So finally after almost 2 weeks of travel, with our 16 items in tow, we arrived at the Valencia airport and headed out to Javea. Surprisingly, our bags all arrived intact, although one of our biggest suitcases arrived early and it took a bit of time to track it down. The biggest stress point was whether we would be able to fit our luggage into the rental car, which was a Ford Focus station wagon. It was big by Spanish standards, but took quite a bit of creative engineering to get all the bags to fit. Suzanne and I were very much looking forward to settling into one place and putting these @#$%^ bags away for a while! Valencia is just over an hour from Javea, but there is a fantastic toll road/motorway that takes you straight there.
I figured it would be easy to find, given I had been there in January. What I didn’t figure was that there was a non-toll version of the same road, veering inland and completely bypassing the coast. After about 45 minutes and seeing no signs anywhere pointing to Javea, I realized I had screwed up. Of course, we did not have any proper maps of the region handy, but we were able to dig up a map of Spain, which showed we were directly east of Javea, with a whole bunch of mountains between us and a few roads on the map that looked like they may be heading west. Suffice it to say, what should have been an hour trip ended up taking three, and what should have been a relaxing early entry into town turned out to be somewhat exhausting first day. However, we did see some very interesting small towns and some cool rural areas with old castle ruins in the countryside that will warrant further exploration when we have more energy.
So finally after almost 2 weeks of travel, with our 16 items in tow, we arrived at the Valencia airport and headed out to Javea. Surprisingly, our bags all arrived intact, although one of our biggest suitcases arrived early and it took a bit of time to track it down. The biggest stress point was whether we would be able to fit our luggage into the rental car, which was a Ford Focus station wagon. It was big by Spanish standards, but took quite a bit of creative engineering to get all the bags to fit. Suzanne and I were very much looking forward to settling into one place and putting these @#$%^ bags away for a while! Valencia is just over an hour from Javea, but there is a fantastic toll road/motorway that takes you straight there. 
I figured it would be easy to find, given I had been there in January. What I didn’t figure was that there was a non-toll version of the same road, veering inland and completely bypassing the coast. After about 45 minutes and seeing no signs anywhere pointing to Javea, I realized I had screwed up. Of course, we did not have any proper maps of the region handy, but we were able to dig up a map of Spain, which showed we were directly east of Javea, with a whole bunch of mountains between us and a few roads on the map that looked like they may be heading west. Suffice it to say, what should have been an hour trip ended up taking three, and what should have been a relaxing early entry into town turned out to be somewhat exhausting first day. However, we did see some very interesting small towns and some cool rural areas with old castle ruins in the countryside that will warrant further exploration when we have more energy.
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