Alicante Day 1

Time for another wee Spanish city break. Just 2 nights this time but it's just good to get away. Our flight was mid afternoon from Prestwick and went smoothly, it was super busy though. We arrived at Alicante at 1920 due to the time difference so we just wanted to get into town as quickly as possible. Unfortunately at least 3 other planes landed at the same time so the passport queue was massive. They have the new machines instead of people and it wasn't going smoothly. We queued for about 20 mins then they gave up and just decided to wave everyone through barely glancing at their passports. Hurrah! We decided just to get a taxi into town to save time. It only took about 10 mins whereas the bus takes 40 apparently. €20 well spent!

We then checked into our hotel and it is lovely. We're on the 9th floor with a corner window. The market is directly below us but we can also see the mountains,  the castle, the cathedral and the sea. We didn't linger long in the room, we had a city to see.

It was only 2025 when we left so a little early for dinner so we decided to grab a couple of tapas first. We managed to snag the last table outside Lizarron on la rambla and quickly ordered some beers. The way this place works is you help yourself to cold food and they bring hot food round and you grab what you want and at the end they count your toothpicks to see how much you owe. The food was really nice so we ended up eating more there than we'd planned. My favourite was a piece of bread topped with beef and caramelised onions, the chorizo was delicious too.

We eventually decided to push on and went a wee wander in the old town, taking in the cathedral and a few other sights. The tapas place we headed to was packed out so we decided to save it for another night. We decided to go to D'tablas which had good reviews on TripAdvisor and is super cheap. 60c for a wee beer and 90c for a tapa. Again they bring stuff round and you grab what you want, this time they count the boards that the tapas come on - some people had pretty impressive jenga like towers. It was packed but we managed to grab a space at the bar then accidentally ate loads more. And drank loads more. My favourite was cubes of fried cheese on bread with tomato jam, there was also a wee beef stew which was rammed full of beef and for 90c was ridiculous. At the end they brought round wee puddings and I had one with 2 profiteroles and k had a chocolate tart thing.

We headed into the night a little tipsy and decided to see the front. Even though it was after 11 the wee stalls along the esplanade were still open so we had a wee stroll looking at them then we went down the marina and checked out the pirate ship docked there. We got back to the hotel at about midnight and it was still 26 degrees so I was very glad of the air con in the room.

It's now 8am the next morn and k is sleeping but we need to get out reasonably early before it gets too hot.