Our Friday drive

The weather was just ok today.  Cloudy but not all that cold.  So it was decent enough to take a drive.  Today we picked a route that would take us into the Jalon Valley.
First we drove to La Nucia again.  That sure is a nice place and we can definitely see why expats have settled in that area.  We had heard that "the best nursery on the Costa Blanca" was in La Nucia so we set out to find it.  We were impressed with that nursery and we agree with it being proclaimed the best on the coast.  They have so MANY different kinds of plants and trees, it was like going to a special Botanical Garden.  And never in our lives have we seen pots as big as some of the pots we saw there.  Those huge pots are holding equally huge trees that it must be something else to have to move one of those things.  Of course, Guillermo was looking for new and different seeds but as good as this nursery is, they just didn't have any seeds that he was interested in getting.

From La Nucia we drove up through Callosa d' en Sarria through the mountains down  to Porcent, through Alcalali and then to the town of Xalo where we had in mind to have lunch.  The restaurant we had in mind wasn't in the town, we had to drive a ways to get to it.  But when we finally found it, we found it to be a cute little place surrounded by vineyards.  It would have been nice to sit outside on the terrace by the grapevines but it was a little too cool.  It was nice inside though with the wood-burning stove and we had a great meal there.

Our set-menu lunch included that whole bottle of wine on the table - wine which was produced from the vines just outside the back there.  It was really good wine and at first we thought, oh no, how are we going to finish a whole bottle of wine, but by the main course, we were wondering if we were going to have enough for the entire meal!

Happening at the table right beside us.  The guy with the guitar came in and started playing and singing and the guy at the table joined him at the end.  They both had excellent voices and it really made for an all-around enjoyable experience.

Our drive back took us on more windy mountain roads and we came to an area where we noticed the Calpe rock way down in the distance.  

We stopped in the town of Altea on the way back, to check out the beaches there.  We weren't impressed but we did see several very interesting restaurants along the waterfront that we would like to come back and try.