Algeciras, Spain - Thursday October 16, 2014

Woke this morning, packed up everything and headed out of Seville.  Seville was a great city, the third largest in Spain and was quite interesting to see, despite the rain.  Today we were off to our next stop, Algeciras, Spain, which is close to the southernmost point of Spain, Tarifa.  We planned a stop at Algeciras, so we can cross into Gibraltar tomorrow for the day to visit some friends that we made on a Baltic cruise in 2006.  They live in Gibraltar and we have kept in contact with them since 2006. They have always said if we were in the area of Gibraltar to stop by and say hello...........well, we are in the area and we are spending the day with them tomorrow.  We are looking forward to a reunion again since 2006 and are sure they will show us around Gibraltar.  On our way to Algeciras today we stopped in Jerez for lunch and a walk around the city.  Jerez is known for their wine and sherry and are a major exporter of sherry around the world.  We took the secondary roads as usual and passed through miles and miles of cotton fields and hundreds of wind turbines on the hills and mountains.  The ride was very pleasant with a lot of great scenery.  There are a lot less hills than in the northern area as we left Madrid and headed south.  After leaving Jerez, we head to the southernmost tip of Spain, Tarifa.  There were a lot of winding roads that led to Tarifa, but the trip was quite interesting.  Tarifa is a small town on the southernmost coast of Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar facing Morocco.  Tarifa is actually the southernmost point of the European continent. Once in Tarifa, we parked the car and walked around...........fascinated by the fact that we could actually see the mountains of Morocco across the water.  There is a ferry service from Tarifa that goes to Tangiers, Morocco that takes about 35 minutes.  After our excitement about being at the southernmost point in Spain and seeing Morocco, we headed to our hotel in Algeciras which was about 30 minutes away.  Once we checked in to our hotel in Algeciras (Marriott), we were given our room keys and headed up to our room.  To our amazement, we were given a suite on the top floor with a bedroom, sitting room and huge outside balcony overlooking the city and the port.  What an outrageous view for our balcony. Below are a few photos taken from the balcony, upon arrival and after dinner.  After settling in our "suite" we walked around the center of the city, which is a very modern, industrialized city.  We had a nice dinner in our hotel and got ready for our trip to Gibraltar tomorrow.