We’re back
in Alicante! (Spain) In fact, we’ve been here for over two weeks. It’s been a time of
settling in and just relaxing. We were here a few months ago, in May, so the
town and region are familiar: this isn’t a time for exploration and discovery;
we’ve been spending a good bit of time at “home.” Our new home, at the top of a
13-floor building with fantastic views. It’s sort of like, we can keep an eye
on everything from up here, why go anywhere?
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| Our departure in May was marked by rain and a fantastic double rainbow; our arrival in November, by a fabulous sunset! |
We call it
the Bird’s Nest, our apartment on the 13th floor* of a tower near
the beach in Alicante. It’s right near the place where we stayed last spring.
Only this time, we have a view!
Yeah, 13th floor. Don’t worry about that old
superstition, though! That’s counting using the European method, where the
ground floor is 0. We use the American system where the ground floor is number
1, so we are really on the 14th floor. It’s the folks below us that
have to worry…
We can’t
actually see the beach because of the buildings that line it, but we have a
fantastic view of the ocean, and the coast for quite a ways up and down. Oh,
and the castle. We’re practically at eye level with Castillo de Santa Barbara, on the
hill overlooking the city (although we are on the side opposite the city, the
eastern side). It’s always quite a sight, lit up at night, golden in the
morning sun, or silhouetted by the sunset.
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| The Grand Panorama |
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| The view we gaze at endlessly. The castle is off to the right. |
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| View from the living room, complete with balcony, table, and chairs |
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| Nighttime view of the castle |
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| Lookin' out the window at the castle. |
From our
level we can easily see the “homestead” of a squatter, an older man who has set
up a nice little camp on the slopes below the castle. It’s well-located, hard
to see from the ground. We’ve watched his comings and goings – it’s a tough
climb but the old fellow scrambles up the steep slope like a mountain goat. One
day recently the police came by, looking up at the hill. We debated yelling
down to them “He’s up there!” but decided to stay out of it (the language
barrier would make things ever so confusing… besides, we didn’t want our guy
thrown out!)
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| Same view, but note at the center bottom you can just see the plastic shelter... |
Eventually
we saw the fellow talking to the police, so we decided they were there on a
different matter. A few days later there was a spot of rain, followed by some
warm sunny days. Our guy was out shirtless, arranging his things to dry. Then
he was gone for a while. And just the other day workmen were on the hill,
removing his plastic shelter and all his things.
We have no
idea what happened, or where he went. Off to a shelter? Victim of an accident?
Or was it his time to pass on? We’ll probably never know. But now the hillside
sits empty, seemly naked. A local mystery! And the question remains in our
minds – what happens to homeless people in Spain?
Always thinking
ahead, Paula found this apartment before we left Alicante last May. It was a bit outside our
normal budget, but the views from the top of this tower make it worthwhile. As
a plus, we were able to leave one of our suitcases here, filled with our
wintertime clothes. That made the intervening five months of traveling a bit
easier! Plus, when we arrived we had our own Christmas in October as we re-discovered all the stuff we’d left behind.
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| Our tower as seen from the street.That topmost window on the left is our bedroom. |
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| View from the tram coming home. Our tower on the right; Castello Santa Barbara above. |
It’s
exciting to be back, to roam the now-familiar streets and revisit places. One
of the first things we did was to re-activate our tram cards. These cards are
available to anyone over the age of 60, and allow unlimited travel on the tram
for 10€ per month (about $12USD). We got them when we were last here, in May,
although it took about 10 days to process the application; see my
earlier posting about Spanish bureaucracy here. We immediately began exploring the coast to the north. This time we expect to explore a bit further (although after an
hour or so those tram seats get very hard!)
We recently
visited the coastal town of Altea, a little over an hour up the coast. The
beach area is pleasant and modern; the old town, uphill a ways, has an 18th
century church and the usual collection of tourist restaurants and shops. The
whitewashed houses and blue trim – and the views of the blue Mediterranean –
really gives a Greek feel to the town.
What else? Ah,
we attended a jazz concert recently, at a local café, Villa Vieja 6 (which,
conveniently enough, is also the address). Jazz and Blues are not always well
done here in Europe, but this group really knew what they were doing! The
singer was very good, with a beautiful voice. And, turns out we were featured
on the café’s Facebook page! Well, ok not featured, but there we are.
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| Jazz concert in Alicante (no, I didn't take this one...) |
And it was
Paula’s birthday! It was a major one, 70. Now we’re both the same age! We kept
to our low-key schedule, but we did splurge a bit. We had a spa day! Paula
found a place in the hills just above Benidorm run by two delightful British
women. We were met at the tram stop and were driven the few minutes into the
hills (where the lovely views did NOT include the skyscrapers of Benidorm!) It
was a bit chilly to sit by the pool, but we enjoyed the sun room and snacks
before our massages.
Thanksgiving is almost here. We'll be joining some American expats living here in Alicante to celebrate the day (and turkey IS available here!). We're looking forward to that. And very soon after we will be moving on, driving from here to Seville, one of our favorite cities. But we'll talk about all that in the next blog.
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