Benidorm, Spain, Altea and the flipflop...

We traveled to Benidorm, Spain during the kid's term break, February 10-17, 2007. Shortly before our trip, we stumbled across a TV show making fun of Benidorm as the home away from home for the British. Benidorm claims to have more pubs than any other Spanish city. This concerned us greatly since we were aiming for an authentic Spanish city, not "Little Britain".

Upon our arrival in Benidorm, we discovered that we indeed had found the British escape. We also found that the average age of the visitors was 60+. We chuckled about this most of our trip. We decided that if ever we were feeling old and slow, we could just nip down to Benidorm to feel young and agile again. There were very few couples there that did not include a walking cane or a wheel chair.

The first item on our travel itinerary was to escape Benidorm, so we ventured up the coast of Costa Blanca to Altea. This is a wonderful Spanish city that is relatively new in Spanish history (Altea's church is only 100 years old). Surrounding the city are mountains, making you feel safely tucked in and safe from the everyday craziness on the other side. The beach (la playa) is covered with rounded, white stones and when the water recedes it makes the sound of water being sucked from the bottom of a glass of ice by a straw.

As you venture into the city, you find that all the houses and shops are pressed together on steep hills. The mountains come right down to the sea, so any direction away from the sea is up a steep hill. We climbed 250 steps to the church placed at Altea's highest point and got a wonderful view of city and the sea below.

Alyssa and Nathan loved playing in the rocks by the sea. I was constantly reminding Alyssa about her shoes and several times she had to run back to retrieve them in the last place she was playing. No matter how much I bugged her, she did not want to wear her shoes near the sea.

After lunch, the kids found some much larger rocks to climb on. They had run ahead to play on them as Dale and I walked slowly behind. Upon our arrival, Alyssa was in a state of great distress because one of her flip flops had slipped off and had fallen in between the rocks. The sea was lapping the rocks below and if we had laid on our stomachs on the rocks we would have been able to touch the water. Dale told Alyssa, who was now quite distraught, that the water coming into shore would push her flip flop right back to the rocks. However, we waited and waited, but still no flip flop. Suddenly, Dale said, "Uh... there it is." I turned to see where he was pointing and there was Alyssa's flip flop gently floating on the top of the water, being pulled out to sea by the water. It was already hard to see as it had been pulled away from the rocks a remarkably long way since she lost it. I suddenly had to supress my laughter at the situation because Alyssa had burst into tears claiming that those were "a treasure" to her and now she only had one shoe to get home. Fortunately for Alyssa, flip flops are easy to find especially in a beach town. Once she had the new pair on her feet, the flip flop floating out into the sea was no longer a concern and she was happily prancing down the beach to the next playground.

Now, when I look out to sea I look for Alyssa's flip flop, I giggle at the memory of the loss, and I wonder where it will land or if it will stay out at sea forever.