Driving to Denia

My feet have been hurting and it's been so hot, that today we decided we'd drive to Denia......so we drove to Alicante.  Navigating in Spain is not the same as navigating in the US.  In Valencia, sometimes the right lane is for buses and taxis only.  Sometimes it's not.  When you stop at a red light, sometimes the lanes across the intersection don't line up with the lanes on this side.  And if you're turning at a major intersection, it's a scrum.  When we first got here, we thought people just couldn't stay in their own lanes.  Now we know better.

So we left the hotel, trying to find the road to Denia.  We couldn't find any road numbers, so thought we'd head towards Alicante, which has a big interstate.  But all we saw were roads to Barcelona and Madrid.  Since Barcelona is north, we took Madrid.  Eventually it said Madrid-Alicante-Airport.  The problem is that they have a sign saying, "Go this direction."  You do that and then the road forks, and you maybe see it in time to take the correct fork.  But then your fork forks, and you can't see the sign for which way to go until you're past it.

It was a pain and a half getting out of Valencia and on to an interstate.  It took us several tries to get on the correct one, and it was heading towards Alicante.  So we decided that today we would drive to Alicante. It looked pretty interesting, with mountains and stuff.

The mountains were great!!!  It looks just like New Mexico.  On the way back we even saw what looked like Sandia Peak.  There were also mountains like the Organ mountains towards Las Cruces.  The Spaniards must really have felt at home in New Mexico.

We even got rained on in the mountains.  There was rain, and cool peaks, and tunnels, and switchback roads.  We had to stop at a gas station convenience store for the restrooms.  That's where we discovered that they are the same the world over.  Ovepriced and the coffee sucks.

We finally turned off the interstate around Villajoyosa.  The good roads aren't free here and it cost us almost 15 euros.  We took the smaller road I'd originally been looking for the rest of the way to Alicante.