I promised you the second part of my Alcoy walk/visit and it took me over a month to finally release it... 🤦 But, here we are... So, in the first part, I took a walk around the Via Verde route, and the finish line was the photo where we reached "civilization" and returned to the city...
This was my second visit (or was it my third? 🤔) and I'm not sure if we can call it a city, or town as it has over 60K residents and covers an area of almost 130 sqkm... It is located in the Valencian Community and often marked as an industrial and university city... To be honest, I didn't notice some big industry around the city, but maybe we didn't visit that part as the area of the city is huge...
As you can notice from the first couple of photos of the buildings and architecture, the city has a long history... According to Wikepedia page, the town was established in 1256, but the human presence in the area dates from 60K years ago! Of course, as in many old towns, at the very beginning, it was important to build a castle to defend it... Like many other towns/cities in Spain, Alcoy has the rest of the castle, but it is not situated in the (current) city, but rather in the outskirts...
We visited the city in April 2023, and I'm not sure if this "small" castle is a replica of the real one, but they have used it as a stage for a local celebration... It is not a "fixed" building, but it does look huge in this photo...
Behind the "mini-castle", you can see Iglesia arciprestal de Santa María, and also in the image above from the other angle... It is not as old as a castle, as it is constructed in the 18th century... After that long walk in nature, we were so hungry that we ignored buildings, and architecture and focused on searching restaurants... The thing of finding a free day for these trips is a hard job, and usually, it means that others have a free day too, including restaurants... In addition to that, Spaniards have lunch in the late afternoon, so we had to make an effort to find one who works...
In the meantime, we were walking around the city center, and you can see the main square (Plaça d'Espanya) in the photo above...
I have to go back to the beginning of the post where I mentioned that Alcoy is an industrial city and it got that label a long time ago... As a matter of fact, there is an interesting story about the so-called Petroleum Revolution that took part in the city! The revolution took place in July 1873, when workers raised their voices (and torches), and as they were poor, they used petroleum-soaked torches... There are stories that the city stank of petroleum in those days...
Searching for an open restaurant through the narrow streets of Alcoy... Btw., fun fact, do you know why Spanish streets are so narrow? If you guessed that it was because of the sun, you were right... By having buildings so close to each other, they create shade prevent hot sun entering homes, and keep the street cooler during the summer days...
Looking at these photos, I have realized that we didn't visit the most emblematic bridge in the city, the famous San Jorge Bridge, which was built at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th... On the other side, the photo above was taken from the Puente de Cervantes (also known as Puente Maria Cristina), which was built in 1838... In the distance, you can see one of the newer bridges (among the 40 bridges that Alcoy has) named Puente de Fernando Reig...
I don't know why, but this was another time when we found only a German restaurant to be open! It happened to us in Vicenza, Italy, when there were no other restaurants open at the time when we were hungry... 😀 This time, it happened the same... We did find one "suspicious" pizzeria and McDonalds, but we refused to go there...
Anyway, the food wasn't "special", but rather an ordinary meal... It was tasty and it filled our tummies, so we could proceed and order pancakes after the main course!
Well, I ordered pancakes, and my other half ordered some fruit...
When we left the restaurant, on the way to the parking where we left the car, I saw this a bit creepy mural that I had to photograph... Have no idea who is the person in the image, it could be a resident or some other important person... If you know, please let me know in the comment section... :)
And that would be all for this walk around the streets of Alcoy! What I like the most from these posts is that I learned a lot researching the Internet about the place that I visited... I know that it is a bit in reverse, but I like to take photos and after that explore what is what... If I miss something, it gives me a reason to go back and revisit the place! For example, I have to check out that San Jorge Bridge!!
Thank you for your time,
~ph~
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