Day 403: Palmeral of Elche

Left Valencia and headed south along the Costa del Sol for a couple of hours. Our destination today was the city of Elche, and its World Heritage listed palm groves. Arrived around 12pm and struggled to find a decent lunch option, so we ended up with kebabs!

It was extremely windy for some reason, just howling through at 50+ kmh which was pretty intense, but we pressed on anyway.

The Palmeral is a famous and long-lasting palm plantation, date palms that were originally brought over from north Africa by the Moors during their long occupation of Spain. They knew a thing or two about growing palms in desert oases, so the groves thrived and dates became a local staple crop. When the Moors were conquered by the Catholics, the palm groves found a new purpose - providing fronds for Palm Sunday celebrations, and apparently most of Spain's Palm Sunday celebrations use fronds from this area.

We spent a couple of hours walking through a manicured garden area and filming various things, then another hour or so in a large area of groves. Not sure whether it was farmed land or just public parks, but it was quite nice nonetheless.

Back in the car where we drove about 20 minutes or so back to the coast to just outside Alicante, and our new apartment. It's just a private room for a couple of nights while we finish the sites here. The man who let us in seemed nice enough though didn't speak much English. The apartment was quite large and sunny (though also extremely windy!), so we just hunkered down in our room with the door shut so Schnitzel couldn't go wandering.

We're right on the beach here so headed down to the bars underneath us for dinner - just some simple tapas again.Read more