Gibraltar Part III

Quick quiz:  What side of the road do they drive on in Gibraltar?

Answer, surprisingly, is the right side.  The reason is that as they share a close border with Spain, they decided the traffic direction should be the same to prevent daily accidents.

We drove to some more scenic locations including an overlook of Gibraltar's airport, at first glance looks like every other airport around.

It looks like every other airport around.  except that...

Gibraltar's main road runs through the runway!

Lights and barriers come down to stop traffic when planes come in to land or takeoff.

There was also a nice cannon at the overlook with the cruise ship in the background:

We drove by the Moorish castle.

We then went for a walk over the cliff.

Literally on the Skywalk over the cliff that overlooks Catalan Bay, onto a thick glass platform.

Above the glass walls, there's quite a wind, but a great view:

Near the Skywalk there's a plaque where an attack by 500 Spanish soldiers was defeated.

After the Skywalk, we headed back into town and looked back up at the top of the Rock:

The radar station there is used these days to attempt to intercept drug smugglers from Africa, which is apparently an ongoing problem.

We then browsed around the shops a bit more and then headed back to the ship. Even though Gibraltar is a small island, there's still far too much to see in just one day.

 

Gibraltar Part II - The Heights Of The Rock And Monkey Business

We headed up some rather steep and narrow roads to the Pillars of Hercules monument.

Looking out we could see Africa in the distance.

Quite a scenic outlook.

Then we headed into the Nature Preserve and visited St. Michael's Cave.

The cave is indeed a natural wonder, and to say it is huge is an understatement.

It descends hundreds of feet into the earth and the ancients thought it was an endless portal into the netherworld.

One story has it that two British Army explorers entered the cave and never returned.  Extensive exploration of the cave system since has found no sign of them.

During WWII it was further expanded with a room carved out to make an underground hospital.  Today the room  is used for concerts. 

The cave complex was nice and cool, if a bit damp  if not wet in spots.

After the cave we headed out and met some of Gibraltar's most famous inhabitants - the Barbary Apes.

The Barbary Apes are native to Gibraltar, with some imported during World War 2, and are the only wild monkey population on the European continent.

 

There were  more apes imported during World War 2 as the legend has it that the Rock will remain British sol long as thew Barbary Apes live there, so Churchill smartly imported some additional packs of them to make sure the population was maintained.

The babies and younger apes are rather cute.

We had been warned to leave bags in the van, as the Apes tend to swipe them thinking there's food in them.  T

hey will grab it, take off into the bush, and you'll never see your stuff again.  They are wild animals, will bite if threatened,  and they may approach youto play or climb on you but they are renowned for swiping food or objects right out of people's hands. or bags off your person.

Such as this fellow who swiped some watermelon from a fruit vendor and then proudly sat down on a rock to eat it:

 They can also be rather insistent:

Hello Human, I see you like food. I, too, like food. Do you have some food for me?  I suggest you do.  Just sayin'.

He did get a reward for his efforts, but after not getting more food, he then stuck out his tongue and jumped up and hitched a ride on the roof for a bit before jumping off.

We then drove on to see more of the island.

Gibraltar Part I

The Cruise reached our first port after two days at sea - The Rock of Gibraltar.

We had decided to explore Gibraltar on our own rather than taking a shore excursion so I had studied the maps and found things worth doing.

The port entrance hallway has a nice large seal of Gibraltar on its wall.  The seal dates back to the Spanish occupation prior to the Rock being taken over by the British.

Going through the port was a non-event.  A sign said non-UK/EU persons had to check in but a friendly security guard waved us past the sign with a quick "That's not needed, on you go", and so we went.

 

We decided to walk into town, which was a relatively short walk of about 20 minutes down a nice, straight road with no real opportunity to get lost so long as you went straight through the roundabouts.

The first roundabout has a memorial to the evacuation of the Gibraltareans during the WWII.

Father down the street there's a memorial to the Gibraltar Defense Force; Gibraltar Volunteer Corp and the Gibraltar Regiment for their service in WWII:

We then reached the entrance to the town:

It's called the water gate as everything on this side of it is reclaimed land.  The water used to come right up to this casemate.

Inside the old town were charming streets and shops a-plenty. 

The Brits on board had left the ship excitedly with their shopping bags as Gibraltar is a tax/duty free shopping haven for them.  It did indeed have several lovely shops with great prices on everything from leather goods, alcohol, high quality quilting scissors (which Tash scooped up for herself and her mom), and many other fine things.

We browsed our way through the streets and as it was hot, we had plenty of liquids.  We then decided to take a local tour via a mini van with a tour guide and two other couples along with us as walking around the rock would have been rather taxing and the gondola up the rock had a very long line.

So we then got in the van with the guide, and started to explore the Rock.

Apparently For The Denver PD, After the First Bystander Gets Shot, The Rest Are Free

In fact, no shots hitting bystanders are free.

The Denver Channel: Denver police releases bodycam footage of LoDo shooting that left 6 bystanders injured

On July 17, 2022 at 1:35am, a fellow reportedly was fighting with others when police arrived. He then tried walking away from police and then displayed/pulled/dropped (unclear at the moment) a firearm and while doing so pointed it purposefully or inadvertently (again unclear at the moment) at police upon their arrival.

Police then opened fire, hitting the individual.

They also hit 6 bystanders.  

All three officers involved  joined the department in 2019. Any bets they got more sensitivity/diversity/inclusivity/equity training than firearms training during that time?

News reports are still unclear as to whether 3  of the bystanders were directly shot and the other three hit with ricochets and/or pass-through, or if all 6 were directly shot.  Only rounds fired that night were form police.

7 rounds at least were fired by three different officers. 

One officer fired a single round when he saw the guy pointing the handgun at other officers.    Other two officers fired 4 and 2 shots respectively. Individual who  displayed/pulled/dropped the gun was dropped with a single hit.

Know your target and what is beyond is rather vital, as is solid marksmanship training and good use of force decision-making skills.  This shooting appears to lack all of that.

Gunschool Sunday - MDFI Foundation Shotgun

Since the last time I took a shotgun class was at LFI II way back when, it was time for a bit of a refresher. 

I had signed up for MDFI's Foundation Shotgun to be held in Caro, MI and 4 more of my friends also signed up for it.  Tosh, his cousin Richie from NY, Jason, and Spencer.  First formal training class for Spencer, which made it interesting as he is very much a Gun Culture 1.0 (hunting, everything I need to know I learned from my dad, Taurus Judge is awesome, ugh) type guy working on transitioning to 2.0.

Tosh, Richie, and I originally planned to fly to Caro and get picked up by Jason at the airport, 10 minutes away from the range, thus saving the drive. This would have been rather epic.

It was not to be.  

Weather forecast had thunderstorms en route and back, low IFR conditions with the potential for the ceiling to drop below minimums at Caro at the time of our arrival, and other unpleasantness that I did not feel made for a safe flight at all. 

So I called it and we drove instead. Decent yet unremarkable drive in thus resulted.  Turns out it was very much the correct choice - ceilings were too low on the way there, and the thunderstorms that erupted both during the class and during the expected departure times on the way back nailed it as the right choice. Epic will have to wait.

Class as usual started with an intro, and then a very detailed safety briefing and  detailed emergency plan.

The Instructors, as is usual with MDFI were excellent, attentive, and kept the energy up during class with a great teaching manner.

Lots of Benellis on the line, quite a few Mossberg 500s, some Stoegers and a Mosberg 930s.  I had my Remington 870 along. Tosh and Richie had matching Mossberg 590A1 with 20 inch barrels and Magpul furniture.  Nice guns but Richie's had some breaking in issues with the pump needing some lubrication or it wouldn't easily pickup the next round, and the stock needing to be shortened a tad, both of which were done and it then worked much better.

Started off with basic inspection and inventory of the shotguns, safe handling and movement,  loading and unloading techniques,  carry and shooting techniques, and then we got to some shooting drills. Immediately went into how best to manage shotgun recoil.

ESSTAC cards were extremely popular there.  Pretty much everyone was running them. I had the hard plastic shell carrier on my 870 and while the hard plastic ones are currently being frowned upon compared to the ESSTAC ones, due to the strain the plastic carriers apparently put on the trigger group pins, it was easier and faster to manipulate the shells both loading the carrier and unloading it than the ESSTAC cards, but I can see the value in those too.

Then we went on with how to pattern a shotgun.

Interestingly, 9 pellet Federal Flite Control does tend to throw a pellet from the group and we saw that with everyone's shotgun who had brought that load.  Pretty much all were still within the target but one pellet would end up away from the rest of the shot group.

I had brought along 8 pellet  Federal Flite Control and the results were rather interesting.  Here's the target showing groups from 5, 12 and 20 yards (note I pulled the 12 yard shot as I was in a hurry, so the left impact has nothing to do with the ammo itself, it went right where the shotgun was pointed at the time):

Very low recoil and no spread through 20 yards at all - the shot just flew together making a solid hole through the target.  Interesting.

Neighbor on the line was shooting 9 pellet Flite Control, and at 20 yards the Flite Control Wad from his shot was actually embedded in his target.

We then moved on to emergency reloads and ammunition select drills. Including under time pressure - each person started with an empty shotgun.  Person to your left fired one and then said "Go", you had to immediately fire one and so on.  This continued for 5 rounds so you had to constantly top off your shotgun.  Then we did it from empty shotguns and had to do emergency reloads for each set.  Quite fun and noisy.  It's called  the Rolling Thunder drill.

That rolling thunder drill inspired Mother Nature to chime in with a Thunderstorm complete with a close by lightning strike so class was paused as we all ran to our cars and got in as they were the safest place to be.  Holding metal sticks during active lightning strikes was counter-indicated.

While the rain then let up, that pretty much ended the class as more thunderstorms were on the way so we did not shoot the qualifier at the end.  Good call as indeed more thunderstorms did pass on through, and more confirmation that cancelling flying there was correct.

Excellent class, great instruction, great bunch of shooters,  and a great refresher on shotgun handling.  Highly recommend the class if you;re looking to use a shotgun for self-defense or need a refresher in doing so in a no-ego, positive learning environment.

Two Days At Sea

For the next two days land was not in sight, and occasional ships, including cruise ships for company.

We cruised through the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay on the way to Gibraltar.

On the 31st we spent time doing a variety of activities on the ship including getting a workout in.

While working out ended up being approached by a Brit about my age with quite an accent and I could pickup about a word in five.  Figured out he was complimentary of how well equipped the gym on the ship was and we wished each other a good workout.  

There were treadmills (which I didn't use) recumbent bikes (which I did) regular bikes, and weight machines and free weights, both of which I used.

After the workout as a reward for our efforts we had handmade pizza for lunch in the Pizzeria and watched them toss the dough by hand::

 

Great pizza, especially accompanied by a Peroni beer while watching the ocean go by.

Then, much of the time was spent people-watching our fellow passengers.  The UEFA championship Soccer match was on between Germany and England and the ship played it on the big screen on the deck:

Two decks packed full of Brits watched the game, with cheers that could be heard throughout the ship.  England won. There was much rejoicing on board.

Then after dinner, we watched a British trivia show run by the crew with the Brit audience (seated in a large lounge having drinks) divided into two competing teams. 

It was raucous and hilarious.  

One question that had them stumped for quite awhile was "What are the top ten selling curries in the United Kingdom?

Do you know the top ten selling curries in the United Kingdom? 

I didn't either, and many were types I'd never heard of before.  I knew and have had Masala, Vindaloo, Saag, Korma, and Rogan Josh.

I'd never heard of Bhuna, Madras, Balti, Jalfrezi, and Dhansak.

There, that's now something you know too.

The Brits kept missing one in the list as the teams went back and forth trying to solve it. It got funnier and funnier each time and the quiz-master was hilarious with it.

We did get Princess Diana right as an answer to one of the questions but that was about it most of the time we had no clue at all but it was just fun to watch the Brits go at it.  Talk about inside baseball, or in this case inside football.

I also, during the show, got quite a liking for gin and tonics.  When among the Brits after all....

The next day at sea was again nice and relaxing.

We shot some hoops on the basketball court, played mini golf, walked a few miles along the upper deck jogging track, and had tea time on the ship.

Only downside was the shipboard wifi was absolutely terrible, as in taking minutes just to download a normal email and timing out completely on websites and was practically usdeless.  So I couldn't do the work I had planned to do on the first of the month. Well, it would have to wait until our landfall tomorrow.

It was a formal night so we put on our best before heading to the dining room. 

The Brits also put on their best, and yes, there were men in formal kilts and full tuxes. The Brits do know how to dress up/ Next time perhaps,  I think I'll have a tux in addition to/instead of the suits I brought.  There would be three formal nights during the cruise.

We also attended an informative talk on the history, culture,  the sights to see and shopping experiences at our first stop: Gibraltar.

Vacation: To The Ship

So we continued on to Southampton.

It is rather unnerving to have cars coming at you from the opposite side that you expect them to do, not to mention being in a car doing a right hand turn from the left side of the road feels all kinds of weird.

All the curbs at the end of  sidewalks in London have markings painted on that say either "Look Left" or "Look Right" to encourage tourists to overcome years of conditioning when crossing a street by foot.   Driving in it would be much worse.

Made it to Southampton without incident, though our driver entered Gate 20 of the port rather than Gate 4, so we got a scenic view of the port and had to pop out of the port complex and back in to get to the ship.

From Gate 4 there was a ton of traffic as there were multiple ships being loaded/unloaded and it took awhile to get to the terminal. There also were special event going on at the Isle of Wight so there were large crowds to get on the ferries to go there as well.

Once there it wasn't too bad, dropped our luggage off in the designated spot and then got in the boarding line.  They confirmed we had all our documents and all the Covid Vax cards and negative tests were done (this was a pain had to be done within 72 hours so we did them in Michigan just before heading to the airport), and the onboard we went.

We were in the Princess Cruise Line Sky Princess.

Turns out that since it was departing from Southampton, about 95%+ of the passengers were from the UK.

This made you feel like you were on the set of a BBC show, but without the subtitles for the various regional accents which made life interesitng at times.

The food had a definite British focus - breakfast offered English bacon, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, sauteed mushrooms, bangers, and black pudding as perennial offerings, along with many awesome Indian curries. And, there was a tea time on the ship each day.

We sat in the Piazza and had our first on board beverages as we awaited the rooms to be ready. The cabins were soon announced as ready to be occupied and we went to them, did the mandatory safety video and then went down and checked in at our muster station.

Those items done, we came back to the room and went onto the balcony to await departure.

Quite a few ships were moving along outside:

The port had a rather lot of cars parked around:

And in one of the parking lots:

Yep, that's a Saracen armored car just sitting there amongst the trucks for some reason.

Then we were off and the side thrusters thrusted, kicking up the bottom and turning the water a muddy brown.

Then we were on our way.

Soon we got to test out two of the most wonderful words in the English language: Room Service!

How I only gained 2 pounds the entire cruise I'm not sure.  The thousands of steps walking helped, as did trips to the very well equipped fitness center on board for a few workouts at sea. So we sat on the balcony as we left the port behind.

As we passed the Isle of Wight we saw aircraft in the distance. There was an airshow going on during the festivities.

Another plane appeared and was seen doing acrobatics in the distance there.  Got a photo and cropped in:

Much too far away to get any decent shots, but that's a Spitfire! The pilot did a full loop which was cool to see.

The cabin, as it turns out,  was nicely decorated with a large picture of my spirit animal:

Then we wandered about the ship some more, exploring and getting our bearings.

After that we had dinner which was beyond amazing.

Then after walking around the ship even more, Abby and I headed to the casino to play Craps. Abby at 18 was allowed to both drink and be in the Casino.  So I taught her to play, and we together won $84 starting from a $200 stake, not too bad.

That was the end of the first day on the cruise.

London - The Grenfell Tower

The next day we got up, had breakfast, checked out of the hotel and met with our driver for the long drive to Southampton to meet the ship and begin our cruise.

As we left the city, we passed by the Grenfell Tower.

The tower was the site of a disastrous fire in June 14, 2017, where 72 residents lost their lives in the worst residential fire in the United Kingdom since World War 2, and its been in the wrap ever since.

The fire was caused by a cascade of errors that all worked together to create an avoidable yet tragic outcome:

1.  The tower had known issues with power surges.  That would have been OK, but -

2. A fridge/freezer in a apartment unit then overheated and burned out creating a fire, likely due to the power surges. That would have been OK, but -

3.  That model of fridge/freezer did not have a metal backing (required in the US but not in the UK) that would have contained the fire. That would have been OK, but -

4.  The fire broke out of the fridge/freezer and lit the wall on fire and made it out the window frame. That would have been OK, but -

5. The outside of the building had been redone in cheap combustible aluminum cladding that created a chimney effect and allowed the fire the potential to quickly spread vertically and horizontally. That would have been OK, but -

6.  The refit had compromised the fireproofing between apartment units. That would have been OK, but -

7.  Inside the cladding was Polyisocyanurate foam that was not properly sealed off. Polyisocyanurate when exposed to open flame burns like gasoline, which it promptly did. That was not OK.

8.  In an unfortunate decision, firefighters lost their chance to contain the fire and failed to immediately douse the unit window that was on fire due to fears of a steam build up in the unit, which then allowed the fire to rapidly breakout of the unit and climb up and across the cladding.

9. Worse than that, the building lacked a central fire alarm so many residents were sleeping and unaware of the fire rapidly consuming the building.

10. Even worse than that, occupants were instructed to remain in their units and await rescue as is typical in the UK high-rises (under the flawed assumption there was fireproofing between the units, and there wasn't).  This is unlike the standard US instruction to people in buildings affected by fire to GTFO ASAP, and only if you're trapped wait for rescue.   Firefighters were unable to reach the victims.

Amazon has a good video on the Grenfell Fire as part of the show What Went Wrong - Countdown to Catastrophe a joint German-UK series that is free if you have Prime and worth watching.

So we passed by that memorial to a tragedy, and headed on to Southampton.

London - Marching Up and Down The Squares

As the time allotted for the British Museum expired, Leah and Tash announced that they were done walking around for the moment, but Abby wanted to continue.

Abby's friend who had lived in London, had recommended she visit Covent Gardens, Leicester Square, and Trafalgar Square.

So Abby and I left the British Museum and we decided to go on foot to these places.

First, we passed by the spot where anesthetic was first used in England in 1846. That of course means that prior to 1846, surgeries were done without anesthetic, Ouch.

We then passed by the house where Sir Isaac Newton once lived.

We then reached Covent Garden.

Covent Garden is not actually a garden but is instead a large complex of very swanky shops.

Many shops didn't display their prices.  If you had to ask . . .

Fun browsing occurred.

Then we walked on over  to Leicester Square.

Leicester Square is a very artsy kind of place with many street performers including musicians and comedians about, and ads for many theater shows.

There's a nice statue there to the Bard:

Then we walked to Trafalgar Square.

The square was very busy, as there was a party going on for the UEFA Women's Soccer championship that was upcoming for England v Germany.

This made it rather hard to get a good shot of Nelson's column as they had some walls and tents up, preventing access to much of the area, and I could not get a view of the front of the column.

I did get a decent shot of the statue of Sir Charles Napier towering over passers-by

There was also a memorial to Edith Cavell.  It turns out she is the great-aunt to a friend of mine here in Michigan, which was kinda neat and we sent him some pictures of his famous and heroic relative.

The square was rather busy and full of people.  After walking there, Abby decided she was done for the day so we walked back to the hotel.

With 16,662 steps taken, I was a tad sore, and that called for a beer.  But not just any beer.

 Yes, it's the Bottle of Britain, Spitfire Ale.

A really darn nice ale it was too. Really wish they exported some here.

A very successful day out and about the City of London.