Costa Blanca and Valencia

Altea

After Villajoyosa and Benidorm we decided to head to Altea which is the other side of Benidorm. It had a really nice feel to it. It was lively and buzzy but seemed more ‘grown up’ and sophisticated than Benidorm.

Here is Dee with our “Tapas Deluxe”. They were very nice. It was a place on the seafront, great position. The bill was 40 Euros which included 2 beers and 2 glasses of wine.

The photo’s below show our walk up to The Old Town and also the beach.

The Old Town was quite interesting. Here’s a few photo’s. Like many of the old towns in Spain it was high up and lovely stone streets and houses.

There was also a church located at the highest square in Altea. It had a very decorative interior especially the ceiling.

We ventured back down from the old town, back to the seafront for another lovely lunch at the promenade. This time we had sushi .

Back at our park up we got chatting to an English couple. They had just spent 2 weeks in Benidorm! I told him of our experience and he replied saying we hadn’t seen the ‘Real Benidorm’. I did suspect that was the case! He said we should go back and have a night out! We liked the idea of a night out as we hadn’t done that since we had left the UK!

The following day we headed back to Benidorm for a night out!

Benidorm Revisitied!

We followed the instructions we were given! “Go to “Tapas Alley” for food but not to go out until 8pm at the earliest! And then to go to Olivers which he said was a gay bar! We are so used to going to gay bars back home in Brighton, they usually have good music and atmosphere and in Brighton everyone is definitely welcome.

The reason for not going out before 8pm is because the Spanish eat late. We wanted some life so we stuck to the instructions! It took us a while to find Tapas Alley. We were told there is a red carpet out! It was literally a very small alley with a few tapas bars. The day we went there was no red carpet? Apparently not all of them were open as it was a public holiday. It still seemed quite buzzy tho. The tapas were nice. You could look at the tapas as shown in the photo below and you were given a list where you could match up to what you could see and tick what you wanted on the list. Once ticked you handed back and the tapas arrived quickly. It was all very fast turn around.

After food we headed to Olivers, it was just round the corner. There were people there but it wasn’t particularly busy. Everyone was sat outside. I think we were the youngest people there, which we didn’t mind! I would definitely call it an English Bar, but definitely wouldn’t call it a gay bar! We ordered a drink which was triple sized! We sat outside and drank it. Everyone was in their groups so we didn’t really talk to anyone apart from the bar staff . We didn’t particularly want to stay any longer so we wandered back after the one drink!

Gudalest

The following morning we were on the move again, this time we were heading to Gudalest, a village in the mountains. We were just going to stop and have a look around before moving onto Calpe.

Gudalest was a pretty little village in the mountains. We had a walk around. In some ways it was similar to Frigiliana the mountain village we went to when we were in Nerja. The steep cobbled streets and houses were very similar. Here there was also a torture museum! We didn’t actually go in but got the photo from the outside!

There were also some terrific views and a reservoir to look down at.

Calpe

After an enjoyable morning wandering around Gudalest we heading a bit further round to Calpe. I’d actually been to Calpe before roughly 30 years ago on a climbing holiday with a group of about 10 people. I couldn’t really remember much about it except it was a fishing village! My friend who was also there said we didn’t really get to go to the town so maybe that’s why!

It seemed that parts of Calpe didn’t want Motorhomes parked up! We did find a park up tho that was about a 5 minute walk from the beach. Perfect. I went for a swim then found a nice beach bar/restaurant where I had an excellent seat in the sun so I had some wine and read my book, soon Dee came to join me and we had some tapas as well. Here’s the beach at sunset

In the morning we woke up to a fair bit of noise, cars, banging just general noise. We looked out the window to find there was a big market being set up right behind us! We were’t in the way, just very conveniently parked to go and have a look! It was all clothes and bags. We ‘d seen a few markets like this in Spain. After walking the length and back again, there was nothing that we wanted to buy. We decided once again it was time to move on. We headed half an hour further round the coast to Moraira.

Moraira

What a welcome! We arrived at Moraira to find there was a parade of some kind going on. Crowds of people watching and waiting. The first part we saw was horses and carriages and then bulls .

The next part was people standing on each other’s shoulder and making tall pyramids with both adults and kids. We did catch a bit of this but also went to get some lunch. We had a really nice paella.

Moraira had a really nice feel to it. We noticed in the restaurant that almost everyone was speaking English.

After lunch we had a went for a walk around the town.

We walked up high as you can see in the middle and right photos. You can walk all the way round to El Portet which is a lovely picturesque bay. There were lots of people walking both ways and all of them were speaking English and sounded English too. We got the impression that there were some very nice properties around and a that it was a big area for British expats. It reminded us of an area back in Brighton called Roedean, another very wealthy area that is also high up with great views and home to many properties that are worth well over a million pounds.

The following morning I went and had a very impromptu haircut! For me this was very brave as I never like going to strange hairdressers. Being a hairdresser myself I am very aware that there are a lot of bad hairdressers out there. The salon was full of English staff ! They even had British magazines. There really was nothing Spanish in sight. The guy that cut my hair was from Liverpool. He did an amazing job. It has made such a difference. Now I want to go back to Moraira next time I need a haircut!

Moraira 2nd visit December 2023

Back to Moraira for another haircut. You can see the photos if you want on the more recent post.

I also thought I would. Add some more info here about Moraira.

Moraira Castle

The Castle of Moraira was built in the 18th century on the coast for defence and surveillance purposes against pirates. It is no longer used for defence but is a historic landmark and worth adding to this post.

Back to Jan 2023, we left Moraira and headed to Denia

Denia

It was really windy. The whole of Spain was experiencing some really bad gale force winds. We decided it was best not to move again until it died down. We ended up staying for 2 days .

Denia is a port, you can go to The Balearic Islands from there. We had a walk round and some sushi one of the 2 days but on the whole there wasn’t an awful lot there and am sure the winds made it even less appealing.

Valencia

Finally it was a bit calmer so we headed to Valencia, this was also going to be our last stop before heading to Barcelona for our ferry to Italy.

We managed to find a park up right on the beach.

It was a massive sandy beach. I did get to swim a few times but it was always more wave jumping as it was still fairly windy and the sea was quite wavy. It was great fun!

The park up was right by the beach and for anyone reading this that may be thinking of heading there it is worth noting that the entrance is very hard to find. It is right by the crossing!

The following day we headed into the centre on the bus. The bus stop was right near where we parked. We got off in what seemed to be the shopping area, maybe the Valencian equivalent to Oxford Street?

We didn’t really know where we were going! Not unusual! We decided to head to The City of Arts and Sciences. We’d seen these amazing looking buildings when we drove into Valencia so it seemed like a good starting point.

This whole area was pretty impressive. The architect is Santiago Calatrava Valls who is himself from Valencia. We didn’t actually go in any of the different buildings and museums but we did have a walk round There is a whole section underneath what you can see in those photos where you can walk along and are surrounded by fountains. There was also restaurants and cafes and we stopped for a coffee.

The Agora Building is a multi functional covered space used for large events and exhibitions. This building is not open to the public like the others.

It started to get a bit cold so we wandered over to the indoor shopping centre and went to have some lunch. It was an Asian style and I had a Vietnamese noodle style soup and Dee had a stir fry, it was very nice.

We decided that the best way to see the city would be on a hop on hop off bus. We also decided to try and walk back probably because we had no idea where to go and find our bus stop. It was about an hour in total and we had to walk round the port. On the way we stopped at a hotel and bought the hop on hop off bus tickets for the next day.

The next day we decided to walk to the place where we were told to get the bus from. We left around 9.30am and we got very lost trying to find it! Eventually after getting directions a few times we were on the bus around 11.30am. It was the usual open top hop on hop off bus with an audio guide. Here are a few of the landmarks we saw from the bus.

The Quart Tower (Torres de Quart) in the first photo is the only remaining entrance to the medieval wall that once guarded the city of Valencia .

The second photo is a modern sculpture on a roundabout “The Iberian Lady” (Dama Iberica). The sculptor is a Spanish artist called Manolo Valdez and was created in 2007.

The 3rd photo is the Notarial College Building Valencia (Cole bio Notarial de Valencia).

The photo at the bottom is the football stadium.

We got off the bus at the Contemporary Art Museum and went for a wander in the Old Town to find a place to have lunch. We thought that we might go back and have a look in the museum after lunch, but it ended up being too late so we decided to get back on the bus. We jumped off at the stop nearest to our park up which was in fact only a 30 minute walk back.

The following day we decided to try and go to a tapas bar that had come highly recommended by my friend Gloria in Brighton. Gloria knows Valencia really well as her mum was Spanish and lived there for many years. The tapas bar is called El Clavo. When we got there it looked great. It was very buzzy and lively. Sadly there was no tables though so we ended up going somewhere else.

The next day was Sunday and we walked into town again. Here are some of the houses we saw on the way. Such great architecture.

This time we stumbled across China Town and the Chinese New Year celebrations which looked fab .

After China Town we walked to the Old Town where we stopped and had a late lunch. After lunch we headed to a lovely little bar that my friend Gloria had recommended

The bar was small and very cosy with a lovely friendly feel. Dee was drinking vodka and I tried the local Valencian drink which was Agua de Valencia. It is Cava, fresh orange and a secret ingredient! Whatever it was, it was very good.

It was a good way to end our stay in Spain. We absolutely loved it all and can’t wait to go back again.

The following day I had a quick swim and then we packed up and was on our way to Barcelona for our ferry. We did stops for food, emptying grey water and filling up with gas . It was a 4 hour drive and we ended up just making our check in time by the skin of our teeth! Phew!

We settled down on the boat for a 22 hour ferry ride.

Next stop Italy, next post will be Rome.

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