In two countries before breakfast…
…and I didn’t even have to leave Spain!
For those of you who may ever need to know, the buses do not run in this region until 10am on Sundays. They normally start around 6-6:30am. A taxi is 30Euro and is just about your only option, but even that isn’t too bad if you split it.
Unless, of course, you consider the fact that the bus is only 2Euro. Oh well…
Impossible to beat the morning view coming into Algeciras, though.
Gibraltar is a really unusual place. I must go back, just a few hours before a flight is no way to see a place.
Next time, I feel a great desire to sail in. And, if you didn’t know it, I love sailing. One of my life-long dreams is to sail around the world. We’ll just have to see.
But, impossible to sail into the Mediterranean without passing through here (okay, technically Sinai works, too, but… naturally speaking!) so, I shall spend some time here. This Rock begs to be climbed and explored.
It’s almost impossible to tell from these photographs, the Gibraltar Rock is enormous. Truly absurdly huge. Its like you just never get closer to it, its always in the distance and always looming.
Still, the town is small enough and close to the airport, its an easy walk if you have a few hours to burn. But, no lie, of all the airports that I’ve flown through – I’m clocking more than 30 flights so far this year, btw – the GIB is one of the most counter-intuitive and awkward I’ve ever seen. There were 4 flying out within the 12 o’clock hour, from only two gates – barely 25ft apart – and there was only one security door with one x-ray scanner. So… you have around 500 people funneling through a single door. I made it to the gate 25min before my flight and I was the second one through from my line – British Airways 0491.
Ah, but it doesn’t end there! We sat in the plane for 2 hours.
Does the epic travel end there? Not quite yet!
(If I didn’t mention, I’m flying to London… and that’s the new Olympic Stadium.)
Upon the arrival to London, it took no less than an hour and a half to get through immigration. Personally, an all-time worst.
At the start of the high tourist season, it seems that 2/3rds of Asia decided to fly to London exactly at that moment. I would venture a guess that there may have been more than a thousand people in that line – mostly single file. (I’m a bad judge of that many people, but the Terminal 3 immigration was completely full. Maybe even more than a thousand.)
All this aggravated by the fact today is Sunday and only half the customs booths had an officer working. By the end of the onslaught for me, the line was still far outside the door into the arrival gates and the immigrations officers were starting to call in help from everybody they could to get the line moving. One poor girl in a booth looked like she had just come out of the gym.
Good thing I didn’t have to collect any luggage – all backpacks for me: the luggage carousel was backed up and 4 of them were completely full, workers were pulling and lining up the luggage in the baggage claim hall. Thousands and thousands of bags.
So… back to London, I am. That’s that.
But in all the traveling, I guess it would be far worse if I was walking, riding a horse, or taking a boat. Hooray air travel!
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
