El Castell de Guadalest

We are getting to the end of our time here in El Campello. We leave next Friday. We have a bunch more on our trip but it will be very family oriented. Our second long-stay to determine our interest in spending extended time out of the United States has been very enlightening. We've identified the things we think we are important to us, the financial aspects, the tradeoffs concerning options, and an optimum path forward. I will be getting into all of that in a future post. For now we are still doing our exploration of the area here around El Campello and the Alicante area in general. 

With the exception of our foray to Alcoi, most of our traveling has been hugging the coast (including the coastal oriented cities of Valencia and Elche). But there is much going on in the mountainous interior of the area. On Saturday we headed out to one of the many mountain castle towns, El Castell de Guadalest.

Our decision had been colored by my observation of the Michelin map I bought of the area. The roads to get us to a number of the alternatives were the 'dreaded yellow squiggly line' roads. If you are not an aficionado of European driving and the Michelin map in particular you might not understand the reference. This particular map symbol typically implies a mountainous road with many, many, many, many curves, steep drop-offs (preferably without guard rails), and a requirement for many times more time than the distance would seem to indicate. 

However, I am happy to report that at least in this section of Spain, the roads are not too bad. They have shoulders, clear markings, and (for the most part) guard rails. Also, the drivers here are decidedly mellower than in places like Italy or France. So all in all it was not a terribly difficult drive.

We began our visit to El Castell with what is not the totally expected screwy parking experience, In this case, it was our finding this to be a really hot weekend tourist destination with tons of people coming in. Most of the parking lots were closed and all the traffic was being directed into a single lot. That was already full. We, of course, have seen this phenomena looking down at the beach parking from our apartment on Sundays. 

Never the less we successfully parked and were on our way.

You know you are not exactly where you want to be as de-I and Wife when you no sooner park but you see the cruise tour buses arrive.

Ah the serene solitude of El Castell de Guadalest

Despite it being very touristy

El Castell is a pretty classy place

For example, this was labeled as the PANDA OF EL CASTELL

Looks just like a Panda. Don't you think?

Despite it all, it was actually a very photogenic place and I took a ton of shots.

You want me to take your picture, I get to take yours!

Going up into the old town in the castle grounds

We made it into the main town area of the old castle

Here we found a small church. Like everything in this part of the world as mentioned previously, the roots go back a long time. But this was very recently renovated. I noticed that the religious artwork was extremely modern. I will confess to being less than enamored with modern art. But, as I focused on it, I realized this was really good stuff. Totally not traditional representations of traditional scenes with a high degree of sensitivity.

 

The first thing I noticed was this statue of the Virgin Mary

The whole posing was different. And the expression on the face. Notice her right eyebrow (as we look at her) raised. Very subtle.

Then there was this modern representation of a traditional triptych.

Not your usual Virgin and Joseph.

Nor of Jesus' Resurrection

I am always fascinated observing an artist's focus on detail

We interrupt this posting for a paid political advertisement

Back to our regularly scheduled programming 

 Looking back at the lower town where we started from

And our car!

One last look 

It was still pretty early. We decided to try on more place

A look back at El Castell

Down a long yellow squiggly line road  we arrive in Callosa d'en Sarria

 

I may be missing something. Is this some kind of ultra avant-garde art?

We never did figure out what we were to see here. We were tired so we decided to bail head back to El Campello for lunch and rest. But that is for another post.