independent, intentional travel
If you’ve recently arrived in Spain for your holiday in Benidorm, you may have noticed that Benidorm doesn’t have its own airport — instead, you flew into Alicante. While you likely hopped on a bus or grabbed a taxi up to Benidorm, Alicante has plenty to see and do as well! So if you’re interested in doing a bit of exploring, here’s what you need to know about taking a day trip from Benidorm to Alicante. [Read more…]
One of the best things about living in Spain again is how easy it is to travel to other countries for a few days. And even better, we get to visit friends who live on this side of the world! Two summers ago, we went to Dublin to visit our Irish friends Sarah and Kelan before taking a road trip/camping trip together to West Cork. This past spring, they came to visit us in Alicante, and we made plans for our next meetup in Ireland. So we just got back from spending a few days with them, checking out their new house and even visiting Sarah’s family’s farm.
Deciding to bring only a small personal item (since we were flying with RyanAir), I asked Sarah what we would be doing and what we should pack. While she gave us a good overview of what we could expect during the trip, she did tell us there was a “surprise” on Sunday. [Read more…]
When I lived in Madrid, one of my favorite things to do when I had a free weekend was take a day trip from Madrid to another city. Now that we’re based in Alicante, we want to do the same thing! A few weeks ago we spent an afternoon in Elche, and last week we finally visited the city of Murcia.
Here’s what you need to know about taking a day trip from Alicante to Murcia. [Read more…]
Traveling by train is one of my favorite things about living in Spain. I feel like I must have done it 100 times by now. But on my most recent trip between Alicante and Madrid, I had a brand new experience: Rather than traveling with Renfe, Spain’s national rail operator, I tried a competitor called Ouigo.
Ouigo is a French rail company, and it entered the Spanish market in March 2021. Up until that point, Renfe had a complete monopoly on the high-speed rail market in Spain. So considering that I moved back to the U.S. in 2020, it makes sense that I didn’t have a chance to try Ouigo until recently. In fact, I had never even heard of it — and I’d also never heard of the other new Renfe competitor, Iryo.
So, here’s my Ouigo train review of what it was like to travel round-trip between Madrid and Alicante. [Read more…]
While I spent two years living in Madrid, one of the things that excited me the most about moving to Alicante, sight unseen, was all the new things I’d get to experience by living somewhere new. It turns out that a lot of the things I thought were “Spain things” were actually just Madrid things. And day by day, I’m learning what things are Alicante things — especially in regards to food!
So here are just a few of the special foods to try in Alicante during your next visit. [Read more…]
Settling back into our lives in Spain after 6 weeks in the U.S. was always going to be a little bit tricky — we had to conquer jet lag, adjust to working different hours, and get back into routines like going to Spanish class. But one city-wide celebration made the whole thing so much more chaotic. (And meant that things didn’t officially go back to “normal” for us until about 10 days after we got back to Spain.) This celebration, the Hogueras de Alicante, is the city’s biggest annual festival, and I’m so glad we didn’t miss it! [Read more…]
The famous lifeguard stations say Alicante Beach, but they’re really at Playa San Juan.
We are finally back in Alicante after six weeks in the U.S., and the city is buzzing with excitement thanks to the annual Hogueras festival. (Look for my next post on that… I’m still figuring out what all it entails.) In the meantime, my little sister Carrie is here visiting, and we wanted to take her to the beach. Alicante actually has its very own beach, Playa del Postiguet, and it’s only a 20-minute walk from here! But it’s not our beach of choice. Instead, when we want to go to the beach, we head out of the city to a smaller town named San Juan.
We’ve now been to San Juan twice, and each was a slightly different experience, but both have been amazing beach days that left me very happy that we decided to go there instead of Postiguet.
So here are 5 reasons why you should visit Playa San Juan. [Read more…]
Welcome to Missouri…
In one week, we’ll be on our way back to Alicante, where we moved sight-unseen in January. But for the last 6 weeks or so, we’ve been back home in Kansas City — and it (obviously) felt so normal to be back here that it almost made me wonder whether we’d actually even moved to Spain. Or did I dream it?
Moving to another country takes quite a bit of adjustment as you learn to adapt to another way of life. And it turns out the same is true even when you come back to your home country. All the things I enjoy the most about living in Spain — I’m missing those a lot right now, and I’m looking forward to going back. But I’m also loving the fact that I can see all my friends and family so easily. So, like anything else, there have been plenty of pros and cons.
Here are the pros and cons of visiting the U.S. for six weeks after moving to Spain. [Read more…]
Hello from Kansas City! While we are official residents of Alicante, Spain, now, we came home to KC for about seven weeks for my sister’s college graduation, a plethora of family birthdays, and to work on some wedding preparation stuff. During the first week at home, our car’s alternator died during the drive to Wichita for the aforementioned graduation, leaving us stranded on the side of the road for four hours. During the second week, our air conditioning/furnace died. As we stared down the $10,088 bill for replacement, we made a decision: to open a new credit card — specifically, the CapitalOne Venture X credit card. [Read more…]
You can’t miss the famous windmill during your day trip from Amsterdam to Haarlem!
Last month, when I visited Amsterdam, I did something different from my previous two visits: Instead of staying in Amsterdam’s center, we stayed in a smaller city called Haarlem. While we originally started looking at Haarlem because finding a hotel/Airbnb there was cheaper than in Amsterdam, we actually felt excited about getting the chance to explore a new city And it turns out that getting from Amsterdam to Haarlem and back is really easy!
If you’re spending time in Amsterdam and are interested in checking out another nearby city, even if you only have a day, I’d really recommend Haarlem. It is smaller and quieter than Amsterdam, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to do or see there! And some people find it even more beautiful than Amsterdam. So here’s what you need to know about taking a day trip from Amsterdam to Haarlem, the Netherlands. [Read more…]