After having a day trip to Alicante a couple of years ago (Well actually 2 hours on a Thomson excursion) while staying in Benidorm,my wife & myself decided to use my last 4 days holiday entitlement to have a short break in Spain & found a really good value holiday in Alicante courtesy of Easyjet. The idea was that 4 days would give us plenty of time to have a good look around the city & as we are into that sort of thing,the castle. The flight went OK but on the Alicante newsletter which I am subscribed to It recommended getting an excellent free map of the city from the information desk at the airport. Well this is where things started to go wrong - I could not find an information desk so we decided to catch the bus & get one in Alicante. As it was Sunday all the information places were closed so we finished up having to pay 5 euros from a news kiosk for one so large it was difficult to manage. We finally found our hotel after a 30 min walk with suitcases up roads that seemed like climbing Everest. We went down later to find a place to eat & found the restaurant in the hotel didn't open until 8 pm so we started walking down towards the seafront. Well if you want anything other than pizza or pasta be prepared to pay 15 euros plus just for a main course. A couple of places on the way down had boards outside advertising English meals so as we hardly know any Spanish we wrongly assumed that if the boards were written in English then there would be a menu written in English or at least someone would be able to tell us what was availble but neither happened so we had to leave & try somewhere else. We eventually found somewhere on the seafront where we managed to get a steak for 14.95 euros.With a jug of Sangria the bill came to 41 euros. Later in the week we decided to try out the tram so we bought tickets to Benidorm. When we got there the shopping monster reared it's head & the wife finished up with 2 new dresses.We then went for a great meal at one of our regular restaurants when in Benidorm. On the return to Alicante we added up how much we had spent & were shocked that all we had spent all day including the tram fare & shopping was 39 Euros - 2 Euros less than just a meal & drink in Alicante. In summary Alicante is a great place for a holiday if you can speak Spanish or like pasta & pizza for every meal,unless of course you can afford steaks every night. Hardly anyone there speaks English so if like us you don't speak Spanish you are better off going to one of the recognised holiday areas like Benidorm where 2 out of 3 people are English and there is a glut of cheap eating places & entertainment(of which there seemed very little of in Alicante) Also you need to be fairly fit as the whole city is built on a very steep slope.in fact we didn't do the castle because it seemed there would be to much of a climb for us to cope with. On the plus side it is a beautiful city with some lovely parks and the highlight was the walk along the park on the seafront,especially at night,with all the stalls & street traders. As far as I am concerned I am glad I went as it was an experience but unless I ever learn Spanish one I doubt I will ever repeat
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