This full-day shore excursion from the Alicante cruise port combines the hilltop village of Guadalest with an afternoon in Alicante itself.
After meeting your guide at the pier, you drive inland toward Guadalest, with a photo stop in the surrounding mountains along the way. Guadalest has only around 200 year-round residents, but its dramatic setting, carved into a rock pinnacle and reached through a tunnel hewn from the mountainside, made it one of Spain's most visited villages and earned it Historic and Artistic Monument status in 1974. In the upper village you visit the restored House of the Ordunas, once home to the valley's overlords, and see the ruins of a castle of Islamic origin dating to the 12th century, largely destroyed by an earthquake in 1644. You have free time to explore the cobbled streets, browse local shops, and take in the views before a break for lunch on your own.
Back in Alicante, you drive up Benacantil Hill to the Castle of Santa Barbara, which has watched over the city and its harbor since Moorish forces first fortified the summit in the 9th century, with most of what stands today added during a 16th century rebuild. Some visitors ride the elevator built into a tunnel inside the mountain, a quicker way up than the switchback road, and Postiguet Beach sits directly at the base of the hill below the ramparts. After a morning spent looking down from a mountain village, the castle offers a different vantage point: views out over the harbor, the Mediterranean, and the rooftops of the city itself.
From the castle, you wind down into Alicante's old quarter, the Barrio de Santa Cruz, where balconies and doorways painted in bright colors climb the hillside in narrow, stepped lanes. Your guide points out the 18th century baroque Town Hall along the way, a contrast to Guadalest's rougher stone architecture earlier in the day, before you return to the pier.
Review Location- Alicante 
