Bike Ride through Guardamar

This is a joint post from Kayla and Jen.

J --- I've been seeing more how the field of architecture calls us to be students of the world, requiring close observations of places and people, late night explorations of the castle and its surroundings, feeling the pulse of the city and the life that lays within it.

Last night Kayla and I rented mountain bikes right as the bike shop was closing. In our broken Spanish, we asked for bikes "por la noche." For only 6 euros each, we had the bikes until 10am the next morning. We locked them together to a street sign and excitedly agreed to meet after dinner.

We met up again at 9:30pm. Our ride started out by biking south towards the urbanizations. I thought about how they reminded me of Le Corbusier's Domino House, and made a mental note to bike back there during the daytime. Then, starting at the southern end of Guardamar, we biked along the promenade until we hit the sand dunes. As the sun started to set, we rode through the park with cacti, palm trees, and other trees flying past us.

K --- It was pretty dark by the time we came to the marina, where the Rio Segura empties out into the Mediterranean Sea. It was beautiful out there - we stopped multiple times so I could take pictures of the lights shimmering on the water. We rode about halfway down the pier and stopped again to admire the view.

On our way back, everyone was out in the streets celebrating Spain's victory in the World Cup game against Portugal - people here are much more supportive of their soccer team! They were driving down the streets and hooking their horns, riding on bikes with huge flags attached to them, and decked out in red and yellow.

We made it back to the plaza we started in and locked up our bikes to another street sign so we could return them in the morning. Hopefully we’ll get another chance to explore other parts of the town; it’s small, but there are many different neighborhoods to check out!


-- Jen Tai and Kayla Solheim