Bedrock

Archive for the ‘Alicante’ Category

It has been a very quiet weekend – some of our friends are away in far-flung places or returning – we’ve been with many others this week gone and so we’ve sat and at least on the surface of it done very little but have a quiet time this weekend.

Of course we never really stop – Netflix declined our cards today and Maureen has spent half the day fixing it – turns out that the bank back in the UK, after watching us use the cards for months while we’ve been here in Spain, suddenly decided that a payment to Netflix MUST be money-laundering – I mean – how stupid can these people get. Anyway, that took some phone calls and meanwhile Netflix were very nice about it and re-instated the account – can’t be missing our shows now can we.

And on that subject, we’ve just finished watching House of Cards which, if you’ve not seen it is BLOODY MARVELOUS. I am finding more and more (consider the Man in the Iron Castle from Amazon) of these original series to often be much better than the material on mainstream TV – apart from Sky Atlantic I’m wondering why we have a dish.

I’ve spent half the say working on some computer code – and playing with black pop bottles to see how much better they are at grabbing sunlight than clear ones (yes we all know they do but now I know by how much). Of course I then had to blog the computing work I’d done so it is now midnight and I’m just about to give up.  If Jonathan is looking in – we’re thinking about you mate – get in touch when you have the energy.

Pilates for Maureen tomorrow, I have some more writing to do and I need a little concentrated sunbathing. She is off to the UK on Friday for a short while to see friends and relatives. The flight is early so I’m thinking about what I could be doing in Alicante for the morning when I’m done dropping her off at the airport. I don’t think we’ve really done much up there but drop in to the airport so it’s worth parking the car up and taking a look around.

Looks like it might be a little cooler tomorrow – in the upper 20s instead of the upper 30s – so a nice day for a walk.

Yesterday morning we headed off to the coast – to Alicante to be precise. The entire album of our trip including yesterday is here for those interested.

From Galera it’s somewhat under a 3-hour trip – and Maureen and I watched as the weather went from partially sunny, through heavy rain and back to full, glorious sunshine.

I’m not sure I’d want to spend any amount of time in Alicante in the summer when it’s heaving with tourists but we had a very pleasant few hours there yesterday including stopping right at the coast for a late lunch at Rudy’s Pizzeria. REALLY nice pizza.

We made the sensible move, given the choice of small, medium or large, of sharing the medium – I’m convinced we could not have managed the large version – the waiter was kind enough to warn us beforehand.

This is the first time we’ve done any more than touch the surface of Alicante and while much of it seems to have been put together in the 60’s it certainly beats the hell out of watching the snow fall in the Northeast of England this time of year.

The beach was superb – almost no-one there due to it being the end of the UK school holiday week and the temperatures were no more than 18c but the sun was blasting and that made up for everything.

We took a good walk around to minimise the effects of lunch before heading off to the airport. A pretty eventless flight. Last night in Edinburgh was AWFUL, after some confusion over the name of the bus company taking us to our car which meant we spent half an hour standing outside waiting, the trip back down the A68 took place in blizzards. This morning – it’s snow here in Wark.

I’m sure there is some saving grace to being back here, but I can’t think of anything off-hand apart from the ready availability of half-decent bread for my bacon sandwich.

Don’t forget – you can click on any of these photos to see a larger version.

Unusually we found ourselves in Alicante yesterday. We normally fly back and forth via San Javier but the prices this time were just a little over the top and so we did the Edinburgh-Alicante trip as against the Newcastle-Murcia version.

For those who don’t fly regularly, the airlines have this off to a fine art now – if it’s school holidays, you get ripped as they have a captive audience – so we find ourselves regularly checking all possible routes for the best deals. Advice welcome incidentally!!

Anyway, with a couple of hours to spare we decided to actually drive into Alicante. First impressions were not good. We headed for a set of blocks of flats thinking they might have some interesting shops – no – a graveyard. No shops, just housing – maybe that’s what some Brits want – a place to sleep and the beach… that would bore me silly – so off we headed to what looked like the city centre and sure enough it was.

Alicante from what little we saw, pretty much looks like any other city and isn’t a patch on the many rural sights Spain has to offer, but we did enjoy a reasonable half-hour checking out the quayside market in the sun.

Unlike much of Spain and pretty much all of the UK in early November, Alicante yesterday was enjoying weather in the lower twenties with lots of sunshine and very little humidity.

Worth another look in the summer? Sure! Don’t forget to click the images if you want to see larger originals.

Sadly, I can’t show the same enthusiasm for the airport which is huge, impersonal and just, well not that nice – ok it’s clean, I’ll hand you that. We dropped our car off and went in search of some grub.

What an absolute rip. The “Air Food Court” as it calls itself sells the most abysmal-looing crap in the name of food.  Here’s an example.. Maureen’s dish was no better…

I ordered Nachos – despite the apparent high price of a fiver+ (more than even the overpriced cinemas here in the UK) – and what did I get – well judge for yourself – most of the cheese looked like curdled milk.

I’ve been eating Nachos all over the world for decades and never seen anything like it (the best I recall were at the Hard Rock Cafe in Florida – cheese right down to the bottom chip).

I took them back for an explanation and the trainee desk operator told me the cheese was “Al fresco” – I’ll remember that next time I get served something that’s half-cooked… “oh, is this al-fresco?”.

So if you happen to be at Alicante Airport – SKIP THE NACHOS….