Crevillent Part Three

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We haven’t done much over the past week other than taking the bus into Elche a couple of times. The archaeological museum in the castle was worth the visit, and good value for the €3 admission.

In the Elche Municipal Park
Pretty ceramic-tiled fountain
The view from the top of the museum – palm trees everywhere!
View over the town from the museum roof
Door of the day
The old market
Unusual statue made from slats of metal
And another one
Elche street art
These are called atxos (at-chose) and are lit to make torches for the Elche Kings parade – they didn’t have these in Crevillent
A letterbox for the children to post their letters to the Kings

Today is el Día de los Reyes, the day that the Spanish kids get their Christmas presents. Yesterday we went to the local pastelería to check out the festive cake, the Roscón de Reyes. It’s a large ring-shaped cake with candied sweets on the top, and contains a ‘lucky’ ceramic baby Jesus inside along with a bean – whoever gets the bean is supposed to pay for next year’s cake. Carol’s slice contained both a ceramic king (rather than baby Jesus) and the bean, so the cake is on Carol next year!

Roscón de Reyes
Carol’s lucky cake
Orange skin and yellow hair… more Donald Trump than Kings

Last night we went to see the parade go through the Crevillent town centre, and were joined by our German/Danish/Swedish friends Monika, Poul, Marianne and Roger. We weren’t quite sure what to expect, and had prepared ourselves to be underwhelmed so as to avoid any disappointment. However the parade was really good fun, with several marching bands, floats and people dressed up dancing through the streets. Most of the youngsters lining the route held carrier bags to collect sweets given away by those in the procession, which were filled the time the three kings passed by in the final tractor-drawn floats. After the parade we stopped for a drink at the local Irish bar, and when they ran out of red wine we moved on to the bar at the campsite hotel where we could see televised coverage of the parade in Madrid. The hotel was holding a festive dinner, and it was good fun watching the guests turn up all dressed to the nines (especially those ladies teetering in ridiculously high heels).

Carol with our German, Danish and Swedish friends
The first band
One of the floats
Dancers
More dancers
This lad did very well for sweets
One of the kings
This float looks like it had been borrowed from the Moros y Cristianos carnival
Start ’em young!
Balthazar

Tomorrow we shall be moving on to Murcia, the first stop on our long journey home. Four weeks from now, we shall be back in the UK.

Mike

1 thought on “Crevillent Part Three”

  1. Happy New year and thank you for your postcard – that is how I remember Benidorm from around 1980 when I went there ha ha. Love the photos of the el Día de los Reyes parade. So good to see celebrations being more traditional and children/adults happy to wear traditional clothes or be in a band for the parade. We sadly seem to have lost our way with this type of celebration back home. Look forward to seeing you (hopefully) when you come back to UK. Luv Lesley xx

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