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

Content:

• Planning the tour from Alicante to Barcelona
• Day 1, Stockholm to Alicante
• Day 2, Alicante old town
• Day 3, Alicante castle Santa Barbara
• Day 4, Alicante to Benidorm
• Day 5, Benidorm to Denia
• Day 6, Denia to Valencia
• Day 7, Valencia
• Day 8, Valencia to Sagunto
• Day 9, Sagunto to Castello
• Day 10, Castello to Peniscola
• Day 11, Peniscola Castle
• Day 12, Peniscola to Tarragona
• Day 13: Tarragona to Barcelona airport

Day 11, Peniscola Castle

After we added one more day at Peniscola we can now visit the castle without any stress.

Peniscola:

Waking up in the morning. Get our breakfast, bread, orange juice, coffee and a cake. Up in the room again and prepare us for this day's doings.

We start with the castle and walk up in the old town. From this wall we can see Peniscola's both beaches, only a narrow piece of land separates them.

Now we must find the entrance to the castle again, was it in here, or ?

We remember this narrow long stairs, that's the way to the castle's entrance where we can buy our tickets.

Faro de Peniscola:

The lighthouse, it' was built 1899. This Lioght house is popular to make movies around. 3 movies has been filmed here, Calabuch 1953, Paris Tombuctu 1999 and Chiringuito de Pepe 2014.

More information about Faro de Peniscola (only Spanish):

• https://es.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Faro de Peniscola (Faro de Peniscola, Wikipedia)

Now we got our tickets, they can be used on the Castle museum and the Artillery park. 4 Euros for an adult ticket, and if more than 60 years it cost 3.5 Euros.

A stair take us up to the entrance of the Castle.

We sat down in this room to look at the documentary movie about the castle's history. It was partly in English and we learned that the armor the soldiers wore weighed 20 kg.

Biblia de los Cruzados:

Much of the castle's history is preserved from the notes of the Moors.

When we were finished with the two halls down stairs we went up to this terrace.

There are so many rooms and tunnels here that we want to visit, but we start with the views. Look at the wall, see the traces of an earlier arc, an entrance, or ? You can see traces of older constructions everywhere.

This is the stairs down to the Artillery park. We can't use this stair, have to get to another entrance from outside.

We leave the chapel we just have visited, look at the door, it has some years.

More information about Peniscola:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Peniscola (Peniscola, Wikipedia)

In the kitchen there is an elevator to deliver the food. It's a small kitchen, it must have been many of them.

During later years they built this church, but even so it's very old.

Walking through room after room, stairs up and stairs down. There are churches, libraries, kitchens, stores etc.

Stairs to the upper levels, very narrow, couldn't walk up here without twisting the body.

Take another stairs down. Up and down all these stairs the soldiers run with their heavy armament and weapons.

Back to the terrace where we started. Now we cross this terrace and take the stairs on the opposite side up to another terrace.

Map over the castle, most of our walks these two days are in this area.

Even these stairs are very narrow. How could the soldiers get room here with all the armaments and weapons they had on them.

This is the highest terrace, for sure an important platform. The soldiers stood here ready with there weapons and watching.

From here they could keep an eye out for any pirates approaching.

The Artillery park:

After two hours climbing around in the old castle we finished it. Walk around the castle on the outside and down to the Artillery park.

An artillery park has of course canons, lot of them, at least in later years. One of them is placed here and aiming towards the pirates.

Exhausted after all walking we sat down on the hill, 5 minutes later a guard came and told us that it wasn't allowed to sit there.

Investigating the Artillery park and walk down this tunnel to the lower terrace.

There was an exhibition down in the basement. Overall they have spend a lot of effort to inform the tourist about its history, even on the castle. Most of the signs had text in English which hasn't been so common at the cities we visited earlier. A last look at a watch tower before we leave this place.

Bus investigating:

It looks very complicated how we can make the trip to next stop, the city Terragona. Lot of train and bus changes. But Gunilla have found a direct bus from here to Terragona. We took a walk to the bus stop so that we at least know that there is a bus stop. No time schedule but on internet we find out that it should come a bus 9 am tomorrow. It could be that there are no departs from here now when there is not high season, or ? This transport must work, if not we will be very late to Terragona and we only have one day left. We didn't dare to buy the tickets online, there was some indication that the tickets could be bought on the bus with cash.

Puerto de Peniscola:

Walking along the pier on the Southern side of the castle. A nice fish restaurant but we were not hungry yet. This second day in Peniscola is different, it's Monday toady and this week a lot of restaurants have closed. We felt that we leave this town in the last second.

Paella:

Today we eat Paella, the symbol for Spain. The dish is big and we share one with some bread and melons.

More information about Paella:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Paella (Paella, Wikipedia)

Santa Maria Bastion:

We still have one corner to investigate in the old town. In front of us, St. Anna Defensive wall, here is also the church Santa Anna de Peniscola.

There is fine weather today which it has been all days on our travel. We can sit down and enjoy the sun and the warm climate, at home snow and some minus Celsius degrees.

Back to the hotel for some rest, we make some plans to where to eat. Many restaurants are closed and we thinks the best hope to find one open is along the beach.

The alley Pl. Felipe V behind this tower we hope to find an open restaurant, and we did.

Satisfied with the dinner we took a last walk along the Southern beach.

Back to our room, we asked the staff if it was possible to have the breakfast a bit earlier because we have a bus to catch early in the morning. It wasn't a problem and we could have our breakfast 8 am tomorrow.