Alicante

Alicante was fairly nice.  It's a big city, but we figured since they had an esplanade along the beach, and were known for the beach, that there would be parking near the beach.  Nope.  We drove past the beach, then past the marina, then turned around.  We almost turned into a parking garage on the back side of a building, but it looked like a pedestrian pathway.  Frank turned there and I was like "Is this a road?"  Turns out it was a brick road behind the building.  But it was too far from the beach so we kept looking.

We finally found a parking sign I'd spotted before and turned in there.  Anyone who's driven in Europe knows what comes next.  You realize why the cars are so small.  Because the damn parking garages are tiny.  (Yes, I know it's really because the roads are so tiny between all the old buildings.)  A parking spot is slightly larger than a small car.  That's it.  And every few spaces there's a square pillar holding up the garage.  Which eats into that space.  Frank did a good job parking.  There was a couple in something the size of a Geo Metro that had to back up about 6 times to get into a space.

The pedestrian exit for our parking garage was up a staircase, which took you to a kid's version of Coney Island.  I kid you not! (Pun intended.)  It was called something like World of Kids.  There were the regular carnival games like where you shoot the water gun to make your whatever go up the wall the fastest.  But it was short, for kids.  There were mini foosball tables and mini pool tables.  A single swing.  Like those rides at amusement parks where everyone gets on an individual swing and then it goes up in the air and turns so that you're swinging.  This was the single version of that.  Coin operated.  Everything there was coin operated.  Mini go kart track, mini bumper cars.  One of those mini carousels with 3-4 horses on it.

After leaving Coney Island we were on the walkway around the marina.  We followed it, then crossed over the esplanade.  It looked like marble, in a wavy pattern, and there were palm trees down either side.  The center was basically a midway with shops and people hawking things from something they were carrying.  There was also a McDonald's and a Burger King.  Yuck!

We kept going and crossed back over where the end of the marina made way for the beach.  It was packed!!!  There was a long "peninsula" with a hotel on it so we walked down that side and took pictures.  It's beautiful.  The Med was several different colors of blue and there was a huge wind.  Frank had to hold his hat.  I managed to keep mine on, but it's woven.

We stopped for lunch there because we were hungry and really liked the view of the sea. We both love the seaside, we're just not beach people.  Lunch was okay.  It was at a hotel restaurant, so it was a bit overpriced.  We had prawns in garlic as an appetizer.  It was good, but it was small shrimp like you'd get in NWA.  Then we split paella mariscos.  Seafood paella.  It was okay, but not as good as the organic place.  We sat for a while, then headed home.

This was when we discovered that Spanish parking garages do not work like American parking garages.  When you go in, you get a ticket from the machine.  That's the same.  But when you leave, there's a machine near the exit, somewhere.  You have to get out of your car and put your ticket in this machine.  Then you pay, and it gives you a ticket that lets you out of the garage.  So you get back in your car and go to the garage exit and can leave.  We caused a small backup and excited the attendant because we didn't know that.