Sunday, Mountains and Castles

Sunday dawned without much notice by most of us since it was a late night, not only due to getting back late from the wedding, but due to quite a raucous group of young fellows in the café across from us – singing, cheering, banging, chanting…It finally stopped around 2 am. Deana up around 4:00 am, sat on our veranda reading, doing crossword puzzles, generally soaking in the wonderfulness of our location. She returned to bed at 6:00, and Leila up by 6:45, went for swim alone, since everyone else sleeping. Tim up just after 8:00, and he and Leila went for a walk, culminating in breakfast at a little British cafe. Eggs, toast, baked beans, hash browns and "white" coffee...almost real coffee. While enjoying our meal, a couple of  bicyclists, decked out in full biker regalia, strolled in, hoping they weren't too late for "brekky". These guys at first seemed Australian, but we soon determined they were Brits, of the heavy accented variety. We only understood every fifth word they spoke, which was amusing for us. After we paid for our meal, Leila approached them and informed them that we enjoyed listening to their banter, and that we only understood alternate words, here and there. They were delighted. One of the pair informed us that his dad had once been offered a job in Boston as a silver smith, but didn't take it. If he had, he'd be one of us. We returned to our apartment to wait for Deana and Blair to emerge. We were all up and ready to go by noon.

Our ultimate destination was El Castell de Guadalest with an intermediate stop to explore the Serra Gelada Natural Park, which is the impressive mountainous terrain looking south southeast from our apartment.

With Leila at the wheel, we headed off under the direction of our trusted companion, Google Map Lady, who eventually, after climbing through some twisty roads through residentialness in the foothills of the park, managed to get us to what appeared to be an entrance, with a chain across the entry and no obvious parking place. So, we chose the least offensive spot to park in hopes we wouldn’t get arrested. Entering the park area, Blair demonstrated a triple sow cow with a half twist as he entangled himself in the chain. No doubt he was reprising his performance at Justin’s wedding, when he did a shoulder roll off the steps leading to that ceremony. Guess he thought he needed to make up for his lack of performing at Joanna’s wedding. Dusting himself off, we proceeded up the track to an upper area of semi completeness where there were some meager plantings of park like description and some seating and picnic bench areas, all overlooking a spectacular vista of the lower town and sea.

But, more spectacularness was at hand if one simply followed trails onto the mountain. We noted on a steep cliff face, probably 60 feet to the top,, some wire hand holds in the rock, creating a suicidal passage up the cliff to the top. Terrifying just imagining someone making that ascent.

The whitish path up the face of this cliff has wire ladder rungs buried in the rock face, creating a heart stopping vertical climb to the cliff top. Can't even imagine someone trying it.

We chose the more tame path. Deana and Blair followed a lateral path that led to a dramatic vista, and Tim and Leila chose to climb a little more to a higher station where they encountered dramatic vistaness.

There were also some cute yellow flowers.

Pictures were taken and we climbed back down. Approaching our car, we encountered a policeman on motorcycle. As we approached, we imagined him scolding us in Spanish and maybe even fining us, or worse, throwing us in the hooscow for years while our families tried to acquire knowledge of what had happened to us. Sometimes too much television is a bad thing. He ignored us. Just nodded and pulled his motorcycle over to the side and continued to gaze into the park. Maybe he was hoping for more disreputable looking victims. We sighed with relief and crept away to continue our excursion.

We were headed for higher altitudes again, which started off through more pedestrian like commercial zones populated with McDonalds and retail establishments that looked like they contained normal type stuff that non-tourists buy. Even supermarkets that no doubt sold food less expensive than our local market. As we started to climb through the hills, the road got steeper and more switch backy. Leila was driving and doing a great job keeping us safe. Google Map Lady kept talking about roundabouts and often told us which way to go after we’d already made a choice. The landscape got more dramatic, mountains all around, and we finally coasted into the village around  El Castell de Guadalest. Parking was a little challenging to figure out. An upper parking area looked like it might have space for us, but we were directed down to a lower parking area. By lower, I mean a lot lower, like down the hill far enough that one might choose not to go down there, knowing you’d have to climb out of there to start more climbing up to the castle. We went down, and parked. The hike to the area where all the touristy stuff was was not as much fun as I wanted it to be. My hip complained, so I did too. But, we eventually crested the summit to behold a lot of shops, including one we chose to stop in for refreshing beverages and ice cream on sticks (Leila and Blair).

From there we paid for three of us to enter the museum of miniatureness. Not the real name, but these Spanish names are hard, so suffice it to say that they had stuff you looked at through microscopes. Some guy from long ago used to create these tiny sculptures, mostly of naked people, set in some setting like the head of a pin. Look through the microscope and see a whole street scene in miniature detail. There was a pair of fleas riding bicycles on something tiny. Can’t imagine how this guy did this stuff, but it was fascinating. The building was a sculpture in itself, with a giant heart on the first floor spawning a menagerie of plant life and animal forms that extended to the 2nd floor.

A couple of mirrors on the floor made for a vertigo inducing experience. Nobody dared walk on the mirrors for fear they would disappear into the rabbit hole.

Blair stayed outside and succeeded in communicating with Les, which made it possible to make some plans with them for another time.

We headed up to the castle, passing through a lot of shops. Tim was persuaded to buy a straw hat, which he didn’t feel quite right in, but bought it nonetheless.

Deana took over the visor, which helped her in the sun. We discovered that the way to actually see the castle you had to go through the mansion, which provided a look at the life these ancient aristocrats lived so long ago. We eventually got on the stairway and pathway to the summit of the castle and encountered spectacular views of the rooftops below and the surrounding landscape, which included a turquoise reservoir that was at low ebb, exposing more of the shoreline then is desireable. I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

Leila discovered holes in the wall that created little wind tunnels. This photo shows her getting a nice breeze on her face, which on this sunny hot day was a nice relief.

We headed back home with Deana driving, discovered the shops all closed, so no last minute food shopping as planned. Got back to the apartment, had some swimming and eventually went out to dinner, about 8 steps from our door, at the place that boasted having hamburgers. Deana wanted a hamburger. We ordered drinks and burgers. Tim’s Long Island Iced Tea was not up to standard, seemingly made by someone who followed the picture of the drink more than the actual ingredients. The hamburgers were satisfactory with their own special Spanishness…that is to say, not cooked to any particular degree of doneness, but resembling a hamburger more than a hot dog. Was actually not bad, to be fair, and we went back for a game of Eucher, running some open hands to get Deana familiar with the rules, and then she and Blair proceeded to humiliate Tim and Leila with their bridge learned skills of card memorization and I declare a certain level of cheating, if only telepathically. We’ll get back at them tonight.

Good night. See you tomorrow.