This is another small Spanish town nestling in the shadow of the mountains with an old town which is worthy of a visit. It is about 20 km from Alicante and is a pleasant drive along minor roads from Guardamar.
Our first success was to find a large car park on the edge of town where we had acres of space and there was no charge. We struck out for the centre of town and the Tourist Information office (wait for it!!), but after much meandering and head scratching, we had still not located either. A charming young man spotted our puzzled foreign faces, and asked if he could help. In his much better English than my Spanish, he directed us to the old town square. Once there we discovered the TI office, closed for the next 3 hours! Oh well, as usual, we managed to amuse ourselves.
We went into the cathedral as it only cost 4 euros. It was a good mixture of opulent and gloomy.
On our wanderings we had also stumbled across a Theatre called theTeatro Circo. It was originally a semi-permanent structure for housing circuses. It was installed in Alicante until 1907, when it was moved to Orihuela. It was refurbished in 1995 and is now become a permanent fixture used for theatre and public acts. It is located in a very attractive tree lined square.
To get to the old town we walked along the river which, in common with most in this region, is almost completely dried up. At the old town end, there is a beautiful paved area beneath which the river seems to flow and wells up over the colourful paving. Sadly, as the Tourist Information Office was not open, we still have no idea of the significance. There is an interesting triangular clock tower on the bridge over this part of the river too but no explanation.
There are a number of very attractive buildings here and we could see what we believe may have been the town hall high up overlooking the town. It looked a bit of a trek to get up to it and no way to ascertain if it was drivable in the van, so we contented ourselves with viewing it from the square below.
As we could not lay our hands on any real information here, we had to be contented with strolling around the attractive streets discovering interesting buildings by chance, delicious coffee in a tiny back street cafe, and the pleasure of plenty of fresh air and exercise. In common with a lot of places we have visited, it was not busy and many shops and the Tourist Information were closed when we were there in the afternoon. In fact, the small towns are almost like ghost towns at this time of year and the only busy places are the restaurants that the locals frequent.