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Published: October 21st 2022
Postcard Pic
Alicante's city beach with the Santa Barbara Castle lording over it.After kicking off the summer with a trip to
Italy, I didn't really have any further travel plans and thus I wasn’t expecting to be writing again so soon - but here we are! Life has a habit of keeping you on your toes.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the world of work forever by forcing millions of office workers to work remotely and for many companies across the globe, this forced experiment proved to be a huge success, as employers realised that productivity could be maintained or even improved, and employees realised that they really didn't need to be in the office every day anymore - that work could now be much more flexible and convenient than ever before.
I am fortunate enough to be working for a company that has not just embraced remote working, but have taken things even further by introducing a four-day week for all full-time employees. The very generous remote working policy means that no-one is obligated to come into the office anymore; meaning that if you want, you can work remotely 100%!o(MISSING)f the time. Your physical location now scarcely matters.
Although I can pretty much work from literally anywhere in the world,
Marina
The path running alongside Alicante's massive marina. I do enjoy living in Berlin so am happy to stay here for the foreseeable future; and I do actually enjoy going into the office a couple of times a week to see colleagues in-person (even if hardly anyone shows up there anymore). But one possibility that I can now take advantage of is the ability to work temporarily from somewhere else; with three-day weekends giving me ample time to explore a particular destination, I no longer necessarily have to take days off to visit a place anymore - I can simply just work from there, for as long as I want. You could call this a "working holiday".
My company has always been pretty progressive and were planning to introduce remote working and a four-day week anyway, but the pandemic merely accelerated the process. In my opinion, this is future of work and there ain't no stopping it.
I would love to have been able to do working holidays and digital nomad stints when I was younger, but I might as well make the most of it now. Scott, Vinny and I were originally thinking about working for a week in a villa in Mallorca, but it would
Falla
A "falla" in the main square of Sant Vicent del Raspeig. These monuments get burned down at the end of the week-long fallas festival. have been way too expensive. So when Scott - who now lives in Spain - instead invited me to stay with him for a week in sunny Alicante, I jumped at the chance to have a holiday without using up any leave. Britta was going to be on holiday with a friend for a couple of weeks at the same time, so I thought that I might as well.
This isn't the first time I have written about a work trip in this blog, but this is certainly the first time I have written about one quite like this.
I have also written about
Valencia before, which is where I was flying into, with this visit being in fact, my third to the city.
With so many airports across Europe short of staff after the pandemic, I was a little worried about delays at the airport or even my flight getting cancelled. But other than a long wait at security, it was relatively painless at Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
I had to change planes in Zurich, which I had also done before; I remember the last time I did this, my friends and I had to sprint between gates. This
Old Town Alicante
Pleasant square in the old (but heavily refurbished) town of Alicante. time, it was much more relaxed, as I literally got off one plane and walked straight onto another. You could say it worked like Swiss clockwork.
Although I didn't have to pay for my accommodation down in Alicante, I still had to pay for a couple of nights in Valencia, as well as for the flights, both of which were relatively expensive. Even a dorm bed in a hostel costs around 50€ a night at the moment, not helped by midsummer prices and a general hike in inflation thanks to Putin's war in Ukraine. I'm past sleeping in dorms now - so now I have to fork out for hotels!
Being back in Spain for
the first time in six years…it still feels the same! One thing that is not the same however, is my Spanish; I can remember how to put sentences together but have forgotten a lot of the words including some of the most basic ones! I can still understand it and read it fairly well, though. My Spanish has also been replaced by German to an extent and in German I have the opposite problem; I know a lot of words but struggle to put them together! It’ll be interesting
Alleyway
A scenic alleyway in Alicante's old town. to see how much Spanish I can get back over the next week.
Arriving on a Friday afternoon in Valencia, I had the rest of the afternoon and the evening to kill by myself. Getting around the city, the annoyingly infrequent and not-well-connected public transport system brought back memories of my first visit here. Let's say that there were a few long waits and long walks. I wish I had brought my bike, as Valencia has become well set up for them!
But the most striking thing about my return to Valencia was the heat. It was so humid as well, way more humid than Berlin - temperatures in the mid to low thirties in this humidity is not fun. Although in saying that, it still wasn't as bad as it is in Malaysia and South East Asia.
I ended my first day back in Valencia with a cold beer and a
paella down by the beach. It was great to be back in Spain.
It was also great to see Scott again!
He came up to Valencia the next day, because he had never been and wanted to check the city out. Despite having been here a couple
Paint A Picture
View from beachside cafe we chilled at in Altea. of times however, I found myself struggling to remember much of what I saw or where everything was (the beach, the old town and the city's famous group of hyper-futuristic buildings apart).
We started back at the beach where we had black paella at a famous
paelleria, before wandering through the maritime neighbourhood directly behind the beach, back to the hotel. Perhaps with good reason, the city is a ghost town in the heat of the afternoon; Scott’s theory behind the
siesta is that it originated because it is simply too hot to be out and about in the middle of a Spanish summer afternoon and therefore, there is simply no point in opening up for customers because there ain't none.
In the evening we walked around the old town with its atmospheric alleyways, chilled bars and cool
bodegas. There is also a lot of very impressive street art in the old town. We happened upon a procession celebrating the Virgen de Carmen - the Spanish really do take their Christianity seriously. It reminded me of the processions I saw when I was in
Malaga. Then thanks to the Valencian public transport closing ridiculously early and a lack of taxis
Plaza de Quijano
Cool little square in Alicante's old town. or Uber, we took a thirty-five minute walk back to the hotel. At least the pedestrian crossing lights are always green here for some reason. I envied the many people who had their own electric scooters - although the city is well set up for bikes, cycling in this heat would ensure you worked up a sweat pretty quick, so having an e-scooter makes sense. They didn't seem that sophisticated either, which makes me think that they are perhaps not too expensive to buy here. Rows of e-scooters for hire that blight many a European city were conspicuous by their absence.
My third impressions of Valencia pretty much mimicked my impressions of the city from my last visits; a nice enough place to live or visit, but there would probably be other places in Spain or indeed elsewhere that I prefer.
The next day, we took the scenic route down to Alicante, doing a tiki-tour of the Costa Blanca.
Getting off a one-hour bus, our first stop was Denia, which at first sight seemed like your typical foreigner-infested Spanish beach town; the large marina, English signage and beachfront high-rises certainly gave off that impression. It did actually however, have
Denia
Old town of Denia. quite a charming old town which looked like it would have a lively yet casual vibe at night. The beach was packed and we were getting pretty cooked in the midday sun. Getting in the water for the first time in over two years was amazing though, and such a relief from the heat, despite the relatively shallow and warm Mediterranean water; I was just happy to be back in the sea again, so I wasn't really complaining!
A replacement bus service then took us to start of a surprisingly scenic train ride along the coast down to Altea, our next stop; the train was very much like the Circumvesuviana that Britta and I caught from Naples down to Sorrento, stopping at many a small town and village along the way.
When we arrived at Altea, we had to do a little bit of a hike along the highway, under the baking sun, down to the beach. What greeted us when we got there however, was wonderful; a brillant blue sea and a beach that hardly had anyone on it. However, we soon discovered why there were so few people - the beach was rocky. While most people prefer
Altea
The second town we stopped at on the way to Alicante probably had the best beach I visited on my "working holiday". the softness of sand, rocky beaches are completely fine for me and even desirable if the rocks are small enough. Little pebbles can be actually be nice and therapeutic when you lie on them, shaping themselves to your body like memory foam. The rocks were just about small enough here and I was thankful not to have sand all over me.
Before throwing down our towels, we came across a shaded patio with a painting-like view of the sea, where we decided to have a refreshment in our idyllic surrounds. It was definitely one of those life-is-good moments.
The water was much cooler and refreshing at Altea too, worth hitting your feet on the rocks while getting into the water. I much preferred Altea’s beach to Denia's, especially with the more forgiving late afternoon sun. The town itself isn’t quite as charming, with rows of hotels and (admittedly nice looking) modern condominiums lining the beach.
Back on to the train, our next stop was Benidorm - the town famous for its annual invasion by drunk British tourists and its loose and lively nightlife. We didn’t really want to hang around in what is known as a package holiday hell,
Contemporary Spanish Aesthetic
Sant Vicent del Raspeig had loads of residential buildings of this style. but did spend a half hour there getting more refreshments and waiting for a less crowded train down to Alicante. Benidorm definitely seemed like the biggest and most bustling of all the towns that we had visited along the coast - the high-rises gave it a sort-of Vegas-by-the-sea vibe.
Continuing onwards, the last leg of our train journey provided a decent snapshot of the remaining beaches and towns along the Costa Blanca - perhaps I might come back to some of them later in the week.
An hour and a half later, we finally arrived in Scott’s new home town of Sant Vicent del Raspeig. A pleasant town, Sant Vicent brought back memories of the cartoon illustrations of contemporary Spain from the Spanish textbooks I studied while in
Barcelona. It’s quite hard to describe the aesthetic but it is one that reminds me of either Spain or Malaysia for some reason. Think lots of contemporary apartment blocks made of clay-coloured brick or peach coloured stucco, all with balconies with green awnings, built in the 70s or 80s.
We happened to arrive in time for the town's very own evening Virgen de Carmen procession, watching proceedings while munching on kebabs
Virgen de Carmen
We caught a bit of Sant Vicent del Raspeig's Virgen de Carmen procession. alfresco.
I did notice that I was looked at quite a bit in Sant Vicent - I guess I’m an unusual sight around town here. Over my travels, I have gotten used to being rather conspicuous, but I thought that I could detect a slight sense of menace with the looks I was getting. I very much hope my instincts were wrong, but if they were not, then the whole situation is rather unfortunate.
It might now be time for a short recap on how I know Scott.
He first appeared
in this entry, which was the first time I had seen him in about seventeen years (in Skopje, (North) Macedonia, of all places). Incidentally, it was around the same time as he met his current girlfriend Valentina, who he is sharing the apartment here in Sant Vicent with. The meeting in Skopje then helped to precipitate my move to Berlin, where he helped me to settle in and we even went on a few trips together (
Nicosia,
Northern Cyprus,
Beirut and
Western Cyprus). He has only just recently moved to Sant Vicent with Valentina, so he knew the town and Alicante about as well as I did!
I then spent the
Promenade
Alicante's "La Rambla" near its city beach. next few days working from Scott and Valentina's apartment. Valentina was away on holiday in
Marrakesh, so I was lucky enough to have use of her desk and monitor, in an office that doubled up as my bedroom. Thankfully, I didn't have the busiest of work weeks and it was nice to have a change of work environment for a few days, although the heat did make concentration a challenge at times!
During the week, Scott and I did manage to head into Alicante a couple of times, which takes about half-an-hour on the tram. My first impressions of Alicante was that it was pretty unremarkable with the downtown area looking like it could be any contemporary downtown area, including my home city of Auckland. But nearer towards the city beach is a mostly pedestrianised network of alleys, which makes up Alicante’s rather charming old town, some of which is built on to the hill atop which sits the old city fortress. There is a pleasant La Rambla-like promenade which runs alongside the sizeable marina, where many a tourist trap restaurant pulls in the swathes of foreigners coming back from the beach.
On one of the evenings we
La Taberna Salamanca
This restaurant we ate at in downtown Alicante had a cool aesthetic and good food to boot. spent in Alicante, we managed to find a nice restaurant one block back from the promenade where we enjoyed some Salamancan cuisine, although I couldn’t resist the grilled
pulpo gallego. Garlic fried Salamancan pork cheek that came with freshly toasted bread - with which you could soak up the oil to make your own garlic bread - was also delicious. It was all washed down by a humongous glass of sangria. We appreciated the two complimentary shots of limoncello slushies at the end, which were probably given to us because we were able to help out the waitress by speaking passable, yet confidently delivered Spanish (drinking sangria helps!). I really do feel that my Spanish is hidden in a dark corner of my brain, it just takes some time for me to find the words (which is often not fast enough). I still feel more confident about speaking Spanish than German!
That evening, we decided to head back home around 11pm, only to find that we had missed the last tram; we then walked a bit to the right bus stop only to find we had missed the last bus; taxis were nowhere to be seen which left us with
Scenic Train Ride
On the coastal train down the Costa Blanca between Gato and Altea. just one option - an hour’s walk back to Sant Vicent. It is not the first long and drunkenly brave walk I have done in my life, but it was still exasperatingly annoying. We were also caught out in Valencia in terms of missing the last train; living in bigger cities like London and Berlin had got me used to a more comprehensive and frequent public transport service. I understand why the service here is so limited, but it didn’t make things any less frustrating.
During the second half of the week, Sant Vicent happened to be having their own “Fallas” Festival.
My second trip to Valencia in 2010, was to attend a festival known as
Las Fallas, which is a celebration of Saint Joseph. Massive monuments resembling cartoons and caricatures are built for the festival which can be up to two-to-three storeys high and at the end of the festival, the monuments are all burnt down. For a week, there are nightly street parties in each neighbourhood and fireworks and firecrackers are let off at all hours of the day and night throughout. It is super-fun if you're out partying and I had an amazing time in Valencia
Fallas Party
Street party just around the corner from the apartment in Sant Vicent del Raspeig. back in 2010; it is not so fun when you're older and it's hot and you're trying to get to sleep.
We just so happened to have one of the nightly street parties just around the corner from us, which treated us to booming music until about 3am. The street party itself looked like it required a ticket or an entry fee to get in, where once inside you could enjoy kids entertainment, a d-floor and a setup of tables where guests could enjoy a sit down meal with loads of local families. The whole thing looked like it was someone's wedding.
The constant fireworks and firecrackers also set off the town's dogs, who must absolutely hate this time of year, poor things. From what we saw on the streets, these dogs are probably all tiny handbag ones, which the Spanish seem to have a weird obsession with. I do like dogs - but can't really stand tiny yappy ones.
On our second visit to downtown Alicante, we went to check out the city beach. The beach itself isn't the greatest - it's way too crowded and the water looks a little dirty - but it does a present
Life Is Good
View out to sea from the rocky beach in Altea. one with a brilliant postcard photograph, with the old fortress lording over the beach from behind. Having not seen the ocean for a couple of years, it was really nice being by the water…when you can find peace and quiet away from the crowds, that is.
On our way back to Sant Vicent, the tram was rammed with seemingly all the teenagers in the region on their way to a party there - the girls were all dolled up and we wondered where everyone was heading; it certainly wouldn't have been the street party around the corner from us, surely (it wasn't).
We did manage to “enjoy” the festivities one night once Valentina had arrived back from holiday however, as we chilled on the apartment balcony, listening to cheesy Spanish dance music being blasted out from the street party, sipping gin and tonics while having Valentina regale us with stories from Morocco.
On my second and last weekend in Spain, Scott and I hit Playa San Juan a couple of times, which is the upmarket side of Alicante and which has a very decent beach! The beach extends a long way up the coast and so there was a
Playa San Juan
Beach in the upmarket outskirts of Alicante. lot more space here than at Alicante's city beach. The water was a bit too warm though and I still prefer Altea as my favourite of all the beaches I visited on this trip. Hiring an apartment in one of the many flash apartment block towers in Playa San Juan would be quite nice though - I was certainly envying the families enjoying the private swimming pools at the bottom of their apartment complexes.
Going back to Sant Vicent from the Playa San Juan on Sunday, we had to endure one last set of crammed trams; combined with the long waits, I have not really enjoyed taking the public transport here in Alicante.
And that pretty much concluded my working holiday.
It was great to have a change of scene and to experience some proper heat and beaches this summer. A big thanks has to go to Scott and Valentina for putting me up and showing me around. Based on this experience, I would definitely do another "working holiday" like this again. A place right next to the beach would be a dream...
Hasta luego,
Derek
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Valencia
I really enjoyed this blog. And like you, my very limited Spanish seems to get magically better with sangria! It must be a thing :)