Rome Trip - July 13: Algeciras

I woke up later than usual on this trip, ~10 AM. Izzy and our hosts had walked to the beach for a coffee and bread breakfast. I was having soy milk on high fiber cereal as they were arriving home. (Yay! They had a brick of soy milk!) (How sad is it that this excites me?)


Izzy's home!

I checked e-mail while Izzy and our hostess had an animated discussion about Catholicism and the CDF document: Responsa ad quaestiones. (Also here.) Released earlier in the week, Responsa ad quaestiones addressed issues regarding the status of non-Catholic churches. Like others I've met who have spent lots of time in Latin American (she grew up in Central America), our hostess' experience with the Catholic Church has been more negative than positive. Fair enough. We hadn’t yet heard about the document (been mostly internet naive for two weeks), but Izzy recognized that it was related to the hand-wringing over Lumen Gentium’s use of “subsists in” instead of “is.” I’m going to need to find a good (non-MSM) explanation of this new document to answer family questions.

We went out for a tour around the city and drove “to” Gibraltar but did not cross the border at La Linea. We did take pix of the Rock, feria, a monument to workers, etc.

Gibraltar pix


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Monument to Spanish workers who travel to Gibraltar, plus McAuto

We also drove to the port to buy our tickets for a Tangier tour the next day. The Tangier-only tour was sold out, so we bout tix for a Ceuta/Tangier tour. We were told to be back at the ticket office the next morning at 8 AM, that we’d be back on the 8 AM ferry; little other information was given.



A bit more sightseeing, then lunch at a family favorite restaurant. We were joined for lunch by our hosts’ daughter, K, (whom we’d met when she was born many moons ago) and her boyfriend (whom we’d met the previous night). K and her parents had an in-depth discussion the previous night about college, housing, etc., between 12:30 and 1:00 AM. This is normal for Spanish time. Nice.



The later times also apply to lunch. We were having ours around 3 PM. I had a broth soup with sherry and a mushroom omelette (for which read tortilla con champinion). Izzy had the seafood dish they were substituting for the paella. I had honeydew slices at the end; he had a bit of chocolate flan.


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Back to the house for a brief rest, then out in the evening to some property our hosts have bought near land’s end.



It was too foggy to see Morocco, but we were able to see a lighthouse over there, as well as the one on Gibraltar and the one here in Spain.


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Back at the house, we had sandwiches made in the sandwich toaster. Good. I’ve been thinking about getting one of these. I’ll have to think harder now.



Flickr set for today:

• Algeciras