Hike to Hermitage Santa Lucia

2013-04-10 Hike to Hermitage Santa Lucia

This morning we headed towards the beach area of town for our Jog/run and followed the shore once we got pass the beach.  It is a mixture of walking paths where you can run and rocky parts where it is best to walk.  This may turn out to be a great spot for our morning routine.  

Did a load of laundry this morning and I had the pleasure of chatting with Margaret who was also hanging out her laundry, the lady from unit 5.  I told her that we went to see the museum that she had recommended.  She asked if I had seen the Javea treasure.  It is a golden necklace with a few matching pieces.  Yes, we did.  The story goes a farmer found a Roman Jug and it was in it and he kept it.  Then the word got around that he found it.  Then one day the king phones him and tells him that he is so happy that he (the farmer) is donating it to the Madrid archeological museum and would he like to join him for lunch.  So the farmer donated his find.  She also told me that when her son was 12, he went scuba diving and found the top of a Roman jug which the son stills has to this day.

Replica of gold necklace found by farmer

For our lunch walk we decided to go see if we could find the Queens Baths which are behind the Javea Parador Hotel.  We had seen where they were at the museum yesterday.  We found it no problem and walked to the end of the path.  From there you can see the whole Arenal beach area.  We had to turn back as there is a channel for the boats to go into the marina.  From there we walked to the beach promenade as we wanted to see where David Ferrer was on Monday.  We found the spot and I took a picture of it for Wendy’s mom to see.

Around queens baths

Lunch time walk today

David Ferrer was here on Monday to unveil this, he was born in Javea where we are staying

After lunch, I walked to the grocery store to pick up something for supper to go with the nice wine we bought yesterday in old town.  It is a beautiful day today.  Probably the warmest it has been so far, around 23 or so. It must get extremely hot here in the summer because the grocery stores all have car ports to shelter the cars for while you do your groceries.  On my way back, it was so hot that I had to walk on the shady side of the street on the way back so that the delicious ice cream that comes in the fruit shells did not melt.   This afternoon treats was a half pineapple filled with ice cream.

Parking at grocery stores is all covered, we think because of the sun in the summer

Pineapple ice cream, yummy!

After Wendy was done work we decided to hike up to see the Santa Lucia Hermitage.  First we walked to old town where the starting point is located.  The information center was open so we stopped in.  The man there could speak good English.  We got a small map of Valencia for this week-end. He told us about the festival in town in 2 weekends,  for a certain type of typical food (Coque).  Also pointed out that we were standing over a graveyard, under plexiglass where you could see 6 tombs that were dug out of stone since the whole hill is all stone. The church was open, so we went in for a very quick visit.  The inside is all stone with very high ceilings.

Church in Old Town

 The loop is 3/4 of a kilometer up and 1 ½ km down as it would be very hard to come down the way we went up, a bit of a direct line.    The chapel that is on top of the hill is only small and it was not open as I guess not too many people go up here at this time of the year.  It dates back from the 17^th century and is classified as a conquest chapel.  The views are fantastic from here as we are at 500 feet above sea level.  Remember that we started at almost see level at our apartment.    Old town is at about 180 feet above sea level.  The trail was rated easy, Wendy said there is no way you are eve going to get me to go on a Hard one.  The climb to the top was a fairly steep grade with a few hard spots. 

This is where we are hiking up this afternoon

View from the top

View from the top again, we are staying near the water, you can see the walk we do to Old Town through the orange orchards

Made it...

Saw this place on the walk down, looked pretty nice...

On the way down we see the path that leads to the Cavalry Chapel.  It is only a small hike up from the path and I figured we could walk to old town from there.  The chapel is not open but looks nice with its blue dome.  Leading up to the chapel is the station of Jesus going to the cross.  The only problem was we started at the end.  It is like reading last chapter of a book first (Elaine).  We already knew the story anyway so it did not matter but we had fun reading the captions in Spanish and figuring what they meant. Stopped at the market to buy a bottle of water and at the same time picked up 2 multigrain buns and a dessert for supper.  The whole 8 km hike took us 2 and 20 minutes with a stop at the information center.  We should be ready for golf this summer and the river hill should not be a problem.   

Calvary Chapel

One of the stations of the cross

Chapel Gates

So supper tonight I picked up something nice to make to go with our wine we bought yesterday, chorizo sausages.  Started with artichokes for an appetizer, then sausages with saffron risotto, and those delicious big onions (like the ones in Mexico).  I was not overly thrilled when I brought it to the table and Wendy said you are surprising me with hot dogs??  Yes, they did look like hot dogs from home, but they were chorizo sausages and they were delicious.  We were a little disappointed in the pricey wine.  It was good, smooth and tasty but for $20.00 Canadian, we will not be bringing this one back home to Canada.  Maybe we have just acquired the taste for 3 euro bottles, not 15 euro bottles.  I saw one that I want to try at the grocery store for about $10.00 Canadian. 

After we were done supper (10PM, yes we are now real Spaniards) we were able to get through to Robin to wish him a happy birthday.  Skype is really great to be able to keep in touch.  We also found out that the photo book we put together for them last November for Christmas finally arrived yesterday.  That is possibly the latest (or earliest) we have ever been with a Christmas gift, even later that Joeys birthday cards!!  Glad it arrived, by now we thought we had just been duped and it would never have been shipped, one of those great deals on the internet, but Jill said it did turn out really nice.

Finished off the night watching some of the Masters par 3 competition.  It starts so late here that I don’t think we will see too much of it this week-end.  Fun to see everyone out with family and girlfriends and hear them being interview.  Speaking of that did Tiger play?  Did he bring a girlfriend, which one?