Alicante, Spain

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After a scenic 5 hour train ride from Barcelona along the southern coast of Spain, we arrived in Alicante located on what's know as the White Coast (Costa Blanco) where our seaside condo rental awaited us. The very spacious 3 bedroom 2 bathroom living space was accented by a fantastic partially covered patio overlooking the Mediterranean. The Ingrahams and the Skinners settled into our new space as did Barb and I. This whole area of Spain is lined with thousands of condos and apartments, many which serve as vacation rentals. Again, being just ahead of the tourist season the crowds were minimal and each and every day we awoke to spectacular views of the Mediterranean. Jeff particularly enjoyed "bird watching", another term for enjoying the views of the nude beaches from our balcony 😊

Alicante is full of historic sights, including yet another hilltop fortress which overlooks the old part of the city. Unlike the majority of the U.S., European cities are served by very efficient mass transit systems which we rode daily to and from downtown Alicante. After our fun experience on the Segway tour in Barcelona we found one in Alicante which took us down the main promenade and harbor area. Our guide even took us back up the hill to the fortress overlooking the city since we were, by now, all experienced Segway operators!

Our 7 days in Alicante seemed to fly by amidst many hours of relaxing on the patio reading books and napping. Traci spent many hours snorkeling and telling us about the marine life she observed, including a large octopus! Dinners were filled with local cuisine like Paella (a rice,meat, and veggie dish), some great seafood, and of course my favorite, pizza! One day in particular, I decided to stay in the condo for the day while everyone went exploring. I went to the closest restaurant for lunch, where we had dined before, and ordered up my favorite (pizza of course). I could only eat about half of it so I asked the waiter for "take away", carton, box, foil, etc. My Spanish was about as good as his English as he whisked away my half eaten lunch with a smile and quickly dumped it in the trash 😞 Lesson learned....I know have a language translator program installed on the IPhone that Jeff loaned me!

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