Susanne and I made it to Spain. Our flight went smoothly, just 3 1 /2 hours South of Sweden. Interesting to fly within the European union, very similar to flying between the states back home. They check the passports at the counter and you have to fill out a health report, which was difficult. I realized I had not fully finished checking us in at 2 am. That had me a bit panicked in the morning but we made it.

We landed in decent weather. We got our car and drove the hour plus north to the town of Denia which is the county of Alicante and Valencia (oranges and citrus) region. We got an upgrade so we can both drive and we can take turns navigating. After 5 months of not driving I thought it would feel strange but not at all. Some of the streets here are quite narrow, which is tricky. It started to rain as we got closer to our destination but stopped after our arrival.

On our drive up we passed a town called Benidorm which had some interesting buildings. Hopefully we will get a chance to check it out later. Reminded me a bit of Las Vegas with some of the buildings. The area in general reminds me of Arizona, Idaho and Mexico combined. Palm trees, scrubby bushes, low hills and it looked dry but not apparently qe are.

We got to our accommodation, which is disappointing but we are close to the ocean. We walked down to the water, an easy 5 minute walk. The clouds were looking like they could dump rain anytime but held off. The temperature was about 14 degrees Celsius or 57 farhenheit and the wind was pretty strong. We walked on the peer, saw the beautiful crashing waves and put our feet in the water. It was chilly but so fun and refreshing..

Our room has a view of the castle on the hill from the balcony. The forecast is rain every day but we have gotten lucky the past two days and had pretty decent weather until about 4 pm. We took advantage of the dry spells and went to town of Denia and up to the Castelle de Denia and did a tour for just 3 euros. We walked all around the grounds and the views are outstanding in every direction. We also meet a couple from Sweden as we were going up.

It was very interesting to see something from so long ago. Everything is pretty much in ruins aside from the outer wall. Part of it dates back to the Roman empire and other parts as new as the current century. After all the walking we were exhausted and went home to rest. Driving the small narrow streets was a bit nerve-wracking but at the same time cool.

The next day we did a driving tour. We drove along the coast which was magnificent with the waves crashing on the rocks in some places. We stopped and collected some shells and seaweed balls which I discovered help clean the ocean.

We saw a couple of light houses and drove some windy narrow mountain roads to see majestic views of the water. We stopped by and had some decedant cake and coffee at a cute little Cafe in the town of Javea.

We ate in a restaurant with the most magnificent view perched on top of the cliff. Fantastic. We celebrated Susanne’s birthday here. She had a little sparkling winep with dinner since I was driving. Dinner was very good with fresh fish.

We had rain on the way home but we were very lucky. So far our trip has been fantastic but today has been heavy rain. They showed areas of flooding on TV we saw large amount of water on the streets. Hopefully it won’t slow us down.