A Day-Trip with Stephanie

Stephanie and I waiting (for a long time) for the tram to take us from San Juan to Benidorm and then Altea.
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Stephanie and I spent a good bit of time together during the month that she was staying only a few houses away. Unfortunately, Stephanies family was not as comfortable as mine with late night clubbing nor did Stephanie have her own set of keys. As a result, on the weekends we usually packed picnic lunches and went to spend the day on the beach or walked into San Juan to shop and chat.

One weekend, we concocted a brilliant plan to escape from San Juan and take the tram to Altea (supposedly very easy to do) and spend the day exploring. We left our urbanization at about 10:30 am armed with books to read, cameras and enough food for two days and set off for the tram station next to the beach. As it turned out, we needed to take three trams to get to Altea (a two hour trip up the coast) and so the trip to a little longer than expected, but Stephanie and I (both very talkative) had no trouble finding things to talk about.

In order to escape the "stresses" of being Au Pairs, Stephanie and I decided to make a day-trip to the scenic sea-side village of Altea...

Altea: a beautiful, very old town built up the side of a mountain beside the Mediterranean coast.
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When we finally arrived in Altea, we were happy wed made the effort. The village was beautiful, stretching from a scenic pebbled beach, up very steep, narraw, and winding paved roads to a beautiful and gigantic church at the top of the mountain. The view from the top was indescribable and the church was, of course, surrounding by a number of quaint open-air restaurants and ice-cream shops. After filling ourselves with our pre-packed provisions, we have very little room for food, but we still managed to buy turron-flavored ice creams (very typical Spanish flavor) and spent the hours wanding the streets and, yes still, talking.