I took my morning walk around sunrise. As the days are shortening up sunrise is around 8 am. The campground is located next to the beach and I got to watch a beautiful sunrise as an unexpected treat.
Ton loves European markets, if a town we are visiting has one it is on our agenda to visit. Today we shifted south to Alicante which is a resort town known for its night life and as a vacation place for northern Europeans. It is not known for its market.
Ton’s ideal market is an interesting building selling a variety of things, with a few food offerings, and maybe a tourist store or two. She mentioned that Alicante had a market, and luckily it had a tram stop on the line we were going to take into the town from the campground. So it became our first stop.
When we walked up to the market it was in a nice early 20th century building. There were a lot of people going in and out. When we entered without any expectations we walked into a very large market with a great variety of foods on sale. There were fruit stands, bakery stands, butchers, fish mongers, and people selling local wines and liquors. Around the edges were small food stands selling local specialties. It sprawled over two floors and Ton was in heaven.
About half way through Ton said that this is the best market we have visited in Europe. What really made it perfect was that it was very busy, and the customers were mostly locals shopping for their homes. It gives the market a totally different atmosphere. There were a few tourists mixed in like us but they were not treated as pests, but were also made to feel welcome.
Ton spends a lot of time researching places to visit when we head to a new town. In addition to the things to see she always has a couple of places to eat on the list. Today’s choice was really memorable. It was just down the street from the market, and when we first walked up we almost passed it by. We stopped and looked at the menu, and then looked inside. Sometimes a place that looks tiny from the road is actually bigger than it looks, but in the case of this Cerveceria it was indeed tiny. It had about 8 stools at a bar and another 4 strolls along a back wall, there were also two stand-up tables on the sidewalk where you could order through a window. We looked in and it was packed. We decided to try somewhere else when a waitress appeared on the sidewalk and said she had a spot for us. So we headed in.
The atmosphere was informal as people were perched on stools or standing leaning on the bar. Drinks and food were passed across the bar with the help of patrons. It lead to a lot of discussion about what are you eating, or what wine is that. We have been to a lot of these informal tiny places this trip and have really enjoyed ourselves. The chef here performed miracles with a grill and panini machine. We had some of the best Tapas we have had on this trip. The guy was a wonderful cook and friendly. The service was quick and delivered with humor. And we enjoyed a friendly conversation with a Swedish/English couple who were just as impressed as we were. We ended up lingering here much longer than we planned as we kept seeing new Tapas that we wanted to try.
At this point we had been in Alicante for about 3 hours and hadn’t really explored the city. Ton gave me a street to find and told me it was the mushroom street. When we got there it was indeed a street full of giant plastic mushrooms. They were whimsical, I don’t know if there is a story behind them, or someone just said why don’t we order a bunch of giant plastic mushrooms and stick them on this street, and the city council said sure. I hope it was the latter. Above the street there were also Christmas decorations, we had a debate whether they were early (my theory), or they just left them up year round (Tons theory). Either way it added to the fun of our walk.
As I said yesterday the Spanish excel at pedestrian streets. Alicante had one of the best waterfront promenades we have ever seen. I can imagine on a normal night it will be packed about 7pm when the Spanish families go out for their evening walks. I said normal night because as we were walking you could begin to see the thunderheads forming over the ocean so we had to cut our wonderful day in Alicante short to get home before the storms came through.
