SPAIN-Day 5

After a wonderful breakfast at the hotel, we took a very challenging trip down the mountain and through the confusing streets of Granada to find the Cathedral. Here it is in the middle of a very urban city. PS, it's also surrounded by one way streets, turn abouts and no parking places. It took us forever to find this place but so worth it. Like many churches, it was very plain from the outside- beautiful but fairly simple

Our first stop was into the tombs to see the remains of Ferdinand and Isabella ( their army recaptured Spain from the Muslims and they chartered Christopher Columbus' trip to the New World). You were not allowed to take pictures inside the tombs, so we didn't get to take any of the amazing alters and stunning marble statues above them but when we went underground to view the caskets, we snuck a few pics.
Then we headed to the Cathedral which again was breathtaking. It was SO white and SO big and SO elaborate and had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of art work built into the walls, the alters, the cut outs, etc. Personally, I found it to be just as, if not more impressive than St. Peters in the Vatican.

Here is one of many pure gold cut-outs around the outside of the worship area.
Look at these walls, pillars, and windows.
This is a picture of the main alter- do you see all the artwork that is on the walls all the way up?
We then headed back to the car and went through a marketplace. Brian was overwhelmed by the beauty of the meat markets. Seriously- its so cool to buy your meat fresh every day. Here was just one of the meat markets as the men contemplated what they might have bought.
Then we got back in the car and headed through terrible storms and winds got a few hours to Gibraltar. Gibraltar is under British rule so we had to show passports on the way in and out. They spoke English with British accents, had English guards, etc.

Gibraltar is known for the ROCK OF GIBRALTAR. Legend says that Hercules took is hands and pulled apart this massive rock. His strength was so great that one part of the rock was on the Europe side and the other was pulled all the way to Africa ( which can be seen from the Europe side). PS...this is also the rock that is used for the Prudential Insurance advertisements.
As soon as you arrive in Gibraltar, you see the English influences.
We found this beautiful little cemetery on the side of the road.
The weather was sketchy. It poured our entire ride to Gibraltar and then was sunny as soon as we arrived. Unfortunately, the clouds settled at the top of The Rock and if we had paid the money to go to the top, we wouldn't have been able to see a thing so, we walked in the rain on the city steets, enjoyed listening to the shop owners speak English and just enjoyed the views.

We stopped in a very traditional English Pub for some pints and some food. Justin and Bri had cottage pie with meat and gravy baked in a pie with mashed potatoes baked on top. I had a pie too, mine with chicken and mushrooms with a flaky crust on top- yum! Heather asked that we add in that she ate tandoori chicken-a traditional Moroccan/Middle Eastern dish.
Then we headed to the most southern point of Europe. It's called Point de Europa. Here we could get clear views of Africa. Yup, that's Africa over there. It was rainy and cloudy bit still you could see the mountains. How cool to be able to SEE another continent.
Here's us with Africa in the background

One last look at the rock before we head away and back to Base.
We drove along the coast the entire way home. We pulled off once it got dark because once again, YOU COULD SEE AFRICA!!!! That's it over there with the lights
We got home late, put down Olivia, looked up a bunch of things we had questions about on the Internet and just hung out-another day in Paradise!