1984 (13) – Exploring the Town

Postcard

To go to the beginning of this book, Tropic Moon: Memories, click HERE.

I had imagined that everyone in Gibraltar would be British, but the people were actually descendants of Spanish settlers, and settlers from Genoa in Italy, with a dash of Moor thrown in.  The Gibraltarians spoke English to the outsider, but among themselves they used a language evolved from Spanish and Genoese that is spoken nowhere else in the world.  About 25% of the population was Moroccan (Morocco is just twelve miles across the Straits from Gibraltar).  The Moroccans made up most of the low-paid labor force doing manual labor like cleaning and construction work.  

Internet Photo.  The Rock of Gibraltar. 
Notice the airport runway, and the marina right above it.

"Crowded" and "seedy" come to mind when I think of Gibraltar.  That 2-square-mile bit of rock housed 25,000 people.  From the streets of town, there were mazes of steps, paths and passageways making a warren of the hillside.  Many people lived on the steep slopes overlooking the city.  Lawns and gardens (aside from the public ones) were nonexistent.  And woven betwixt and between city streets and hillside housing were the remnants of battlements, forts, drawbridges, tunnels, and a castle, with every historic wall labeled in two-foot high block letters. 

The castle is up in the background, on the right.

We spoke with many people, mainly British, and the advice was virtually unanimous that we were crazy to stay in Gibraltar, when we were free to go on to Spain.  We listened to complaints on everything from the weather, the closed border, the size of the place, the local people, the lack of nightlife, the quality of service, and the expense of importing food and goods.  But, even though the novelty of the place quickly wore off, and despite all the advice we received, we still liked Gibraltar very much, and decided to stay on there for a couple months.  

The crowded marina.  I added an arrow, pointing to Tropic Moon.

Ever since the Azores I had been self-conscious about being so obviously an American.  It seemed that everyone could tell, even before I opened my mouth.  I fared better in Gibraltar.  One day we were watching the Changing of the Guard in front of the Governor's palace.  I had been chatting with an older British couple who were standing next to us, the man taking picture after picture of the guard and the marching band.  At one point he turned to me and said, "You don't look like an American.  You're not flashing away with a camera."  We hadn't bothered to bring the camera with us that day because it was overcast.  We figured if there was anything worth taking a picture of, we could come back again.  So I pointed to the sky and remarked that it was cloudy.  "I only take pictures when the sky is blue."  He nodded, looking like he thought I was pulling his leg (I wasn't), and went back to his picture taking.  

Internet Photo.  Mummies in a case at the Gibraltar Museum.

After the Changing of the Guard, we went to visit the Gibraltar Museum. It hadn't looked like much from the outside, but inside there were thousands of items, displayed in lovely rooms.  One room contained a 30-foot scale model of Gibraltar.  There was an Egyptian mummy that had been recovered from a ship that had sunk in the Straits, and the skull of a Neanderthal woman that was discovered on Gibraltar.  There were beautiful watercolors of local scenes painted by a British officer in the 1800's.  Rooms were filled with cases containing samples of indigenous rocks, birds, insects and underwater marine life.  The museum was built above what was originally a 14th Century Moorish Bathhouse.  It was fun to wander through the rooms and imagine its original use, though, as a woman, I probably wouldn't have been allowed in.  

Internet Photo.  One of the rooms in the Moorish bathhouse, below the Gibraltar Museum.

The Museum was something of a labyrinth, with many stairways and passages, and I eventually lost Ed somewhere between the wildlife exhibits and the room on military history.  I covered the area several times, and finally decided he must be waiting near the entrance (it turned out he was in a bathroom).  Back at the reception desk, I started talking with the woman working there.  She eventually said, "You don't look like an American."  It was, indeed, my day.  She then explained that she and her family had visited Disney World in Orlando, and that she hadn't been able to get over the number of fat American women.  I asked her what I did look like, and she said I looked like I came from Gibraltar.