Alicante, Spain

The last stop on the European leg of our fall trip.

We have spent September in France, and October in Spain, and we knew we would be a bit weary from all that European culture travel so we had planned 9 days at the Spanish beach town of Alicante. We were envisioning a quiet week of just visiting beaches, while we got ready for a visiting a new country. We thought it would be similar to our last week in France that we spent at the small beach town of Saint Jean-De-Luz. We didn’t quite get that. Alicante is way bigger that we thought (340,000 people). We also knew were were running out of good European weather. Alicante is usually hot and has over 300 sunny days a year. We got the sun…. but it is still November and we got a lot of wind to go with temps of only 65-75 during the day and a bit chilly in the evening. Some people were on the beach, but most stayed out of the water because of the 55 degree water temperatures. We didn’t do any beach sitting. But Alicante is still a beautiful town and we found a lot of stuff to keep us busy during our week that we were supposed to be relaxing.

I wrote another post about our day trips including our near catastrophe of being lost and abandoned in Elche but today I want to talk about our time in Alicante. We have been organizing our travels so that we leave Europe when it starts to get too cold to wear shorts and sandals. Last year we stayed in Southern Italy until almost Thanksgiving and ended up wearing pants and a light jacket for the last couple of weeks. This year, we planned to leave Europe a bit earlier in November but also decided on staying in one of the warmest and driest parts of Spain for our last week. It worked pretty well but there were times I had to put on socks and shoes and a windbreaker to go out for dinner again. That’s just the way it works when trying to cram as many European destinations into a fall trip without making it feel too rushed.

We did a lot of walking in Alicante, of course we walk a lot everywhere. The castle on the hill was impressive and gave some great views. Alicante even had a street filled with mushrooms for a reason we never figured out. Lots of good photos to choose from for the highlights.

We had lots of good sunsets and sunrises from our deck but the tops of the buildings didn’t really make for good pics. But I did snap some good ones including a nice one of the castle on the hill and some night shots.

We did do a few museums in town – we appreciated that Alicante had many free or cheap museums. The fine arts museum was between exhibits so we didn’t see much. The contemporary art museum wasn’t very big but had some good stuff including some minor works by a few major artists. One day we did the archeology museum which had a traveling exhibit of the Chinese terracotta statues that was amazing. It got me excited to go see the whole collection in China some day. The rest of their regular collection of Spanish Archeology was well done but not much was in English. We also saw a free exhibit at the castle about their yearly Moors and Christians festival. Alicante has a parade and a bunch of events every year with people dressing up as Medieval times Moors and Christians. They clearly were on the side of Christians winning so it was kind of weird and I didn’t really understand the whole premise – seemed like a celebration of Christians over others, versus a celebration of various cultures and beliefs that have influenced this region. I would love to see that festival in person so I could understand a bit better.

Our Airbnb was wonderful in Alicante. It was one of those places that looked like someone’s vacation home instead of a unit built just for Airbnb. We had a balcony on the 7th floor right in the action on restaurant row downtown. Although it was a bit noisy on Halloween. Bars/clubs here stay open until 7am and people tend to talk loudly in the pedestrian streets outside of the bars. It was a good thing we were so high up on the 7th floor.

This is our last stop in Europe and we have already purchased tickets to return September of ’24. We don’t have our agenda yet but we are thinking about some hiking treks in Northern Europe and then heading through Eastern Europe. This year was amazing and we are eager to see more. The trains in Europe make traveling so much easier and less stressful to see so many different cultures.

Next Stop- a change in continents!!

I am writing this post from our next stop in La Fortuna, Costa Rica!! Back to hot!!!! and sandals and shorts! 85 degrees today and crazy humid. We are a bit jetlagged but woke up this morning with a sloth in our backyard and hearing a bunch of new birds. Totally excited for this next chapter!