Birthday

At: Alicante, Spain

November 20th was my birthday. I’m getting older than I like to admit, but at least I’m doing midlife crisis things before my actual midlife crisis hits. Suddenly my brother popped up next to me on the quay! “Happy birthday!” I almost had a heart attack right there and then.

I wanted to visit the Volvo Ocean Race museum and the Santa Barbara fortress on the hill. The VOR museum was tiny but nice. The fortress was huge and also nice. We took the 160m elevator up and then descended the hill at our leisure. At a certain age, you’re allowed to do that.

We had an expansive view over Alicante and could see our house from here.

In the evening we had dinner in an excellent restaurant (“San Telmo Gastrobar”). A very good birthday indeed, one of the best!

Next day, we went to see modern art in the MACA. They want to democratize modern art, so the museum is free, but it is strictly forbidden to take pictures of the works. Imagine someone trying to democratize modern art too much. When we came into the exhibition room, two attendants sprang up from their snooze and started following us around with panicky eyes on the kids. We considered splitting up in 3 groups to see what they would do.

In the evening, my brother sadly had to leave again. We met up with our friend Hilde, who was coincidentally in Alicante for a training and who believes since forever that my birthday is on the 21st. We had a very pleasant evening in a vegan restaurant (“Purpura Project B’art”). At my age, you got to start watching what you eat.