Today we said adios to the
Hotel Europea, and the three of us walked across the street to the
Valencia Nord train station. We had a quick train 2 hour ride to the small town
of Benicarlo, whose main attraction is the train station. As soon as we
arrived, we hailed a cab and drove into the beach town of Peñíscola,
a popular destination for locals and other European tourists. We quickly
realized we were the only Americans around, which was a nice treat! We checked
into our new hotel, a bit of a splurge called the
Hotel Hey, and were pumped that our balcony had an ocean view. The
first thing we did after settling in? Go to the beach of course!
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| View of the Castle |
La playa de Peñíscola is a beautiful stretch of
sand, and the cherry on top of this fantastic view is the ancient Castillo de Peñíscola,
a large stone castle built into the rocks by the Knights Templar in the mid-15th
century. You can feel the sense of history just from looking at, and it
transforms what could be “just another beach town” into something unique. I also think it’s neat that in the 1960’s a
movie with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren called El Cid
was filmed there. So, while soaking up
the sun and swimming in the Mediterranean, the three of us were also enjoying
the castle view. After my fair-skinned friends had enough sun, we made our way
over to the hotel pool and had lunch. It is a small little pool but definitely
nice- made me glad to be in Spain and I definitely felt like I was on “vacation”!
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| Pool at the Hotel Hey
Peñíscola |
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| I wish I could say I built this |
After us girls freshened up (poor Greaham), we decided to
walk from our hotel down to the castle. It was about a 30 minute walk along the
beach, but the breeze and the people-watching made the time fly. We saw a few
professional sand-castles along the way, and stopped for the obligatory water
breaks that we so often need in always-hot Spain. Once we got to the bottom of
the castle, we enjoyed all the street vendors selling their crafts and
souvenirs. We decided to start climbing the walls to the entry of the castle,
and had some great view of the ocean and the town below along the way.
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| View from inside El Castillo |
Once we were high up enough, we had the choice of paying to
go into the castle- it wasn’t a bad price, so of course we did. It was a good
decision, because the interior of the castle had some interesting carvings and
information about the Knights Templar (makes me think of the National Treasure
movie), as well as aerial views of the town that were even better than before.
Being there at dusk added to the overall experience, and I was really happy we
had such awesome views. Once we had our fill of hearing about secret caves,
knights, and pirates, we headed back into town for dinner. We ate somewhere
along the strip, and toasted the evening in Peñíscola with sangria (of
course). Even better, Christina and I ate gourmet ice-cream as our dinner. I could get used to this!
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| City of
Peñíscola from above |
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