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Alicante Spain - How To Explore It In One Day
By Robert Carlton, Thu Dec 8th
Imagine some of you will come over and spend these summerholidays around the Costa Blanca in places like Benidorm,Torrevieja, Denia or Calpe. After two weeks of sunbathing andparty at night, you finally get your act together and do a oneday visit to Alicante – just to be able to tell the loved onceat home that you have seen some culture and arts as well. Come and join me for a foot walk around Alicante Before we start a quick overview. Alicante, with about 310.000habitants lies about 6 hours down from Barcelona along theMediterranean coast of Spain. Within the summer months about 6million tourists visit the Costa Blanca area. Depending ondifferent sources, about 4.5 Mio come from the U.K. alone.Cities like Benidorm (population 50.000) host up
to 4 Miovisitors every year. Alicante is the second largest city in theprovince of Valencia. (Article continued below)
The city is best explored by foot starting at the harbour area,where many parking areas are available. So we leave our car nextto the Melia Hotel right on the harbour entrance. (A quick tipat the beginning, if you arrive at Alicante Airport you can geta very good Alicante map right at the tourist information centreat the arrival hall.) Just behind the Melia Hotel at the foot of the Santa BarbaraCastle you find the beach of Postiguet, where at the end of ourlittle walk through Alicante, we will have our sunbath. Butlet’s go on and get some culture and historical buildings tosee. Directly in front of the Melia Hotel we enter a little roadwhich brings us to the Plaza del Ajuntamento, which means Plazaof the City Hall. Alicante’s city hall was originally built in1688 by the French, later heavily damaged and rebuilt in the18th century. Guided by two 35 metre. tall towers, the cityhalls stairs measures the “Cero-Point” concerning sea level. Allmeasurements of height in Spain – refer to this “cero-point” asbase for their calculations. Within the city hall you can visitthe blue salon with its wonderful mirror gallery (Monday toSaturdays). Just passing the city hall at the right you willfind the Plaza de Santissima Faz, a lovely little areasurrounded by palm trees. The nativity scene museum of Alicante A little bit further, particularly if you are with children, youshould visit the nativity scene museum at San Augustin Street. Ihave to admit it is a rather strange feeling to watch Christmascrips around the summer time, but it’s worth it. The museumcontains such a variety of hundreds of different scenes andfigures from all over the world, that it will impress everyvisitor. As entrance is free, just have a look – you will notregret it. Just around the corner from the nativity museum, you will findthe concathedral of San Nicolas de Bari. With the neighbour cityof Orihuela being the residence of the bishop of the province,Alicante got a “sub-cathedral” granted by Pope John XXIII in1959. With an impressive 45 metre high blue dome theconcathedral the building is one of the landmarks of Alicante.At one of the two entrances you will find a sculpture of theholy Nicolas done in black marble. Just when you walk out of the old city centre of Alicante andpass the rather modern street of Rambla de Mendez Nunez, youshould enter the Avenida Del Teatro. There you will findAlicante’s huge theatre with massive roman style columns guidingthe entrance. Just the right place for a pleasant eveningentertainment, by the way. Walking down in the harbourdirection, you will find the Plaza Nueva Alicante. Here you willfind a little aquarium within lovely plaza. The modern displaysits within palm trees and an alley. Just the right place tohave a break in one of the bars around, enjoying the sun. Alicante Bars and Parks I think now is the best time to take a break from ourtraditional Alicante sightseeing tour and leave the path ofhistoric buildings and museums. There are so many differentchurches, museums and places particularly around the old citycentre, which you can spend many days discovering them. However,as you might visit the city during the rather hot summer monthsallow me to have a little step back and go up to the Plaza de C.Sotelo. The lovely garden is the ideal rest place and the best startingpoint for a little shopping tour in Alicante. Right at theopposite you will find the El Corte Ingles, the famous Spanishdepartment store chain with an impressive outlet. Not that youmight just go there for shopping, but as it is air-conditionedit might just be the right thing to “cool things down” a little.So after a nice “shopping-rest” just coming out of the El CorteIngles, we walk the Avenida Doctor Gadea down to the harbourarea. Next to statue of D. Eleuterio Maisonnave former minister ofstate and famous sun of the city of Alicante, the Avenida guidesyou down to the harbour with beautiful flowers along the way. Itis this kind of alleys you find all around Alicante and make thecity such a wonderful place for a walk around. The city is fullwith peaceful places and gardens its all up to you if you prefergoing for the quiet site of Alicante. Down the Avenida DoctorGandea we reach the harbour area again. Before turning left to where we came from, you should visit thePanoramis shopping mall directly at the harbour. Just when yougo there you will pass the Real Club de Regatas – the royalregatta club. If you are lucky you mind even see members of theSpanish royal family, who sometimes spend some time here.Similar to an American style shopping mall, the Panoramis offersyou a breathtaking view over the Alicante harbour area. With ahuge variety of different restaurants, most of them with perfectview over the city, it is a lovely point of reference for everywalk around the city. Finally we turn back to the area around the Melia Hotel, wherewe started our walk through Alicante. Along the harbour at thePaseo Explanada de Espana our way takes us in between an alleyof palm trees right back. Further sightseeing tips on Alicante Having completed more or less our walk through Alicante – whichmight take anything in between 4 to 6 hours, there are obviouslymany more things to see and visit around this impressive city.Among others you could go up the castle of Santa Barbara (takethe car to get there if it’s too hot), see the bullfighting ringor visit the Park Ruiz de Alda north of Alicante just to name aview. However you might reconsider your plans when you areactually visiting the Costa Blanca area, because aboveeverything stands usually the beach, the sand and the sea.
About the author:Robert Carlton lives with his valencian wife and daughter in theAlicante suburb ofSan Joan. Running a marketing company he started setting up awebsite for some of his international customers visiting him.You can reach him via his website http://www.alicante-spain.com | 