Matthew and Cassie's Big Climbing Trip.: 3 months already?

Gibraltar monkey

Our last few weeks in Europe have been a bit of a whirlwind. We ended up in Gibraltar which is definitely not Morocco but was actually more interesting than we expected. The rock has a history of battles for ownership and strategic importance in other conflicts which have made it a rather unique place. We walked to the top of the rock which has an amazing view of the Mediterranean. Also on the rock is St Michael's cave, which is a natural limestone cave with huge stalactites and cave formations. They think this is the cave where Neanderthal man was first discovered and that is referred to as the gates of Hades in Roman mythology since at the time no one knew if there was a bottom and the formations are quite trippy. It reminded us a bit of the gaudi architecture in Barcelona. They even given musical performances in there. That would be pretty cool! After the natural cave, we walked to the other side of the rock where the siege tunnels are. The British built a total of 33 miles of tunnels, starting in the late 1700's and continuing on through WWII. The tunnels were initially to get to a point on the rock and mount a cannon where the defenses were weak. Another interesting quirk to Gibraltar are the monkeys. They were brought over at some point from northern Africa, and they say that the British will leave Gibraltar when the monkeys do. So of course the British want to keep the monkeys there, and have even brought more over when the population was low and feed them still today. They are interesting to see, but a bit strange.

St Michael's cave

Gibraltar botanical gardens

After Gibraltar, we decided to make our way back to fontainebleau. The forecast wasn't great, but it was promising enough that we hoped we could get in a few more days of bouldering. On our way back we stopped in El Chorro (but didn't climb) the gorge is amazing and we wanted to check it out and spend one more day in the sun.

El Chorro Gorge

Once we got back near Paris, our first stop was Versailles. We had bought tickets when we were first here before realizing that the line wrapped 3 times around the front courtyard and we couldn't handle the thought of a 2 hour of more wait at the time. We guessed that in December, there would be much fewer people and were fortunately correct since we walked right in with no wait this time. Versailles was quite spectacular. It showed all the excesses of the french monarchy at the time and you could understand why the people of Paris were so upset at the time that all this money was being spent on the palace and they were starving. The marble work was probably one of our favorite parts. We've never seen so much beautiful marble in so many different colors.

Versailles cathedral

After Versailles we were a bit concerned as the forecast for Fontainebleau had changed to one nice day and 3 rainy days. We were quite discouraged about the prospect of sitting in the rain for our last few days here and were wishing we had stayed in Albarracin longer. We ended up getting 2 1/2 good days of climbing in, it rained at night a few times and drizzled one afternoon, but our last day which looked the worst ended up being a beautiful cool, sunny day. We went to the very first area that we climbed at here, 95.2. It's a sunny open area on a bit of a hill so we knew it would dry quickly. We found that many problems were a lot easier this time around. We think it is more that it was about 20 C (75F vs 45F) colder this time around which helped a lot with the friction. Maybe we've gotten a bit stronger as well :) We had a great time on some of our favorites from before and checking out some new ones in that area.

We're heading to a hotel near the airport tonight for our flight tomorrow. It's hard to believe that three months has flown by so quickly. It was been an amazing trip that we will never forget. We spend Christmas with Cassie's parents in Portland Oregon and then head down to Bishop California for at least a month, maybe two. So enjoy your holidays and we'll be posting more sometime in late-December or early January.