December 2006

After being in Gib for three months I was becoming a little stir crazy. Gib is nice and all but other than a few trips over the boarder to La Linea and some business travel I hadn’t been taken advantage of the local surroundings. I rented a car from a Spanish rental company and picked it up on the Spanish side of the border on Saturday. I hopped into the random European economy car and quickly hooked up my newest toy, the Tom Tom One Europe GPS navigation system. With my fearless navigator on board, I was free to go anywhere.

I punched in S-E-V-I-L-L-A and Tom Tom asked me if I wanted to take toll roads or not. Figuring that I was in no particular hurry and regular roads tend to be the most scenic I instructed Tom Tom to avoid toll roads. For the next 2.5 hours I drove along the Spanish countryside sometimes going miles without seeing cities or even houses. Along one particular stretch it seemed to be mostly farming country. There was a vineyard that stretched for what seemed like miles along flat terrain and then suddenly a large estate with palm trees marking the driveway from the road to the house. It was a surreal site. Nothing for miles and then this massive and beautiful home in the middle of nowhere.

I arrived in Sevilla in the late afternoon and took Tom Tom with me as I walked around the city. It knew where I was at all times and all I had to do was ask where things were around me. I didn’t really go to see anything in particular so I just went wherever Tom Tom said there was something interesting. I grabbed a quick bite and couldn’t help but notice that Sevilla has some of the most beautiful women in the world. Not Los Angeles or Vegas kind of beautiful where everything is cosmetically enhanced but a real natural beauty. And a friendliness that seemed a little odd for a city that large.

I finished up with my snack and it was beginning to get dark so I retrieved my car let Tom Tom guide me back to Gibraltar.

Sunday morning I received an email from a former Full Tilt colleague who said she was in Southern Spain and wanted to know what there was to do in Gib. We shot a few emails back and forth and she eventually ended up missing the bus to Gibraltar so we never met up.

Instead I hopped into the car and headed to Marbella. While Sevilla is to the north west of Gibraltar, Marbella is along the coast east of Gib. It’s an amazing drive as the road takes you along the coast overlooking the Mediterranean. It reminded me of driving down the coast from Malibu or Santa Barbara California. Steep cliffs overlooking beautiful ocean views.

It was Christmas Eve so I didn’t expect anything to be open or much going on in Marbella but I had a car and a free day on my hands. As you approach Marbella you can’t help but notice that Marbella is the playground of wealthy Europeans. The homes overlooking the beach are enormous and the price tags of the cars you pass start to increase correspondingly. There are some smaller communities around Marbella where, I’m told, $100,000 cars are pretty much bottom of the line. It’s not uncommon to pass restaurants where the only thing parked outside is Ferrari’s, Bentley’s, and Rolls Royce’s.

I drove around a bit and took in the views from high points in Marbella before heading back to Gib. I arrived back my local pub just after last call had been announced. It was Christmas Eve so they were closing early. One of my friends, Roger, invited me and several others back to his flat for some tapas and drinks. In his kitchen Roger had a rear-hind of a pig and several other meats and cheeses that he cut into slices and brought out. The hind was cut into razor thin strips that almost melted in your mouth without chewing. It was truly fantastic.

Monday I had been invited for dinner at the home of the owner of my local pub. It was myself, Alex who owns the pub, his wife, his daughter and her boyfriend, his youngest child, his niece, and Felicity one of the waitresses from the pub. Alex lives in Gib up on the side of the rock. After some twisting roads to get up to his place there are about 100 yards of steps going up the hillside to his front door. I got pegged with carrying a case of beer up to the house.

As we were being shown around, it was obvious that the main attraction was the living room which had huge arched doors that opened up onto a balcony where you could see all the way to the Spanish port town Algeciras on one side and Morocco and the northern tip of Africa to the South. It was absolutely a stunning, stunning view. All the ships that passed through the Straight of Gibraltar either heading into the Mediterranean or out to the Atlantic could be seen and later after the sun had set and all the ships were lit up it was like you had your own little light parade going on.

Dinner was absolutely brilliant. The first course was a prawns and smoked salmon with avocado seafood salad. By the time the turkey came out I was stuffed but continued to gorge myself anyway. We ate so much that I thought I was going injure myself. After dinner we had several bottles of Spanish wine and played some trivia games while Alex tried to talk us into a little ice cream and apple pie. The spirit was willing but the body was weak.

So that was my Xmas break.

{ 2 comments }