May 8 We're in Alicante Spain!

 The town our apartment is in is El Campello which is just outside of the city of Alicante in the Provence of Alicante.  We arrived in Madrid on Friday afternoon and spent the night at a hotel near the airport.  Saturday morning we went back to the airport to pick up our rental car and drive to El Campello.  You can read about our first 24 hours in Spain on my husbands blog here:  http://de-intimidator.blogspot.com/

We met Anna at the front of the gate into our apartment complex.  She got us through the gate and situated in out apartment.  We learned that since it is not summer yet (summer is July and August only)  we are still on the winter schedule here in El Campello.  So the grocery stores would be closed on Sundays.  If we wanted to buy any groceries we would have to get there asap.  There is a smallish grocery store fairly close to us called Hiperber with no parking available.  There is another slightly larger store, the Mercadoua, a little further away that has underground parking.  And the third option is the Carrefour  which is the largest of all, which has to be driven to and has plenty of parking above ground.

We were too tired to walk and our first shopping would be a large one.  No one told us we could not drink the tap water at the hotel in Madrid - so we did with no bad repercussions.  But here we were told that (with a look of shock!) "Of course no one drinks the tap water here.  Everyone buys bottled water!"  So that means lugging huge bottles of water to and from the store.  

It was not difficult to drive out our gate onto the main road and several blocks down the road to the Mercadoua.  Finding the parking garage took a little time as the entrance was actually on a side street. But traffic circles are frequent and make it easy to turn around.  We were congratulating ourselves on our find until we realized that the road down to the underground parking lot was actually two way and our car was taking up the whole road!  Luckily no one was leaving and we were able to make it down safely.  Now we fully realized that we were in Europe!  The parking spaces were extremely small.  Every parking spot had a pole obstacle on one side or the other and the one way drive was very narrow.  In fact there was one corner were every car we saw had to make at least a 3 point turn to get around it.  And that is with all those parking spots empty!  There were so few cars in the lot that some cars were parked cross wise on 2-3 parking spots!  I think we were both convinced that if we have to do another huge shopping we will opt for the Carrefour!

We had forgotten to bring our shopping bags from home - so the first thing into the shopping cart went 3 large plastic shopping bags.  We will add them to our eclectic collection of shopping bags from around the world, including New Zealand.  The rest of the shopping went smoothly.  We only went home with one wrong item.  We bought another bottle of hand wash instead of the hand lotion we wanted.  We also bought enough cheese, pate, ham and bread for a quick picnic meal for the evening.  We did not need the challenge of cooking on our first night here.

Sunday morning I slept late - in spite of the hard bed and the lumps they call pillows in Europe!  We are now in the same time zone as Alexis is in Denmark.  Stephanie, in CA is 9 hours behind us and Lisa (Shanghai) is 7 hours ahead of us.  We were able to skype with 2 out of 3 daughters.  Stef had an event to go to that lasted beyond our bedtime.  

It rained in the morning, but later the sun came out a little.  We are on the tenth floor - and so have good views in spite of being a ways from the water.

View from my balcony.  There is a lot of empty space next to us.  some taken up by this beach parking lot.  There are also some walking paths.

The front open area has windows on two sides - both with good views.  The dining table in the front.  Behind is "Rocking chair" corner and in back of that the sofa and two recliners.  

The swimming pool and tennis courts for our complex.  The gate at the far end is how you leave or enter.  It is still quite chilly for the pool or beach.  But some brave souls still make the attempt.  If you turn right out of the gate you there are 4 restaurants in a row.  The first is Chinese (Hong Kong), next a Spanish restaurant, a French restaurant and an Italian/pizzeria.  

Views down to the right and back of us.

My bedroom with balcony and views.

The tiny kitchen - only efficient for one at a time.  Here is the chef at work!

The bathroom

The shower is super tiny and quite slippery - we plan to buy a mat for it.

In the late afternoon we took a walk along the beach.  There is a very nice walkway that runs about 16 Kilometers along the shore.  

Like most beach towns there is a plethora of restaurant choices.