Day 8: The Rock of Gibraltar

<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">Today was an early morning. We had a tour booked with the cruise lines to drive up to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar and see the caves inside. We had to meet for our tour in the theater at 7:45am. I received a phone call at 7:20am from my mom saying that they never got their wake up call. So they were a little cranky by the time I had met up with them at the theater. We were on our way driving up the Rock by 8am. What a sight! We had a very nice tour guide. He took us to see the straight of Gibraltar before heading up the Rock. After seeing that we began our scary ascend up the Rock. Now I had picked this tour so we would not have to go up via the cable car- this wasn't much better! We're talking tiny, winding roads up this mountain with no guardrails! Then this one woman was being a little loud with her fears so the driver began to "check his breaks". Like to give my mom a heart attack. I was lucky enough to be sitting on the side looking straight down with no guard rails. How'd that happen?? Anyway. Once we got up there it was gorgeous and the caves were amazing. Once we had gotten out of the caves the Apes had woken up & just finished breakfast. Gibraltar is known for these 300 or so apes that live on the Rock. They were hysterical to watch & I even got some of the babies playing in the trees on video. I also got some pictures and video of one of the older males hamming it up for the cameras. They are amazingly intelligent animals. They steal cameras, sunglasses & food especially. There was one family who went in the gift shop, bought and ice cream, walked out of the store & before they could even open the ice cream one of the Apes came along & stole the ice cream right out of their hands! Very funny. After we played around with the apes we headed back down the Rock. We went into town and shopped for a while and then it started to rain. It's incredible. We were in Ireland for 3 days and barely saw any rain & basically had sunny days all three days. Every other country we've visited, we've seen rain. Go figure. Rather than walk back in the rain we took a taxi to the ship. We got back on board and then had some lunch. After lunch my dad headed on a tour of his own back up on the Rock. This tour went inside all the WWII tunnels and showed how they lived and survived WWII. He really enjoyed it. Meanwhile my mom sat in the shade by the coffee cafe while I headed to the adult only pool. We each stayed there until it was time to get ready for our show and dinner tonight. 

Tonight was a very special show starting at 6:45pm. It was like being at a Jonas Brothers concert... just for 50 and 60 year olds. They had a special Beatles cover band. That was an experience. I like the Beetles music. I don't however like to watch 300+ old people shaking their hips. Ugh. I tell you, I was okay with the first 299 people, but that 300th hip shaker just put me over the edge. Add on top of that, I was sitting next to my mother- Beatle Mania President and CEO. Apparently she didn't get the memo "cover band". About every 10 seconds she'd lean over & tell me just how much these guys were just like the Beatles down to how they stood & everything. I thought they were great, however, I was not born in the year of the Soda Fountain & Poodle Skirt, therefore I really had nothing to compare it to. After the show was over I did some research. Aside from the 300 elbow nudges from my super excited mother- I found out from other passengers (without direct communication of course!) that they were extremely accurate and everyone in the room that was 50+ felt like they were 13 again. They really were good, 'cause they sounded just like my ipod! I really enjoyed them, especially when they sang one of my favorite songs of all time, Hey Jude. 

After the early bird special we headed to dinner. It was another amazing dinner aboard the Magic. They had an adult only show by the juggler, but non of us were really interested so we just headed to bed. Even better than heading to bed at only 10pm was that it was actually 9pm. Today was the first of our six 25 hour days!! Tonight before bed we had to set our clocks back an hour. It's like Christmas! 

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