ALICANTE CASTILLO – Juno 12

Alicante is the next big city to the North of us on the Mediterranean. Our big sister city if you will. We took a day trip (45 min, 3 Euro bus ride) to Alicante to visit their Castillo (Castle) in order to learn more about our Castillo in Guardamar. The Alicante Castle is MUCH larger than our site and it is much more preserved. Modern architects have done work to renovate a portion of the entrance to create a welcoming community park space. This was great for us to observe experience and study in gathering information for our eventual design proposal. After we finished our tour of the park we hiked to the top of the castle and could see all the way to Guardamar! It is beautiful here! But since Monday it has been POURING rain which is really random but we are working in Studio all day (and night) so it hasn’t been too much of a hassle. Alex (our Studio Professor) has been giving us nonstop work for class but we have a break this weekend! We have a travel weekend (one of two for the semester). A few friends of mine in the program and I just booked our bus ride and hostel for Granada, Spain to see Alhambra. We wanted to go to Bilboa but so last minute it was going to end up being almost $300 to get there and back! No bueno. Granada will be awesome…we just have to be back in time for class Monday.

PARQUE DE LA ERETA at the foot of the mountain.

You can see why they picked this location for defense, by land and by sea!

A few of us with our Professor out front of the castle.

Some of the cityscape leading up the entrance. It is so picturesque!