Viva Espania! Castles in the Sky

I started Wednesday with a clear head and a delicious breakfast of pan con tomate (tomatoes on toast, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt) with a cafe con leche. The boys suggested we return to the place they'd eaten the previous morning and assured me was all about the food and nothing to do with the six-foot-tall Spanish waitress with waist-length hair and doe eyes. 

Fortified, we set off to explore the imposing Castillo de Santa Barbara which towers above the city and has been open to the public since 1963. Luckily for Jon's knees, there was a lift to take us up the 1.66m high mountain for €2.70(free for the over 65s). Admission to the castle is free. The young attendant wanted to know which football teams were local to us and was able to visualise Walsall on the map when we told him we were between Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers.   

Bronze Age, Iberian and Roman artefacts have been found on the slopes of Mount Benacantil but the origins of the castle date back to the 9th Century when the peninsula was under Muslim control. On 4th December 1248, the castle was captured by Castillian forces led by Alfonso of Castile and named after Saint Barbara on whose feast day the battle fell. It was conquered by the Aragonese in 1296, led by James II of Aragon who led its reconstruction. Later reconstructions were made by Peter IV of Aragon, Charles I of Spain and Phillip II of Spain.

In 1691 the castle was bombarded by the French and during the War of Spanish Succession (1701 - 1714), it was held by the British for three years. In 1873, during the Glorious Revolution, when the Cantonalistas deposed Queen Isabella II. From the 18th Century, the role of the castle declined and it was often used as a prison. The poignant graffiti left behind by prisoners imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War is still visible on the paving slabs. 

We'd read that the views from the castle were spectacular and they certainly didn't disappoint. The weather was absolutely perfect, too. I'm not sure we'd have enjoyed our visit quite so much in the 35°C heat of Alicante's high summer jostling for space with hundreds of other tourists.

The boys are both a bit scared of heights so didn't venture too near the edges.

Inside, there were ancient ceramics, heraldry, carvings and artefacts galore and my favourite, an exhibition of old photographs of the city and her people through the decades, donated by the citizens of Alicante. We even made friends with a cat.

After a coffee in one of the two castle cafes, a toilet stop (public loos in Alicante are plentiful, free to use and immaculately clean) and a visit to the very classy gift shop we declined the lift and ascended the slopes of Mount Benacantril by foot.

 I was keen to visit Alicante's Bull Ring (from a cultural aspect, not for the sport itself), which was completed in 1888 and can accommodate up to 16,000 people. The first bullfight was recorded in the city in 1700. Unfortunately, the museum, Le Plaza de Toros y Museo Taurino de Alicante, was closed so I had to make do with admiring the bull ring from afar.

Back in the city, we sat in the square with ice-cold beers outside the Basilica of Santa Maria, built in the Valencian Gothic style between the 14th and 16th centuries over the site of a former mosque and is the oldest church in Alicante.

Overlooking the square is MACA, Alicante's museum of contemporary arts which we visited afterwards.

I absolutely loved the lady on the left (after Velasquez?) wearing a dress depicting Picasso's Guernica.

Can you see the Head of the Moor? Legend has it that a beautiful young princess called Cantara fell in love with a poor man called Ali. Her father, a Moorish king, disapproved and would not let his daughter marry for love. The heartbroken princess could not bear to live without the man she loved and threw herself off the castle and onto the rocks of Mount Benacantril. Upon hearing the news Ali also jumped to his death so he could be with his beloved in the afterlife. His daughter's death is said to have broken the King's heart and he spent the rest of his life in misery and despair.

Lunch was bocadillos ( Spanish sandwiches served in a toasted baguette), queso y tomate (cheese & tomato) for me and jamon y queso (ham and cheese) for the boys eaten at a bustling seafront cafe and accompanied by pints of Cruzcampo.

 

On the way back to the Hotel des Monges Palace we popped into MUBAG, Alicante's museum of fine arts, housed in a grand XVII building behind the beachfront. Like almost all of the places we'd visited in Alicante, admission was free, masks mandatory and our temperatures checked on arrival via an infra-red camera.

After a siesta and beers on the rooftop, we headed into the heart of the old town to Calle Jerusalem where we'd seen a Moroccan restaurant the previous day and had chatted to the chef & owner, who'd lived in London for thirty years. 

On the menu were pastillas, hummus with flatbread, ratatouille with a cheese crust, roast chicken with apricots and a beef tagine. As Kaf is unlicensed we drank homemade ginger lemonade and hibiscus iced tea. Tony had never tried Morrocan food before and was blown away. We've been to Morocco twice but this was just as good as anything we'd eaten there.

After we'd eaten we walked back to Calle de St Agustin and sat in the square behind the town hall, chatting until way past bedtime with a bottle of 11€ Alicante red wine.

Day four - coming very soon!