Alicante Blog- Third Installment

Well the plan to write a weekly blog has somewhat failed seeing as I am writing this blog on the 26th February. I am going to blame the gap in the entries to the work hard, play harder attitude we have had to adopt to get us through.

Carnival

From Friday 8th-Tuesday 12thFebruary Alicante was celebrating one of several Carnivals which send the city into frenzy. My carnival experience started on Saturday 9thby carefully selecting my fancy dress costume for the party, well by carefully I mean looking for the cheapest that would keep me slightly warm in the Alicante winter. A wee Julius Caesar number did just fine.

Dressed in my toga, Peter in his priest outfit and Lewis masked up as Spiderman we headed round to a friend’s flat for a few pre-bevvies before we hit the streets, where the police would be turning a blind eye to any drinking that would take place. It wasn’t so much as turning a blind eye as not having a chance in hell in dealing with everyone. I hadn’t quite expected to see the entire esplanade jam-packed with people, all in fancy dress. Mario and Luigi, jellyfish, a variety of Heinz sauces and ladybirds were amongst some of the costumes we passed as we squeezed our way through the crowd.

After the beer ran out we were moving from the esplanade to the barrio to hit some of the bars. I thought that maybe the crowd would thin out at some point, but I had been wrong. The half-mile walk to El Barrio was a case of fighting our way through a mass of people drinking and dancing to the music provided by several sets of massive speakers. Even all of the pubs and clubs were full of carnival-goers in their crazy attire. The whole city was buzzing.

Castle

Needless to say, after the festivities of the carnival, heads were a bit fuzzy in the morning/afternoon when the flat started to stir again. With temperature outside approaching 20°C we decided that we’d best do something other than mope around and nurse our hangovers.

Walking around Alicante city centre it is hard not to notice the castle which as I mentioned in my first blog, sits about 500ft above the city watching everything that goes on. It is hard to miss even at night when several giant floodlights pick it out of the darkness. Having seen the castle every day, for the first three weeks of our stay we had never visited it. What better cure for a hangover than a walk up a hill?

Having been accustomed to many hungover walks and crazy antics through the OTC, the climb was not as difficult as Pete and Lewis would have you believe. It took about 20 minutes to reach the top, including getting lost for a bit when we ran out of path.

The view from the castle was pretty spectacular. We were at the highest point for miles, higher than the monstrous high rise hotels which seem to plague the Spanish coast. The next highest points that we could see were the several mountain ranges surrounding Alicante. The natural beauty of the surrounding landscape was a stark contrast to the unorganised maze of the city beneath us. Nonetheless, my camera was still snapping pictures of the blue sky, mountains and sea.

Font Roja- 17/02/2013

The university in Alicante has a fantastic organisation, the CSI (Centro Superior de Idiomas) which organises language courses as well as weekend/day outings. Since arriving we had talked about going hill walking as there is an abundance of hills to be climbed around the Alicante region. When we finally got our acts together we signed up for the next hill-walking trip which turned out to be a day outing to Font Roja Natural Park.

The day it turned out was not just a walk in the hills, but more of a guided tour around the park which albeit was pretty hilly. Our guide for the day, I can’t remember his name, did not speak much English. His audience, a group of ERASMUS students, didn’t speak much Spanish. I like to think I understood some of what he was saying but there was something rather amusing about watching him explain all about the plants and the ancient way of life in the hills to a group of bemused looking students.

There were several points of interest dotted about the hills which our guide endeavoured to tell us about. He showed us the natural wells people had once used and the mud built domes which had traditionally been used to produce charcoal.

The most impressive however were the snow pits. These were pretty much gigantic holes, about 20 metres wide and between 20 and 50 metres deep, which were dug in the ground. The pits were used in the 19thcentury to store snow from the winter until the summer months when it was used to make ice cream and to chill drinks. The walls of the pits were lined with several metres of stones which would serve as insulation for the snow which was compacted in, layer by layer, by people trampling on top of it. Once the pit was full of compacted snow, layers of branched would be laid on top to provide further insulation. In past times there were also domed roofs over the pits but sadly there were no pits on our tour which still had roofs.

Despite a slight language barrier between our tour guide and us, it was a fantastic day out. It was nice to go for a walk in the hills in the sun and not have to change in and out of waterproofs every 10 minutes. I got back in the flat around 6 o'clock that night feeling quite satisfied, even if I was a wee bit sun burned.

Female company in the bachelor pad

After four weeks in Alicante with only emails and the occasional Skype between us, I was finally going to see my girlfriend, Kirsty, again. It was quite exciting to see her again as I was dying to show her all the new sights, sounds and tastes I had been experiencing for the last month.

I took a (somewhat cheeky) half day in order to meet Kirsty at the bus station where after a not-so-cheesy reunion we quickly ditched her bags in the flat and headed for tapas in one of my favourite tapas restaurants. For those of you who know me well, I love my food, so the idea of tapas is right up street, with lots of different dishes on display at the bar which you can help yourself to.

After a tapas lunch we had a stroll around the city where I showed her all of our haunts of the past month until it was time for dinner. Despite being in Spain, we opted for Italian. A nice little restaurant hidden at the bottom of El Barrio beside San Nicolas cathedral was just the thing for both us, really filling us up and preparing us for the night to come.

Friday night was not much different to any other, it was fiesta time. Kirsty was quickly introduced to craziness of Alicante night life when the first party we arrived at was promptly shut down by the police. We moved to the next party until about half past 2 when we finally decided to go out. Two clubs later we eventually arrived back at the flat at 5am. It had been a 27 hour day for Kirsty.

The rest of the weekend passed far too quickly for my liking. The original plan of travelling to Calpe, a picturesque little town further up the coast, had been thwarted by a torrential downpour. We opted instead for a lunch time Dominos pizza followed by a trip to the castle once the weather cleared.

Tuesday morning regrettably finally arrived and I had to say goodbye to Kirsty for another few weeks. My thinking was that it wouldn’t be too bad if the next weekend she come out was as good as the first one.