We had planned to visit
Granada but it was closed. Actually, we
discovered that the
Alhambra
palace was sold out. One cannot get tickets at the last minute. Seeing the
Moorish palace will have to wait for another trip. Instead, we decided to taste
some of the local wines in the
Alicante
wine region. We visited Novelda, Monòver and El Pinós.
All three towns are part
of the wine region where the main red-wine grape is Monastrell (Mourvedre). In
El Pinós, we thought we would have lunch, but like
Alhambra, it was sold out. (The reason was
that that Sunday was the last day of a week-long gastronomic festival in El
Pinós and the restaurants were all booked.) We headed back toward
Alicante with the idea of
eating in Monòver but found no restaurants open there. The same was true in
Novelda. We ended up having a nice home-made lunch back at the apartment. It
seems that few establishments are open on Sunday in villages far from the
tourist towns. A waitress in El Pinós told us that we would have little success
in finding wineries open on Sunday; everything was closed on Sunday. (Luckily,
we proved her wrong and had fun tasting wines at a wine cooperative near
Monòver . She
was right in that none
of the vineyards were open. As I think about it, the wineries that we passed
did not seem to have tasting rooms as the wineries in
France have…)
In Novelda, we visited the Gaudi-inspired church Ste. Maria
Magdalena at the site of the castle de la Mola.
The church was designed by José
Sala Sala and finished in 1946. Novelda is known for its stone quarries and the
organ loft is built with local marble.
One other thing that I have noted on this trip is that one
can buy a whole leg of air-cured pork. In the wine coop they were selling a leg
of pork for 7.95€ per kilo. (In
Madrid, the lowest price I saw was 13 € per kilo.) I am sure that I never saw a leg of air-dried pork for sale in the states…
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| Which is the ham? |
