Our last day in Madrid! Sad. We were greatly enjoying our time in Spain thus far. But before we go: one last morning-light picture of the block from our hotel.
Today’s itinerary called for us to take the high-speed rail from Madrid to Alicante, a mid-sized town on the Mediterranean coast. More tasty fun with maps!
We stuffed our bags, checked out, and took a cab to one of the main train stations in Madrid, Puerta de Atocha. Very nice indoors, with a greenhouse-like interior plaza to enjoy while we waited for our platform to be announced.
And here’s our train! SQUEE for high-speed rail!
And now to shoot across La Mancha (yup, that one) at hundreds of kilometers per hour! Looks like the windmills have changed a bit at some point in the past few hundred years.
And now for a brief interlude.
Turns out our seats were in the “silent car,” and we weren’t even sitting in the same row. Quelle horreur! Fortunately, we were able to switch with the lady sitting next to me. Unfortunately, after we exchanged a few brief “so glad we’re sitting together” whispers, the older lady who had been sitting next to Mercy stepped over to our seats, put her face a foot-and-a-half away from mine, and proceeded to tell us:
“THIS IS EL COCHE SILENCIO! SEE!?” she pointed at the headrest sign right over my ear. “YOU MUST BE QUIET! YOU CANNOT TALK! IT IS FORBIDDEN!”
I’m not making these words up. And she’s yelling this in a voice approximately three times louder than our whispers.
In the meantime, a half-dozen other people in the car have cellphones going off, are holding phone conversations, listening to music. But clearly I digress.
When we finally arrived in Alicante (and it was a peaceful, quiet ride after that), it was a short walk from the main train station to the hotel, Eurostars Lucentum. Eurostars turns out to be a nice chain of respectable, higher-end business-class hotels located across most of Western Europe (we’d stay at another one in Ibiza, though we did notice a few engineering issues here and there in both locations…) After our usual unpack-and-nap routine, we took a stroll down the conveniently-close promenade. It was a very nice smaller-town break after Madrid, and much more like Portugal, from the outdoor landscaping to the tiled sidewalks.
It doesn’t have the royal palace. It doesn’t have the Prado. It doesn’t have Madrid’s bustling size or fantastic Metro. But you know what Alicante has that Madrid doesn’t? Here’s a clue.
Alicante is, of course, right on the coast, and it’s a beautiful place. Like most old towns (and I mean OLD; our hotel here is named after the original Carthaginian settlement, Lucentum, from 230BC), this old place is built around a disorganized huddle of old-town streets. The old town itself sits at the base of a rocky outcropping, typically topped by a castle that was used to scout and defend against pirates for thousands of years. We’d see this pattern again in Denia, Ibiza, and even Barcelona itself.
Despite it’s contrast to Madrid, it’s not to say that Alicante doesn’t have it’s fair share of public art. We spotted several neat sculptures on our walk along the marina to the beach, including this charmer who (we’re still not sure) might be holding either a surfboard or large tuna.
One of my favorites was this sculpture, which reminded me of the dodecahedron from the city of Digitopolis in The Phantom Tollbooth.
A few moments later, we finally made it to the beach. Despite the fact that it was technically shoulder season, the place was absolutely packed with Brits getting in a few last days of sun before heading back to winter in auld cloud-saturated Brittainia. (Dear god, I’ve seen enough arrogant, overweight, and speedo-sporting old English men–and women–to last several lifetimes.)
Walking back up the inside of the promenade, there were plenty more tiled mosaics in the ground to admire as we made our way to dinner.
Dinner that night was pizza at an outstanding Italian establishment, Sale e Pepe. (The northern half of Spain’s eastern coast has a strong Italian influence.) What a place! Great, authentic pizza, served by a jovial Italian family who refuses to speak Spanish (“English or Italian only in here!”), and right in the shadow of the local cathedral. Great food, great wine, and fantastic limoncello. We could have stayed here for days.
