A journey across Europe to visit Portugal: Peniscola

July 14, 2016

This year my family and I decided to go on a different kind of holiday, one I have wished for a long time: traveling around Europe with a camper. Our destination was Portugal, 3000 km away. I will not go into details about our whereabouts because the photos will speak for themselves.

The first longer stop was in Peniscola, Spain. The town is located on the Costa del Azahar, north of the Serra d’Irta along the Mediterranean coast. It is crowded with hotels and tourists, but the beaches and the castle make up for it. The castle was build by the Knights Templar and it is worth visiting, best before the main season.

We haven’t really looked at any pictures of what we would visit, so when we got to the seaside, we did not know what to expect and after this cute little wooden bridge, a beautiful long sandy beach greeted us. The waves were small and it was a bit windy, just nice enough so it wasn’t too hot. Because we were staying in a small camp at the other end of the city center, the beach was almost empty.

Peniscola, often called the “Gibraltar of Valencia,” and locally as “The City in the Sea” is a fortified seaport, with a lighthouse, built on a rocky headland about 220 feet (67 m) high, and joined to the mainland by only a narrow strip of land. The history of the place goes back to the Iberians. Later the town became Phoenician, named Tyreche, then Greek, under the name Chersonesos (meaning “peninsula”). It was next captured by the Carthaginians under Hamilcar Barca; legend has it that this is the place where he made his son Hannibal swear an oath that he would never be a friend of Rome.