Highlights from Alicante

After a few days in Madrid, we made our way to Alicante. Man, was it good to see more friends and introduce Mike to life in Alicante! Alicante was a little crazier than normal in that it was during a time of festival. Mike got a good taste of Spanish night life. He had to get used to staying up late and getting up practically in the afternoon.

Some of the things we saw and did in Alicante:

• Learned a lot of new Spanish words, as I was forced to speak in Spanish/translate a lot. Plus, my friends really helped push me to learn more.
• Ate a lot of good food
• Met up with lots of friends after 11 years
• Went to Hogueras events: mascleta & parades
• The beach
• Paella at Casa Domingo
• Castillo de Santa Bárbara
• Bodega: Francisco Gómez
• Reunion dinner at David & Natalia's flat
• Port
• MARQ: museo de arquelogía
• Looking at the different monuments created & visiting the Hogueras museum

I had remembered the Hogueras festival differently from 11 years ago so we had plans to leave in the middle of the festival, thus missing the last day of the festival when they burn all of the monuments. We had reservations to go to La Alhambra in Granada, so we ended up leaving mid-week, going to Granada, and then returning to Alicante to be present for the Cremada. I'm so glad that our plans were pretty flexible and that we could come back to experience the last night with friends.

** As always, you can click on the collage/pic to see a bigger version of it. :)**

Great friends

Paella at Casa Domingo

Hanging out before heading to the beach

At the beach. We introduced our friends to the art of jumping pictures. They had seen the one of us jumping on the beach in New Zealand and thought that was so cool, so wanted to do their own one in Alicante. :)

Castillo de Santa Bárbara

La Bodega

La Bodega. I love this series of pictures; they make me laugh every single freakin' time because Mike is showing us his booty practically the whole time. In his defense, he didn't know that a series of 9 pics was going to be taken and that we were only planning on doing a booty picture 1-2 times. Pobre Mike.

La bodega

A reunion of HS friends at David & Natalia's place. It had really been about 10 years since all of them had been together. Unfortunately, we were missing Silvia, who was in Madrid. :(

Late night/early morning shananigans.

Mike got to try horchata and hang out with David's little birdy. The other two pics are views from the great terraza that David & Natalia have.

Hogueras. They spend practically all year planning for this festival, all for it to end quite quickly. They create these huge monuments to enter in to a competition and then on the last night there's the cremada, where they burn them all.

The beginning of the cremada. This was the first hoguera to be burned. In the above collage, it was the one in the bottom left corner that looks like a palm tree.

This was Natalia's sector's hoguera.

It almost looks like riots. The people scream to be sprayed by the fire hoses to cool down.

Last night

Trying to get a good view and not get soaked by the fire hoses.

Last night... out dancing after the cremada

My love.

We had such a great time. Thanks for hosting us, David & Natalia!