Looming like some great ship off the southernmost tip of Spain, the tiny British colony of Gibraltar is a heady compound of curiosities. To the ancient Greeks and Romans, it was one of the two Pillars of Hercules, set up by the mythical hero to mark the edge of the known world.

Today, it's a little piece of the European continent populated mostly by Gibraltarians (of mixed Genoese, Jewish, Spanish and British ancestry), along with sizeable British and Moroccan minorities. Signs are in English but the languages spoken are English, Spanish and a curious mix of the two.