A week in Javea, Spain

Hello friends! It's been a while. The summer is flying by, I can't believe it is the end of July already. We are back home in Canada, finally settling down after a rather hectic first half of 2019. I have lots of half finished posts that I will hopefully get to over the next few weeks: updates of how we are doing in Canada and a recap of our last few weeks in England. I wrote about our first three weeks in England here and here.

First up is a post on our week in Javea, Spain. Javea is located on the east coast of Spain, in between Alicante and Valencia. Andy's best friend Lee's parents have lived there for 18 years, and Andy spent quite a few summers in Javea with Lee and his family as a teenager. It's a lovely coastal town, popular with both tourists and expats from Europe. When I last wrote Ollie was sick with possible chicken pox and we were not sure if we'd be able to take him to Spain with us. Happily his fever broke two days before our trip and within a few days of being in Spain his rash was gone and he was back to his normal self. I was SO happy and relieved that he did not have chicken pox and we could leave for our week in Spain as planned.

On the day of our departure we were up at the crack of dawn for another early morning flight from Gatwick. Andy and I pretty much have our early morning flight routine down pat and we left for Gatwick 12 minutes earlier than planned. Although getting up early is a pain, I do prefer travelling at this time of day. The roads to the airport are usually clear and the airport itself is quieter. Though I’m not sure any London airport is ever “quiet”.  We did manage an almost civilised breakfast at The Grain Store in Gatwick before boarding our flight with British Airways. The four of us crowding into three seats on a small airplane is getting pretty old. I'm almost looking forward to the day we have to start buying Ollie his own seat as he is far too active to be sitting on my lap the whole time!

Once we arrived at Alicante airport, we picked up our rental car (a looooong process) and then headed to Javea, which was about an hour away. Our accommodation was a four bedroom condo townhouse, across the laneway from Lee's parent's house. Lee, his wife Claire, and their daughter Maisie stayed with Lee's parents. We shared our townhouse with another couple, Tom and Marie, and their two-year-old daughter Izzy. Tom, Lee and Andy are all part of the same group of friends from London so it was nice to hang out with everyone again, although admittedly a family holiday with young kids was very different to our childless partying days in London!

We spent the majority of the week by the pool, which was conveniently located right outside our back garden. Ella and Izzy could have happily played in there all day every day. It was shared by the surrounding townhouses, which were a mix of locals and holiday rentals. We were pretty lucky and the pool wasn’t very busy at all, a lot of the time we had it all to ourselves or were sharing with just one other family.

The pool was a fantastic design. There was a shallow end that was probably about 70-80cm deep - Ella was able to stand up in it easily. This part of the pool was separated from the deep end by a bridge, supported by poles spaced close enough together so that you were not able to cross from the shallow to the deep end without getting out of the pool. It was absolutely perfect for Ella.

We haven’t done a lot of swimming since leaving Australia and as a result Ella was somewhat timid when we first got in the pool. She wouldn’t put her face under water, and she wouldn’t go in the deep end while wearing her swimming vest. Both of these things she used to do confidently six months ago. I felt a bit sad about this and have resolved to take her swimming more often in Canada, even if it means braving the freezing cold public pools. Happily, over the week her confidence grew, and by the end she was going under, swimming and jumping in the deep end, and even attempting to swim a few meters without any swimming aids.

Ollie has only been swimming a handful of times, so he’s much less confident or happy to go in the water than Ella was. By his age, Ella had been doing swimming lessons for 9 months already! Poor second child Ollie, we should really get him more used to the water! I think the water in this pool was a bit cold for him, so I had to get him used to it gradually before he was happy to stay in. He did love sitting a floaty boat and being pushed around by Ella.

We went to the beach twice with everyone. The girls had loads of fun playing in the sand and the shallow waves and it made a nice change from the pool. We could only stay for the morning as it tended to get too hot for the (shadeless) beach in the afternoon.

The area around the beach, known as the Arenal Promenade, is fantastic. The beach itself is gorgeous, surrounded on one side by a mountain, the Mongo, making for stunning views. There is a wide paved path for pedestrians and a good variety of bars, restaurants and shops facing the sea. There are also a few playgrounds along the beach, so you can get a drink at a bar and your kids can play in view at the beach, either at the playground or running through the palm trees. Perfect!

We ate at a few different restaurants on the Arenal. We took all the kids to eat at Chabada one night. We had a table looking out on to the beach and the kids were pretty well behaved for the most part. Javea is very family friendly so no one bats an eye at noisy toddlers at a table anyway. (Yes, those are Ollie's legs you can see under the table. I found it easier to just let him crawl around down there rather than make him sit in a high chair the whole time.)

We had lunch twice at No. 11 which I really liked. A good selection of fresh juices and smoothies and healthy lunch options.

Lee's mum, Silvia, took Claire and me to her local spinning class. It was a killer! We did go three times that week, which made me feel quite virtuous and it of course negated all of the food and alcohol consumed that week! The spinning class was held at a tennis club which had a pool, so the others would meet us after spinning for coffees, breakfast and a dip in the pool. Such a lovely place to spend the morning!



We each had a "girls night" and a "boys night" where we all got to have some child-free time. The boys went golfing, and we went on a beach bar crawl, sampling happy hour cocktails while watching the sun set over the sea. We got talked into this "disaster bowl" by our very flirty waiter who of course took this selfie for us:

Our visit coincided with the annual Javea International Festival. The main attraction was the food; tents lined the streets with different cuisines from 20 different nations. It was about a 40 minute walk from our accommodation, so on the way there we stopped at one of the many small bars (really just little shacks) along the beach for sangria and snacks.

A big draw at the food festival were these HUGE mojitos (for only 8 euros!), and based on recommendations from Lee's parents we sampled some delicious meat from Argentina and corn and pork from Columbia. There was a main stage with live music and we had a great time dancing and eating with the kids.

On our last night we had a huge dinner. Lee’s brother had arrived from Hong Kong with his wife and three kids (3 year old twins and a four week old baby). We were a party of 19, including 7 kids under the age of 4 - Ella being the oldest. Crazy? I thought so. But it was actually fantastic. We ate early enough that the huge restaurant area was pretty much empty, as no one is Spain (except for the English tourists) eats at 6:30pm! The back wall was lined with fish ponds which kept the kids pretty occupied, as did the ice creams they had once dinner had finished.

All in all we had a lovely family holiday enjoying the sunshine, swimming and time spent with good friends. We have been invited to a wedding in Javea next June, so I'm already looking forward to our next holiday here!