Friday September 12, 2025
Hi Folks! Well we’ve sadly reached our last full day of this cruise. I can’t believe it’s almost over but we’ve had another glorious adventure!
Today we are back in Spain and docked in the city of Alicante. Alicante is a port city in Spain’s southeastern Costa Blanca (“white coast”) with a population of 350,000. Its old town, Barrio de La Santa Cruz, has narrow streets, colored houses and a hip nightlife scene. An elevator or steep climb leads to a medieval Castillo de Santa Barbara, set on a hilltop with sweeping views of the Mediterranean coast.
We opted to take a tour to two off the beaten path towns called Villajoyosa and Altea. We started at Villajoyosa and saw the vibrant, multicolored houses on the seafront. Legend has it they are deliberately vivid so that fisherman can see them from far out at sea. We had free time to walk around this little beach town.
After that we drove past the town of Benidorm. While it only has 65,000 full-time residents, during the summer it grows to over half a million people. All coming for the sand, sun and surf. They get 325 days of sun per year!
We then went on to Altea which is a quaint village with a really neat Old Town. It was all white washed houses and cobbled stone streets. It also had some stunning sea views and lots of local cafes. The prettiest building was the Church of Our Lady of Consolation with an eye-catching blue tile dome. Here we also had some free time to roam around and take in the ambience.
Interesting factoid about Altea. It has a very large population of both Ukrainians and Russians. And they all get along. How cool is that? But the most interesting part is Vladimir Putin has a summer home there! But he’s not allowed into Spain anymore so we didn’t see him! Lol
We then drove back to the ship. All in all it was a great tour! After boarding we grabbed lunch and did that dreaded last cruise day task… Pack! Yuk! We then got ready for dinner. Hope everyone’s having a great Friday!
The Wandering Italian 