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Monday, 7 April 2014

Alicante - Hola Espana!

As I am about 4 weeks behind on the blog at the moment I shall be posting a few posts in quick succession to hopefully catch up a little bit. So instead of just arriving in Spain like this blog shows we are actually much further along with our travels.

The flight to Alicante was an early one, leaving from Gatwick at 7am and arriving in Spain at 9:30am (10:30am local time). This was a quick flight which I slept through mostly. Once arriving we took the bus into the town centre and got off at the beach.

Surprisingly to us we saw a few people on the beach sunbathing whilst we were wrapped up in about 3 layers of clothes. We thought they might well have been British, as we seem to take our clothes off at the first sign of sun!

Nice view over the sea from the Promenade
After having a nice bit of lunch by the beach we headed to our hostal, La Milagrosa and checked in. We then went out for a wander around to explore Alicante a bit more. We attempted to get to Santa Barbara Castle, but didn't manage it as we couldn't find the right street to take us to the top of the hill, so we ended up in a park instead at the base of the castle, before deciding to head back as Carmen was very tired due to our early start and being unable to sleep on the plane. Once back at the hostal we had dinner on the rooftop terrace and then went to bed.

The next day we went to the Basilica Santa Maria (church) after breakfast and were lucky enough to see a bit of a service taking place. They were praying and then just going up for communion, it was all very solemn. Afterwards we went to the modern art museum opposite from the basilica. This was very interesting and we saw some good pieces of art, but we also saw some things that make you think, "How is that classed as artwork?!"

Entrance to Basilica Santa Maria
 Our next destination was somewhere Carmen wanted to go for lunch. Plaza del Carmen was the place and here we enjoyed some croissants we had left over from breakfast and listened to the locals gathering for a chat. Spain seems to be a very relaxed and sociable country so far. We then headed up to the castle, and this time we actually made it inside! It had some really great views from up at the castle, as it is perched on top of a cliff overlooking the rest of Alicante. It used to originally be a muslim castle but was then later used by the Spanish once it was reclaimed.

Beautiful views over Alicante and the ocean from Santa Barbara Castle


The following day after we visited the local market as we heard this is the best place to go to buy food in a lot of Spanish cities. At the local market we saw a big collection of stalls selling groceries, meat, fish, olives and bread, with a fair share of them offering better than supermarket prices (always a nice addition). Afterwards we were planning to head to Elche, but unfortunately Carmen wasn't feeling too well so we decided to stay at the hostal. Later in the afternoon however Carmen was feeling better so we went out for a walk along the promenarde and got some wine, which we had with dinner on the terrace.

An old boat and statue called "The Surfer" along the promenade

 The evening turned out to be really nice and we had fun when we went for a stroll on the beach at night when it is quiet. We also had fun climbing to the top of a big rope construction that was on the beach, like proper kids!

Carmen at the top of the rope construction
 On our last day in Alicante we got a bus to Elche, where we went to visit the Palmerie, (a former Oasis). We walked through it and saw lots and lots of palm trees of all shapes and sizes. After walking through it via one route we had a wander through the centre of Elche and went inside another basilica and saw part of a Spanish funeral. We decided to leave this fairly quickly so as not to intrude, although loads of people seemed to be doing so anyway.

Carmen by some of the palm trees

We then walked some more through the town centre and visited another church and also a panaderia (bakers), where Carmen bought a potato empanada (pastry), which she really enjoyed. We walked back through the palmerie afterwards and stopped for a late lunch there. It then started to rain so we took shelter.

After it stopped raining we decided to get the bus back to Alicante. We were then going to get the tram in the afternoon to a place called Denia, but the tram would not have been running by the time we wanted to go back so we just had another wander around Alicante instead and got to see some really good street art graffiti.

Graffiti street art in Alicante (seems to be popular in quite a few cities!

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