire car.
We finally got to
Ron's at 3:30 a.m. Some journey! We'll probably be in the UK for 10
days or so - depends on how much we get done - but it won't be much longer than
that if we can help it as we are keen to get back...