Viva Espania! Alicante Part I

Hola! We're back from a cheeky few days spent in sunny Spain! 

Like most good ideas, our trip started after a random conversation over a few beers in 'Spoons with Jon desperate for some Winter warmth, Tony keen to escape the UK after two years of going nowhere and me always up for an adventure. The following day, after some serious internet trawling, we settled on Alicante, the historic Mediterranean port city on the Costa Blanca, a region none of us had previously visited and, with average daytime temperatures of 18°C and return flights costing £66, it didn't take much persuasion to click the "book now" button on the Ryanair website.

On Monday morning we picked Tony up at 3.30am and headed to Birmingham airport, boarding our flight just after 6am and landing at Alicante's Elche Miguel Hernández Airport some two hours later. As soon as the Spanish authorities had checked our vaccination status and waved us through, we boarded the C6 bus into the city where we disembarked and wandered along the palm-tree-lined, ceramic tiled boulevards in the glorious Mediterranean sunshine.

Our accommodation for the next four nights was to be the gorgeous boutique hotel, the Hotel Les Monges Palace, a former nunnery built in 1911 & situated in El Barrio, the atmospheric old quarter of Alicante, which we'd booked independently through Booking.com. Although check-in wasn't until 2pm we popped in to see if there was anywhere we could leave our belongings and discovered that Tony's room was already available so we offloaded our bags, discarded a couple of layers of clothing and headed off back into the city to explore.

Our first port of call was a stroll down to the Platja del Postiguet to admire the city's immaculately clean beach. We gazed at the imposing walls of the Santa Barbara castle, perched on the rocks high above  Alicante and looked out across the Mediterranean at the infamous resort of Benidorm with its monstrously tall buildings piercing the skyline.

The February sunshine was warm and, although it wasn't what I'd call bikini weather, there were a handful of tourists prostrating themselves on the pristine white sands.

We found a bustling cafe on the esplanade and ordered ice-cold Estrellas, wishing every Monday morning could be just like this.

After a wander up and down the seafront, we'd worked up an appetite and found a traditional-looking restaurant on the esplanade for lunch, packed with Spanish families.

The service was painfully slow, it took the waiter 20 minutes to bring a menu and another forty to take our orders, but it was worth the wait.

My friend Helen, a Spanish teacher, had furnished me with a list of Spanish vegetarian dishes to look out for. When I'd last visited mainland Spain, back in 1995, it was nigh-on impossible to find food that wasn't laced with fish or meat, despite me always telling the waiting staff soy vegetariano (I'm vegetarian). 

The boys went for tuna salads whilst I plumped for gazpacho soup - a dish I know well but have never tried - along with large glasses of Spanish beer. Considering the restaurant was in a prime spot on the seafront, the prices were pretty reasonable.

The Hotel les Monges Palace was just behind the Alicante Town Hall, a magnificent 18th Century baroque building with doors so gorgeous they made my knees go slightly weak (or that could have been the daytime drinking).

Normally only open to the public by appointment, the receptionist was kind enough to let us have a little peek inside.

This Civil War-era poster is heartbreakingly apt, isn't it?

Back at the hotel we checked into our room and took a siesta before meeting up with Tony on the rooftop bar. At around 12°C, Alicante's Winter nights are milder than we're used to at home although I was glad I'd packed my thermals.

We drank San Miguel and watched with wonder as the sun sank behind the buildings followed by the almost magical electrical illumination of both the castle above us & the city below.

At night, the pretty square below our hotel was transformed with the glow of candles, flames from the gas patio heaters and twinkling fairy lights, brought out by the surrounding restaurants however, after an hour on the roof, we opted to eat indoors.

Tapas time!! I devoured the oven-baked Provolone cheese in a tangy tomato sauce, the boys demolished a platter of Iberian ham with Manchego cheese and the pork tenderloin and we shared Padron peppers and Patatas Bravas washed down with pints of the very potent Cruzcampo Reserve beer (which I discovered to my cost the following morning).

I'll be back with part 2 very soon.

Adios! 

Image above especially for Elizabeth!