Lauren of all Trades: That Time I Went to Gibraltar...

One of the port stops on our honeymoon cruise was the city of Gibraltar; a self-governing British Overseas Territory, located on the Iberian Peninsula.

We were scheduled to be there for the earlier part of the day (7am-3:30pm) so we knew we wouldn't have much time there cause we're not good at waking up, but we knew we wanted to go to the "top of the rock [of Gibraltar]"...

It was a pretty long walk to get to the city from where our ship was docked. We finally got to the edge of the town, passed through the Grand Casemates Gates, and saw some stuff along the way.

Look closely.

After a long street of shops and restaurants, we finally had a good view of the rock!

We walked a bit more to get to the cable car that would take us up the mountain. We used Viator to purchase cable car tickets, which we could have bought there, but were able to skip the line by buying ahead.

I don't usually book excursions outside of the cruise line, but Carnival didn't offer a comparable excursion, and there aren't scheduled times for the cable car; just show up during their open times and wait for a car. We did have to make sure to go back down with enough time to get back to the ship, but we didn't have to wait in a line for our return trip.

There would probably be a longer wait for all of the above during the summer when there are more tourists, so plan accordingly.

Anyway. So we skipped the line and got on the next cable car and after a bit it headed up the mountain.

I'm not afraid of heights, so I did stick my head (and camera) out the window to look down and take better photos as we went up.

We could again see our house from here

And Husband used our GoPro-on-a-selfie-stick to capture me doing so.

We reached the top and before the car came to a complete stop two monkeys slept onto the bars that went across the window of the car.

They were looking for food, but luckily we all saw the sign.

As we walked away, both of them jumped off the cable car and on to me (probably because I was wearing a backpack) which was quite an experience. They didn't hurt me at all but I was very much in "wtf do I do? PANIC!" mode. I was able to shake them off with no harm done and unfortunately no photos taken.

They then jumped on another woman (also wearing a backpack, hence my assumption), who reacted about the same, with the same result. I tried to get a photo but wasn't fast enough.

Now that we were at the top, we had amazing views requiring photos.

My GoPro was on wide-angle, hence the curved horizon

We meandered around the facility that was at top, bought some stuff at the gift shop and took some more photos.

Husband turned into a monkey sponsored by Heineken

The nature preserve where you can see more moneys for more $$

And after looking out at the view a bit more, headed down to get our return trip on the cable car, meeting up with some baby monkeys along the way.

We walked back through town to our ship, this time taking a different route and saw some more cool stuff.

Friends!

George Rooke erected [for the] 300th anniversary of British Gibraltar"

Mooring anchor used in building of dockyard

We made it back to the boat and waited to sail away and once we got to the Strait of Gibraltar we are able to look south and just make out a bit of Africa.