Viva Espania - The Finale

 The rain persisted throughout the night and when we got up on Friday morning it was running in rivulets down the pavement below our balcony. We packed our bags and headed back to our usual place for breakfast before walking up to the Mercado Central.

Alicante's mercado (or market) is open seven days a week from 7.30am. It was built in 1912 and incorporates part of the 17th Century city walls.

The market was the scene of one of the deadliest bombings of the Spanish Civil War. In a bid to eliminate the Republican maritime commerce and destroy morale, on 25 May 1938, Franco ordered between seven and nine Italian bombers of the Aviazione Legionaria to bomb Alicante. The planes dropped ninety bombs with many of them falling on the central market. There were between 275 and 393 civilian deaths and over a thousand wounded. 

It's a vast space, spread over two floors, covering over 11,000 metres and almost three hundred stalls.

Swooning over the displays of fruit and veg far superior (and cheaper) to anything we'd get at home, tantalising olives and pickles and some very scary looking fish and cuts of meat, we regretted having already eaten as there were some gorgeous little bars dotted around the supermarket which would have been a superb spot to people watch....ah well, there's always next time.

We popped into the Concatedral da San Nicolas on the way, built between 1613 and 1662.

On exiting the building a tile slid off the dome and crashed to the ground in pieces, narrowly missing the three of us. I think someone up there knew some dirty atheists had been in his house. 

Although the rain had stopped, the skies were grey and without the sunshine the temperatures had plummeted. The deserted Esplanda d'Espanya felt like a world away from the bustling beachfront we'd visited only a couple of days previously.

After a restorative coffee we popped to the chocolate shop we'd been admiring since we arrived, in raptures over the exquisitely old-fashioned paper packaging and purchased some bars for friends (although I suspect a few might get eaten before reaching their intended recipients).

We wandered around the streets of Alicante before returning to the hotel to check-out. We settled our respective bills and were told by the staff that we could leave our belongings and they'd provide a room free of charge if we wanted to shower and get changed before leaving for the airport. No wonder they get rave reviews!

With the rain making a comeback we turned up a street we'd not visited before and stumbled upon El Museu d’ Aigües d’ Alacant (The Water Museum of Alicante), very apt considering the circumstances, and spent an enjoyable hour learning the history behind the city's plumbing. When we'd looked the museum up online it had numerous negative reviews from Brits moaning about the lack of any English signage. Throughout our trip we noticed that English wasn't particularly widely spoken and that many of the restaurants, cafes and bars we visited didn't have menus in English, something we found great fun, forcing us to use the little Spanish we knew. Anyway, the moaners were clearly idiots as there was a QR code next to every exhibit which provided an explanation of everything in the museum in a variety of languages (as long as you owned a mobile phone).

It was a part of Alicante we'd not seen before, one of crumbling buildings, boarded up businesses, distressed paintwork and graffiti which sounds a lot like Walsall only a lot more atmospheric.

We had a big lunch back in the town hall square, demolished before I'd thought to take a photo, but consisting of freshly-made spinach ravioli, pork tenderloin and chicken croquettes, patatas bravas, and padron peppers.

Keen to walk off the calories we strolled over to the New Town, visited the massive El Cortes Ingles department store - a shop I remember well from the crazy week I spent in Barcelona in the late 1980s staying with a couple of my ex-housemates who'd moved there and were renting the most glorious 19th Century apartment overlooking the Sagrada Familia. 

We also popped into Zara, the Spanish fashion chain, as Tony had never heard of it. The prices were  much cheaper than the UK (not that we were buying).

Then took a slow walk through the old town so I could take more door photos to add to the hundreds I'd already snapped along with more of the wonderful shopfronts scattered around the city.

We'd spotted an exhibition of vintage photographs of the workers in Alicante's long-gone cigarette factories but couldn't for the life of us remember where it was so ended up back on the hotel roof for a few beers and a final view of our marvelous rooftop vista.

Yes, Jon really did take a Morrison's bag for life away with him....

We collected our bags, walked down to the seafront and boarded the C6 bus back to the airport. The journey home was quite eventful in that the plane developed a technical fault prior to take off and we were evacuated on to the runway to await the arrival of its replacement leading to a two hour delay. As I remarked to a moaning Brit next to me, at least they noticed the problem before we took off!

Adios Alicante, you were amazing!