Sunday - Mothers Day and May Day (Labor Day) the same day!

As we continue to the process of considering where we might potentially want to live...in the city of Valencia, in Old town Valencia, near Valencia beach....we decided that we would rent a car and drive south to see some of the smaller beach towns, about an hours drive South of the city.

First off, Sunday's here, at least this time of year, are like Christmas Day or New Years Day or Thanksgiving Day "used" to be in the old days.......NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING is open in the city.  When we choose to rent the car it was just dumb luck that we choose Sunday.  Things that are focused on tourism, like rental cars were open.  We rented a brand new cute little Fiat 500 and hit the road.  I should add that Beth got a local SIM card for her phone through Vodafone, thus we had the ability to use her data for driving directions, etc.

It was an easy drive on the "toll road" JUST 10.50 Euro (our car rental for the day was 28 Euro) to drive from Valencia to Javea.  While we driving we would occasionally see signs for Xabia and we started to get a bit confused....then I figured it out....many, if not all the signs are in both the Spanish and Valencian languages.  It was about an hour drive to Javea (video of Javea).  It was beautiful and we loved it right away.  We walked along the small boardwalk and ate a wonderful lunch at Noray Puerto, which is on the boardwalk.  Javea is only about 30,000 inhabitants of which 53% are foreign nationals...I can see why the British, Dutch and others live here, at least for part of the year.

As we enjoyed the gorgeous day we realized that while Javea is beautiful we could not live there full time.  To small, not enough culture or activities other then the Sea and hiking and biking.  So after lunch we drove North (back up towards Valencia) and visited Denia. It only has a population of 43,000 but it felt so much larger than Javea.

"There is evidence of human habitation in the area since prehistoric times and there are significant Iberian ruins on the hillsides nearby. In the 4th century BC it was a Greek colony of Marseille or Empuries, being mentioned by Strabo as Hemeroscopion.  It was an ally of Rome during the Punic Wars, and later was absorbed into the Roman Empire inder the name Dianum.  In the 1st century BC Quintus Sertorius established a Roman naval base here."

To me Denia was too large and too busy with many tourists. So we continued our drive back towards Valencia.  Out last coastal town was Oliva, small but not much to it...although their beach was the best of the 3 costal towns we saw.

We had an awesome day and it helped us to know that we would spend some weekends in Javea, we just will not choose to live there.