Europe Fall 2024 - Digging Deeper Into 'Why Campello' #2

One of the things that makes Campello such an interesting, and convenient place to stay is the way it is laid out. I tend to think of it as a laminate, or as Wife likes to say, layered. There are distinct areas, all approachable via walking, that have very different characters. This allows you, the visitor, to enjoy a variety of experiences within a compact area. So in this post, I am going to try to give you an overall feel for this. In subsequent posts, I will be going into more detail about some of these areas.

 Here is a (not great) screen shot of the map of El Campello

If you blow up this shot, you will see the yellow star where we are staying. And you will see the two main roads of the inner town, the Avenida St. Bartomeu, and the Aveguda dels Furs (say that 10 times fast). This is a lot like the structure of a Roman city as we saw in Ostia. Just to the East of St. Bartomeu, you will see a small road and then the coast. These are the first three layers of the 'laminate'. The fourth layer which goes all the way to the tram line (which kind of forms a bowl) is much more typical urban.

I'm doing this walk around fairly early in the morning. I say 'fairly' because Spain is so far East in its time zone that the sun doesn't even come up until 7:30am. 

I leave our apartment. We are on the 20th, the top, floor...yes...back in the 'Tower'.

Our building is right on St. Bartomeu and we are on the far South end of town. The beach front almost runs into St. Bartomeu here.

Looking North and South on St. Bartomeu

I walk to the first layer of our laminate. The prominent but not deep, sea front.

 Going a few blocks North, I can cut West and come to the second layer, which is the Carrer St. Pere.

Only a block off the coast, it has a whole different character as you can see. It has all kinds of small hotels catering to those wanting coast access but needing more affordable lodging. There are some restaurants and bars here too, and other retailers but nothing like the concentration on the coast.

One of the characteristics of Campello is the vast amount of housing (at least compared to what we say in Italy for comparable sized towns). I took these to show some of it just off the coast.

And just two blocks from the water, is the main drag, St. Bartomeu. This is clearly a working, urban street.

Here at the corner of Aviguda dels Furs, you can see clearly the two blocks back to the waterfront.

 So we have our three very think laminate layers with the contrasting types of streets. Now we go up dels Furs and into the heart of the 'real' town.

 Still tons of housing

We're at the point that where Aviguda dels Furs runs into the tram line which is pretty much the border of the inner part of Campello.

 

 Then as we swing East and South, we cover a long section with a lot of different neighborhoods but nothing particularly outstanding

Until we come back to our current home.

This gives you an overview. As mentioned above, in future posts, I will be showing much more detail on how this structure results in an extremely livable environment.