This is about our 3 night trip to Murcia a few weeks ago, the seventh largest city in Spain but somewhere we had not been before. A bit off the beaten track for us. Normally we fly into Alicante airport and head off to stay in that fantastic, warm city. This time we took the bus from the airport to Murcia, less than an hour away, to see the sights and search for a new snowglobe.
We love football and made sure we saw
the Murcia (0) v Intercity, of Alicante (1) match at the impressive Estadio Enrique Roca de Murcia.
On our second day in Murcia we were excited to find a little convenience shop in the centre selling a small selection of souveniers including a Murcia snow globe. Unfortunately, as we were heading off the the football match, we didn't buy it at the time. Alarmingly, each time we went back to try and purhase the globe, the shop was closed and there appeared to be no other shops in the centre. Not to be thwarted, Margaret took to the internet and, after lots of seaching, found a blog from an American globetrotter who reviewed souvenier shops!. So we had a happy ending as Daniel G showcased La Vitrina (https://goo.gl/maps/9d7xFrz1yLGDFCMW7), which was open, and was packed with an interesting selection of ornaments. Can you see the globe in the shop window below?
Murcia has only one design of snowglobe but we were not disappointed with the design. The cathedral and tower are probably the main feature in Murcia and the base had a quality looking illustration of the city walls and what I think is the town hall.
Here's a close up, showing the two features in the globe we bought, and us outside the real thing. The main part of the cathedral facade was undercover for repairs but the tower looked great in the warm, February sunshine.
The Cathedral was free on Sunday and well worth a look around. We went on a tour up the tower. It's by guide only and was all in Spanish so we could not understand too much, but still worth the climb for the views. In Alicante down the road, English is plentiful but out here its mainly Spanish for everything, so we had to manage best we could with the language. From Google we found the tower, Torre-Campanario, was built from 1521-1791 in 5 stages. It measures 90 meters high, It has a neat whispering room where a whisper in one corner can be clearly heard in the opposite corner. We made it to the bell tower with its 20 bells and got some great views of the city.
Murcia was a very interesting addition to our places visited. It was really good to add to our collection with the available snowglobe.
Other places we visited of note are:
The Real Casino de Murcia. Each room had different spectacular, artistic, Spanish styles from the 19th and early 20th century.
The sculpture museum of Museo Salzillo to see in particular its detailed nativity displays.
We also took a bus out of the city and visited the shrine of the Mirador del Santuario de la Virgen de la Fuensanta, well worth a snow globe itself really.
Murcia is inland so we couldnt resist catching the bus to Alicante on our final day and spending the afternoon on the beach before jetting out back to the UK on the evening with our snow globe well wrapped and boxed in our suitcase.