Museo, Murcia, and Altea!

On Wednesday, a few of us went to the Mueso de Hogueras, which is the Museum of the Bonfires. It's a museum dedicated to their biggest celebration of the year which is la Fiesta de Hogueras. What happens is people, artists of course, create these huge works of art in the shape of people from wood and other materials. They can be stories high. There are smaller ones for the kids too. The festival is from June 19th-24th, and it just a week long of partying. They parade these floats down the streets and on the last day of the celebration, they light them on fire! I will come back some day to see it!

On Friday, we had a day trip to Murcia, which is a little over an hour south of Alicante. It was a really beautiful city with accents of an old European city that are so great to see. We had a full day of activities. First, we went to the Cathedral which was so big and it had so many details in its decoration. Our tour guide took us inside the Cathedral which was pretty cool and explained the history behind it. It was really interesting because Alicante doesn't really have a Cathedral like that. After spending a couple hours at the Cathedral, we went to a museum that was built around some of the remains of the old Arabian wall that surrounded the city hundreds of years ago. We actually got to be in a room with the wall all around us. Of course I had to touch it. It was a really cool museum, but it was hard for all of us to pay attention because we were starving to death. My friends and I ate lunch on a set of steps outside one of the doors of the Cathedral. The sun was shining and finally our bellies were full. Then we were on a mission to find a cute cafe for some dessert and coffee (hot chocolate for me). We ended up at this cute place that had delicious crepes. After the cafe, the group walked around the city to the river which was also beautiful. We made our way to another little museum that was filled with bull fighting stuff. It even had bull heads mounted on the wall which was kinda weird but I liked it...sorry mom...lol. It was really cool seeing all the different pictures from bull fights and all of the matadors and their costumes that they wear. After that museum, we went to one final museum that had parade floats that were of Jesus' last days. The statue things were carved out of wood and they looked so real. They parade them around during Semana Santa, which is the week of Easter. It was a really interesting museum, but sadly, we weren't allowed to take pictures. And, of course, right when we got in there, I looked up at the ceiling and was like oooh man, I want to take a picture so bad. You would have been dying mom haha. Overall it was a really cool trip and a beautiful city.

On Saturday, me and 3 other friends went to Altea for the day. It was around an hour south from Alicante, and that's actually close to where my family is staying when they visit me, remember mom? Right when we got off the tram, we immediately walked to the beach and we were in awe. It was so beautiful. The water was greenish blue and it just looked perfect. Of course there were palm trees everywhere. And the beach was made up of white pebbles. It was so sunny and we couldn't stop staring at everything. It was just too cool. We wandered around the main street by the beach that had tons of places to eat and was filled with British people on holiday, so it was funny to hear a lot of English being spoken for a change. We decided to find the famous church with the blue top, so we started walking around the city. We took a lot of back roads that had all those cool alley ways that everyone loves. We finally hiked up to the top and it was so beautiful. The view from the top was incredible too. You could just see forever. We stood there for a while because we couldn't look away. After that, we decided to stop at a cafe. Well, we picked one and sat down and they handed us the menus and we realized that we didn't want anything on it. So we decided that we were gonna make our escape when the waitress left. So when she did we quick grabbed our stuff and didn't look back. We then went into a French cafe that looked pretty cute. We asked for some Goffres and some crepes and we decided to get cocktails because that's just what you do in Spain. Well, the drinks were pretty strong, so every time we took a sip, we would each make a face, and then we would chase it with our desserts haha. It was pretty funny. After that, we went back to the beach to wait for the next tram. We threw pebbles in the sea and listened to the water against the pebbles. It was pretty much the best sound in the world haha. It was a great day trip and we all want to come back when it's warmer!