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My travel in Europe:
From Alicante to Barcelona, Spain 2023

Content:

Day 3, Alicante castle Santa Barbara

Last day in Alicante, tomorrow we move to Benidorm. We must visit the Santa Barbara fort today, it's the last chance. We also found an archeological excavation in the old city. According to the sign it should open at 10 am, but it's Monday and museums are normally closed on Mondays.

Placa Gabriel Miro:

We walk along the street Carrer del Cid toward the museum but make a stop here at the park. The sun light up the trees and bushes in a fairy tail story style, we must have a look and photo of it.

Ajuntament d'Alacant:

Continue walking on the street C Jorge Juan and come to the building Ajuntament d'Alacant. This building can be seen on old paintings and at that time there are no other tall buildings around it.

In front of the building is the square Antonio Varcalcer, that's where we saw the fashion show last evening.

La Ciudad Descubierta:

A few hundred meters more and we are in front of the entrance of the archaeological museum, of course it was closed. They have to update the signs !

More information about Mercado de Alicante (only Spanish):

https://www.alicante.es/es/ equipamientos/ ciudad-descubierta (Archaeological museum)

Mount Benacantil:

After the the museum we walk direct to the white building blocks at street San Rafael and walk or climb upwards all the stairs once again. Now we have to walk all these zick zack streets up until we reach the fort. It's placed on the summit of the Mount Benacantil.

Before we start walking again we took a rest and enjoy the view over the Mediterranean Sea.

In a another direction we have our hotel standing up, no problem to find the direction back to our room if we get lost.

First part of the walk finished, from here we follow the road up to the gate of the fort. And yes, you can take the bus as an alternative. But how fun is that ?

Santa Barbara Castle:

At the gate of the fort Santa Barbara. By the way, they doesn't call it a fort, they call it a castle. But from the beginning it was a fort, it was built or part of it already during the Muslim era, 9th century.

We enter through the gate at the first defense wall.

This is on the Northern side of the fort, we never visited the area down there.

Still in Alicante !

The fort can be described as it has three levels. Here we enter the second level. It's free to visit this fort. On the first level is the museum and the gift shop.

Two arcs preserved from a cathedral or a church.

Could it be one of the founder of this cathedral, or ?

I think this arc is rebuilt with some inner construction to hold it together.

More stairs to reach the top level.

Castle Santa Barbara from above.

Around the highest platform there is many terraces where they had there bows directed to the enemy. Canons came later.

Panoramic view in Northern direction.

The road up to the fort.

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A bull fighting arena in North-West. I think it's a museum today, we newer visited it.

It's big up here, lot of rooms and terraces to visit.

In this building it was some meeting with people from a gourmet club.

A walk around the upper terrace to have an all around view, South-West direction.

The guard tower, doesn't seem to be properly attached to the wall, it could fell off, or ?

From here we found that there is a cafe down there. It's time for us to turn around and start going down.

Information about Santa Barbara Castle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Santa Barbara Castle (Santa Barbara Castle, Wikipedia)

The Marina Esportiva del Port d'Alacant from above. From this marina they started the Ocean Race 2023.

Information about the Ocean race:

https://www.theoceanrace.com/en/ route/ alicante (The Ocean Race, Alicante 2023)

The cafe, Gunilla was happy because now she could get a cup of coffee. When they said they didn't have any coffee left she wasn't that happy anymore, let us leave Santa Barbara.

Walking down to level two, our hotel in view once again.

Down to level one. It's mostly rock up here, but they've planted some trees and cacti.

North-East view. To the left the tram rails can be seen, that's where we go tomorrow.

After we got out through the gate we walk up on the defense wall and took that way down. After half way it was blocked and we had to walk down the last part on the street San Rafael.

There is a lot of history around Alicante, here is more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ History of Alicante (History of Alicante, Wikipedia)

Plans for trip to Benidorm:

Now we must do some research how we could take us to Benidorm, train, tram or bus ?

We know that there is a tram station in the Northern part of old town, Porta del Mar. Here we have found the tram station and we study the map. To our surprise we found that we have one tram station where we live, Luceros, so practical for us. But how it come that we didn't see any tram nearby the hotel earlier ?

Going back to our hotel where we also have the tram station. Here is the last part of the defense wall, it's in the old city. Here we had came down if it wasn't blocked. Some reparation going on maybe.

Luceros:

No we found why we didn't see the tram station earlier, it's under ground. Asking in the information about the tickets, only 3.8 Euro each. And it's much easier, no change or waiting.