Soon, Christmas is here again! Day by day we are closer to that cheerful celebration and it's time to visit some Christmas markets and walk around in those towns...
Hey, stop!
What you are talking about? We are only at the beginning of June.
Oops, true! Though this walk indeed happened in December 2022. We visited for the first time Xixona, which is a little town between some mountains in the inland Alicante area (Spain). I had a day off, which was so good to be able to plan a little excursion instead of going to work in the afternoon.
We had seen an advertisement for the Christmas market in Xixona, and we decided to go that day when I was free. It lasted for several days, as seems that it is a pretty famous market on those dates before Christmas. This town is well known for the artisanal ice cream and the kind of nougat (turrón) they produce. We were surprised to see so many stalls selling that product, made by local families.
Although we went because of the street market, we participated in a guided tour through the town. Maybe it is better to call it a village, as there are less than 7000 people living there.
We didn't know what to expect, but that's why it was interesting, to meet a new place. Not new, as the village is old. But it was a new town marked in our travel records.
The meeting point of this guided tour was in front of the town hall. It was free and there were two guides who were sharing the work of showing us the municipality and talk about the history of it.
First, we walked through the main street and later the path led towards narrow streets and uphill. Good physical exercise, something I would need now...
One of the stops was in front of this little church. A chapel. The guide told us a story of how the town survived the plague. It was connected to an image of San Sebastian that was in this house. While the owner of the house was cleaning, she saw that the image was crying. It happened on July 24, 1600, well, according to the tradition. Now we can believe or not this story, but they say that the population got rid of the plague in that town because of this happening.
We have chosen to go on this guided walk, but I think we would not get lost by going alone. The main places and buildings were marked with signs.
Stairs up and down but we were not complaining. The group continued and actually was growing during this time. How? People from the street who happened to be there became interested in this activity and they joined.
One of the destinations was the castle of Xixona, and there we stopped a bit, again to talk and laugh about some funny things that happened in the meantime. There was a boy claiming that he is hungry and would like to eat biscuits. The guide offered him turrón, but he didn't accept. To the question of why, the mother said that he didn't like it as it was hard to chew. Well, that is true, there are types of that nougat that have a very dense structure.
The views from the castle were so nice, but it was misty, the tops of the mountains remained covered the fog.
The Castle of Xixona was built in the 12th century, and it is how it looked like. In this representation, we can see different towers, and one of them (the number 5) was Torre Grossa - The Great Tower.
Closer and more detailed representation and explanation of the Great Tower.
This whole complex was built on an elevated part of the town and from here they could watch even the coast and prevent pirate attacks.
If you go up, it means you have to go down too. So again stairs and steep streets were waiting for us, but this time it was easier to go walk.
The old centre of Xixona is not very well-maintained. There are old houses that for sure would need some maintenance and nicer facades. There was also a ruin of an old church, just the main entrance and a part of a wall remained. The guide talked about it but I was a bit far away so I didn't hear a lot of the history. My bad.
This would be the interior of this old church. But we have to imagine the walls here and the roof.
The church that is still in good condition is this one, with the blue roof on the tower - Archpriestal Church of Our Lady of the Assumption. It was built between the 16th and 17th centuries, in Renaissance style.
Just a few streets and we were back to the little square from where we started this little guided tour.
The tour lasted for a bit more than an hour, and the facade of the town hall received a different look. Illuminated by the lights - it felt like evening already.
However, it was not the end of our visit to Xixona. It was time for some sweet bites from the stalls of the street market.
