Whilst staying at Guardamar, we had some excursions out around the area. One of the places we had briefly visited was Elche which is a city immersed in a palm grove that was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2000. The city is proud of its heritage and the Lady of Elche, discovered at nearby L’Alcudia in 1897. More of that later.
We decided that there was enough of interest here to justify staying in the area for a few days. We started our New Year by moving from Guardamar to Crevillent. The town is unremarkable but, there is a good bus service to Elche and Alicante. We stayed on a very pleasant campsite located in the grounds of a traditional Spanish hotel. The hotel staff were friendly and welcoming and we could see why people might decide to stay for the Winter.
Our first excursion into Elche was to the old town where the Tourist Information centre was located. Although it was a Monday, the TI centre was open! We were provided with some directions for the most important museums and the palm groves. We were also advised that as it was Monday, the museums were all closed! The Basilica de Santa Maria was supposedly open but not on this particular day. We contented ourselves with exploring the famous palm groves and the Municipal Park with it’s fountains, dovecote, bandstand and visitor centre. All very attractive and peaceful given its central position.
We had a memorable walk through the palm park as we went exploring and found a number of pathways leading to – a WALL!! Not to be beaten we managed to find a bit of wall low enough to scramble over and after consulting our excellent tourist map (ahem!), we navigated back to the centre of things.
Since we had only whet our appetite looking at the outside of the Basilica and wanted to see the inside, we decided to return when everything was open.
Tuesday was a more successful day in respect of getting inside some of the historic buildings. We also managed not to get lost amongst the palms.
The Basilica was open and was worth a visit. There were many beautiful features and I ave included some here.
We also visited the Modern Art Museum, not worth hanging about for as we had done. However, the walk along the Riu Vinlopo was interesting due to the extensive decoration
Following the tourist guide we also paid to enter the Callahora. All we knew was that it had a spectacular decorated ceiling. Well, what a sell, as they say. We were no wiser after visiting but, there was a fairly ornately painted wooden ceiling! Sorry, no picture available. We were underwhelmed.
Altogether we had a couple of very enjoyable days in Elche and would recommend it.