Jacques and Rollande: Benidorm

Today we headed out a bit earlier than usual to catch the tram (metro) to Benidorm. It is a little more than an hour away. On the way we saw lots of hills and small mountains, all of them almost barren with just a few bushes here and there and a few bunches of dried grass. It makes you wonder how they can grow all those oranges, lemons and artichokes on soil so dry.

At one place on the way, there were about 20 or so sheep and as many goats in a field along the metro lines. There were no fences that I could see but something must be keeping the animals from going on the tracks.

The surprise was when we arrived in Benidorm or maybe I should call it geriatric city. There were almost as many scooters as there were people walking. There were even double seater scooters, most of them with a rental sticker. It's nice to know that when we get old there are still places that we could go even with mobility issues.

Benidorm is a modern city, flat along the water with pedestrian streets, wide sidewalks and lots of high-rise hotels and apartments, not really what we expected in Europe. It is also very British. Most of the restaurants had British flags and the language heard the most was British. Being that everything was British, we decided to have fish and chips with mushy peas for lunch. It was much better than what we had in Gibraltar a couple of weeks ago.

Further up in the city center away from the touristy area the streets have a lane in the center for bicycles. This way they only need one lane. It was pretty neat, and they were painted a bright red so very visible.

So far this trip except for Benal Pueblo we have not seen many historic buildings that you associate with Europe. Everything is modern. Like home, the little villages are disappearing, and people are moving to the bigger centers. We usually see a lot of old churches and so far, we have only seen a few.