The grey weather blew thru overnight and we woke up to a cool morning with very blue skies. We headed down to the bus stop about 10:30 and joined three other couples from the campground at the bus stop. The bus ride to town was uneventful.
Our first stop for the day was the castle. Like almost all towns here and in much of Europe Denia started out as a Roman settlement and then changed hands many times in its history. The castle was built by Moors, but in this case Denia came under two different Moorish rulers during its history.
One of the most interesting things about the castle was a tunnel built under the castle in 1936 and 1937. Denia was a Republican town in the Spanish Civil War and an important port and manufacturing site. It was bombed several times by Italian bombers under command of the Fascist forces. It was also bombarded by a Fascist naval cruiser. To protect the citizens from the bombings and the naval bombardments the city constructed several shelters including the tunnel under the old castle. After Denia was captured by the Fascists the entrances to the tunnels were sealed. As the town expanded in the 1960’s the tunnel was reopened to give the citizens of the town a short cut from the old town to the new town.
We enjoyed climbing the walls of the castle, and taking in the panoramic view of the town and the surrounding countryside. There were a couple of small museums on the ground that we also spent some time in.
Ton was most excited to visit the central market; she had read that it had a good selection of goods and we were hoping to get a couple of gourmet items. The market was nice but Ton was disappointed with the selection and we ended up leaving with nothing.
After the market we embarked on what we had really come to Denia for which was lunch. One local guide said that you could eat out every single day of the year in Denia and never repeat a restaurant. I can’t confirm that, but for a relatively small town it does have a tremendous amount of restaurants and bars.
The town is known for the number of bars that specialize in vermouth which Ton likes and I love so she had identified a bar for us to try vermouth. Casa Benjamin has been in business since 1906 and their vermouth was outstanding.
She had picked out three restaurants for me to select from for lunch, but unfortunately they were all closed on Mondays. Instead we went to an area called the Magazinos that had 2 big restaurants and many small restaurants. We walked thru and surveyed our options before selecting the major restaurant. We ordered a local rice specialty which is a kind of poor mans Paella. This time we had beer with our meal.
For once a Spanish lunch hadn’t filled us completely so after spending some more time walking the town we headed to a wine bar. In the wine bar we ordered a tapa with some local wine to wash it down. We hadn’t planned on an afternoon of drinking but a combination of good weather, a nice town, and a little bit of remorse about the trip coming to an end encouraged us to get our moneys worth out of the day.
It is sometimes a small world. When we turned up at the bus stop to head back to the campground one of the couples from the morning was also there. They came up to me and asked about the bus. We began conversing and they were a couple of Dutch sisters. They asked where we were from and I told them. As the conversation continued all three of us began to feel some Deja vu. When Ton joined we all remembered that we had run into them in the spring waiting for the bus back to the campground in Zaragoza on good Friday. We spent the rest of the wait catching each other up on our activities since our last meeting, like old friends do. It is indeed a small world at times.