May 10 Market Day and Ocean Views

 Wednesday there is a farmers market in El Campello.  We thought there were two markets and one was close to us - but the one we found was quite a ways away.  Michael had brought a plastic shopping bag - next time we will bring the shopping trolley that comes with the apartment.  Our purchases proved a little more heavy than we expected.  Everyone seems to use a trolley and they compete for space with the strollers and wheelchairs in the narrow lanes between the fruit stands at the market.  The market is actually covered which surprised us.  But it will be great in case of rain.  You just get wet coming and going!

Even though we did not get to the market until after 11 am - there was still plenty of fruits and vegetables to chose from.

The area around us is known for its orange groves.  So the oranges are very good.

There were 3-4 stands selling olives and pickled things.  They were always crowded.  You could buy all kinds of nuts and sweets.  You could even get cheeses and sausages.  But no fish or meat products.  

On the walk home we took a different route.  and found another grocery store - The SuperCor               This was the biggest grocery store we have come across in El Campello. They even had a section selling fish!  We got some Dorado which Michael made for our late lunch.  It was delicious!

It has been warm but very windy today. Some time after 3pm I noticed some new entrants on the water.  I have seen paddle boarders before - but this was the first time I saw these guys out.  At first it was just three guys.  The blue guy, yellow/green guy and orange guy.  When I looked closer, I saw that each of them had a different twist on the "Sail" that they held.  These photos are all take from our tenth floor apartment several blocks from the beach.  So they have been cropped considerably.

Here you can notice that the waves don't seem to be that strong.  It all depends on the direction the wind is coming from.  And where the water breaks are located.  The beach right in front of us was very protected from today's wind.

Orange guy is shown here close to the shore.  It looks like his sail is attached to his board.  He went way out into the ocean to the point that he disappeared.  The other two guys just sailed back and forth in the protected area.

This guy with the clear/white sail showed up late in the game.  I think he came from the beach to the south of us beyond the south protective water break.

He came from somewhere near these beaches.  As you can see the waves are much stronger here.  We have walked beyond the corner above.  You come to a bridge that we did not walk across.  The "boardwalk continues over on the other side of it.  Some day we will explore it.

May 8 El Campello

 It has been a busy Monday.  This morning we needed to do a little shopping.  We took our cameras with us, but never took them out of our backpacks!  Anna had told us where to find the bath mat at a store very close to us.  Interesting in that it was close to looking like a small hardware store.  The small section on plumbing held the bathmat and a few other things like towel racks.  The next item was the hand/body lotion that we thought we had purchased the day before, but got hand soap.  Today I was much more alert and got out my cell phone with google translate.  I had tried using the camera function before covid and found that it didn't seem to translate very well.  Especially at restaurants where dishes were named with localisms.  We thought we would have to go to a pharmacy - we have found items like this at European pharmacy's before.  But we were right by the Hiperber so checked there.  In Spain "body milk" is lotion.  When you translate "body gel" you get bath gel which we also needed.  We also checked out where the dish washer soap and the clothes washer soap were - as it is hard to tell the difference in how the products look in their packages.

The last item we needed was a yoga mat.  Anna had told us we would need to go into Alicante to get one.  But as we wondered around searching for the tram office, we passed a sports store - and sure enough - they had one for 12 euros, which is not a bad price.  If you every travel to Portugal, Sicily or Spain ask us where we stayed.  We have left a trail of yoga mats behind us!

We did find the tram office with the stop where that is closest to us.  We are still trying to figure out the different kinds of cards you can purchase.  There are three different zones to the tram and different cards work in different ways. But all cards are cheaper than just buying individual tickets.  

Our last stop at around 1:30pm was at the Ke Bob shop for lunch.  Why doesn't someone open one up in Albuquerque - it is so good and so inexpensive.  Then home for a rest.

We left the apartment around 5:30pm.  It turned out a little too early for the best light!  On this walk I wanted to head toward the left of our apartment.  Before this we have always headed to the right of our apartment.

On our way down toward the Mariana.

A bocce ball court on the beach.

Fishing at the Mariana.

Next we headed past the Mariana into unknown waters.  It turns out there is a yacht club here and then a little further on the nicely bricked walkway ends and it is time to turn around and head home.

We ran into a lot of stray cats.  This one seems to be giving us the evil eye!

Views back towards the Mariana.

Views to the left further on and into more towns that we have yet to explore.  The tram line should take us here and beyond.

And now heading back home.

Some last views of the Mariana. 

                                       

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.