Continued from yesterday”¦ As we were getting ready to go out, we could hear a bunch of planes taking off and landing. And they were loud. This tiny airport can’t possibly have this much traffic, and certainly not big planes. Eric poked his head out and saw a new super high powered state of the art jet fighter doing acrobatics. It would take off, do trick in the air, then land, then repeat. Eric watched for a while. Here is a shot of the waterfront as we were leaving Kosmos to get some lunch.

Eric was delighted to see a Mexican restaurant on the boardwalk. He thought Mexican food was the ideal way to celebrate our passage completion. We are sad to report that they served the most bland Mexican food we have ever had. It is all prepared in the real Mexican style, so it looked like authentic, but they used zero seasoning at all. Even the “spicy sauce” had no kick. We did try an appetizer there that was delicious, dates wrapped in bacon and deep fried. They were served with a sweet red pepper jam. There was a big sign posted saying the legal drinking age is 16. Every American under 21 reading this is probably planning their next vacation to Gibraltar.

After lunch, Eric went over to the fuel dock to find out about getting fuel. Turns out no appointment is needed, just pull up to the dock. Then he looked at the stabilizer more closely. The hydraulic actuator shaft pulled right out of its socket, literally stripped itself right out. Amazingly, it broke in a way that it can still center itself, meaning the fin could be turned off safely. The whole hydraulic actuator definitely needs to be replaced. He sent an email to ABT to let them know about the problem.

We went into town to do some shopping and exploring. We exited from the north end of the marina complex. About three blocks through the modern town is the city wall, and you walk through an impressively thick gate into a fairly long tunnel that leads out into a large town square. A sign posted outside the tunnel says that for a long time this was the only way in and out of the city.

The town is cute. It definitely feels like a British territory, with red phone booths, coppers on the street in traditional British uniforms and fish and chips shops galore. The British rebuilt the whole city when they took it over, so it looks like a 1700’s European town, with a more modern style building here and there. The building styles are eclectic, but no cool Arabic buildings remain. The main road through town is long, gently sloping street. It is pedestrian only for (we’re guessing) a couple kilometers then turns into a car traffic road. We turned around at the end of the pedestrian portion. The side streets are a maze. The roads are barely as wide as a single car in the old portion of town, and there are quite a few blind/hairpin turns to beware of.

The building in the first picture was built as a convent, and in 1728 it was converted to the Governor’s residence. The governor still resides here and it is still called the convent. The second photo is of a church, definitely a different style than the rest of the places we have seen in Europe.

Christi got a much needed haircut. She’s been holding out until we got someplace where they speak English. Ever since the strategy she used in French Polynesia of simply pointing at a photo proved to be disastrous, she has been adamant about communicating with the hair stylist. This time she got exactly what she wanted, a wash and go cut that requires no styling tools.

While Christi was getting her haircut, Eric wandered around some more. He came back and reported that he saw a sign in a window saying gourmet meals to go. From what he could tell, it appeared to be a women’s clothing shop with a lot of erotic underwear in the window next to the sign. He didn’t want to go in there alone asking about food. It turned out it is a department store called Mark’s and Spencer’s that has a small grocery store tucked away in the back, behind the clothes. We went in and found heaven. We bought as much as we could carry of tasty looking canned and frozen meals that will hopefully not disappoint. We’ll go back tomorrow and get another round of groceries.

Actually, for being such a small town, we had surprisingly good shopping luck today, finding almost everything on our shopping list with no difficulty. It really is so much easier when you can read the labels and know exactly what you are getting instead of guessing.

We have decided the best thing about Gibraltar is the store and restaurants hours. They are open all day! You can get food and supplies any time you want! No more starving for two hours while we wait for a restaurant to open. No more going back to a shop three times to see if it has opened from its siesta yet. Yes! And, lots of restaurants are open for breakfast. Granted, they all seem to only serve English breakfast, which isn’t nearly as good as American breakfasts, but better than nothing.

We chose a restaurant in the town square that looked kind of cool. Once again, the food was incredibly bland. Since we are in an English colony, Eric ordered the obligatory fish and chips, which is a deep fried white fish fillet and French fries. The restaurant has maps of all the tunnels that have been dug throughout Gibraltar as part of the massive defense strategy. There are a lot of them.

Here is another entrance through the city gates, taken from the outside. Just like in Mallorca, the city’s fortified walls were built up to the edge of the water, so the ocean crashed onto this wall. All the ground you see is man made land developed in the 20th century. Once the wall was no longer exposed to the ocean, the openings were carved out of the wall to make city access easier for everyone.

When we got back to Kosmos, we were horrified to see that the tide swing was bigger than we anticipated. This meant that the fenders were on the edge of protecting Kosmos from hitting the concrete wall. Not good. We have been spoiled because the Med has very little tide swing and we haven’t had to worry much about adjusting the fenders to accommodate tides. Eric readjusted the fenders so half are up high for high tide and half are down low for low tide. They overlap in the middle for slack tide. The bad news is that in the few hours we were gone, we managed to lose a fender. It had a funky latch instead of a rope, and the latch must have come loose from the pressure of the wind rubbing the fenders up and down against the pier. Bummer.

On a side note, today we had lots of energy to go sightseeing and shopping, and didn’t need to take a nap. This supports our 3 days at sea theory that we have mentioned before. It takes us three days to adjust to sea life. If we are fully adjusted to sea life when we return to land, we have no adjusting back to a normal land schedule. If we are at sea for less than three days, our internal clock is all messed up and we have a hard time adjusting to a land schedule.