Southwestern Europe trip

At the beginning of April Jessie and I met her father Ken in Lisbon POrtugal to take a roadtrip through Spain to the edge of southern france. I am now in Valencia, Spain and I have to decided to update as I can now check off many must sees that I put on my bucket list so to speak. For starters I never thought that I would make it to PORTUGAL of all places. Seriously, what business could anyone ever have there? Well we met JEssie´s dad In Lisbon and saw much of the city. I was quite surprised at how no one speaks any english at all. Compare that to Germany where almost everyone understands it at least. I imagine that the kids who study abroad to either Spain or Portugal are really forced to learn the language because the never have english to fall back on like I do in Germany. Anyway, from there we went to the rock of Gibraltar which is basically this tiny piece of the United Kingdom in Spain. IT is at the mouth of the sea there and has been under british control since the 1700´s. Not only does it provide a spectacular view of Spain, the Atlantic, Africa, and the Meditarranean (spelling). Gibraltar is also Europe´s only host to wild monkey´s. APes to be exact. Though it is not recommended, it is quite easy for visitors to interact with these apes as well. It is quite sureal to pass by families of monkey´s just hanging out freely.
I climbed to the top of the rock with Ken via the extremely long staircase (shared by apes of course). The weather was fantastic, and a welcome relief to what we had experienced in Germany over the winter. From the rock of Gibraltar we drove to the southern most point of Spain and windsurfing capital called Tarifa.