As my time in Spain winds down (12 days today!), I’ve started taking the time to do things for the last time. I’ve dedicated both this weekend and the next, in between all the studying for finals, to fully embracing the city of Alicante and Spain!
Before I get into all the things that I’ve started saying goodbye to, I thought I’d share a little about my trip to a local winery that my program took a few weeks ago.
About a two hour bus-ride from Alicante, this winery not only specializes in making a fair number of different wines, but also in manufacturing high-end olive oil. I don’t know anything about wine, so a lot of the tour went over my head, but it was cool to get to see the vineyard and the big machinery that they use with the grapes. Here are some pictures from the tour:
Behind this building is the manufacturing plant. 
A little hard to see, but those are bottles upon bottles of wine. 
All of this is underground and climate controlled 
Barrels of wine (totally my stereotypical vision of a winery)
The grape emblem in the center is the brand of the winery. 
The two-digit number is the year that the wine was placed in the barrel.
The tour guide also showed us this bottle of wine (showed below) that is a really old, specific type of wine that costs 372 Euros — roughly $410. (Fun fact: the crystals that are on the bottle are Swarovski.) It’s very expensive, high-end wine.
Then we went into the private collection vault, which was basically like a hidden labyrinth behind this gigantic door that rotated (super cool). The private collection vault is really elite; to have a space in there you have to have a lot of money. There’s also tiny spaces where owners can come to drink with their friends and family or make business deals over fancy wine. It was insane.
The brown piece to the left is the door. 
A little drinking cove 
There were also larger places to sit like this 
This felt a little like being inside Gringotts
After we finished the tour, we did a tasting where they had four different types of wine for the group to try, as well as samples of their olive oil with bread and other snacks (very yummy!). Overall, a very fun activity. I’ve never visited a winery before, so it was just cool to learn about the process and see all of the things you imagine when you think about a winery (the vineyards, barrels etc.).
Lasts
Here’s some of the things that are on my list of things to do/visit before I leave:
- The castle
- Sip & Wonder (the coffeeshop I frequented while here)
- My favorite bakery
- Costa Blanca beach
- 100 Montaditos (one of my favorite restaurants)
- La Explanada (walk in downtown Alicante)
- Sal y Pepe (one of my favorite restaurants)
Of these things, this weekend I visited the castle, Sip & Wonder, and my favorite bakery. As a snack on my hike up to the castle, I bought a package of Christmas-themed cookies from the bakery. The cookies were delicious and really cute because they were shaped like Santa, reindeer, or other things like that.
Santa (minus a leg…) 
A reindeer 🙂
Even though it was a gorgeous day, there was virtually NO ONE on top of the castle, a sight incredibly rare. Because it was so empty, I took advantage and took a lot of photos (plus the lighting was pretty as I went about an hour before sunset). Here are some of my photos:
Normally this is full of people 
Yours truly 
I also went to Sip & Wonder to get some work done, a fun time! (Side note: I ordered an acai bowl for the first time there and it was delicious — it had coconut, fresh fruit, and mint!)
This upcoming weekend I’m going to hit the rest of my list, so that after that I can just focus on finals and packing! So crazy to be so close to the end! Next blog (which I think will be my last) I’m going to reflect on my experience and give my thoughts about study abroad as a whole. Definitely going to be a good post!
¡Hasta luego!
— Grace
Where in the World Is Grace Elizabeth? 