← Maratón Elche-Alicante·Day trip

Villajoyosa: Painted Houses and a Chocolate Factory

A fishing town up the coast from Alicante with a row of brightly painted houses above the beach, a flat seafront and a free tour of the Valor chocolate factory.

DurationDay trip
TransitTRAM line 1, about 1 hour from Luceros, Alicante
DepartsAlicante Luceros

After the Maratón Elche-Alicante: Villajoyosa

The Route: Alicante (Luceros) → Villajoyosa → Alicante (Luceros) Logistics: TRAM line 1 north along the coast, about an hour each way. Flat walking between the beach, the old town and the chocolate factory. Marathon Month: November Duration: Day trip

Alicante Luceros ──(about 1 hr TRAM L1)──> Villajoyosa ──(about 1 hr)──> Alicante Luceros

The Maratón Elche-Alicante finishes in Alicante's port, and the easiest escape the day after is the coastal tram. Villajoyosa, La Vila Joiosa in Valencian, is an old fishing and chocolate-making town 30 km north. Its signature is a row of houses painted in strong reds, blues, yellows and greens, stacked along the old town's edge above the river mouth and the beach. The story told locally is that fishermen painted them so they could pick out their homes from the sea.

Late November in Villajoyosa is out of season and pleasant: afternoons usually around 20°C, the beach nearly empty and the town going about its own business. The sea is too cold for most people. It is a town to walk slowly through, not a beach day.

TRAM line 1 runs from Luceros station in central Alicante north along the coast to Benidorm, stopping at Villajoyosa. The journey takes about an hour. Buy a ticket at the station machine and check the return times before leaving; the line is single-track in places and services are every 30 minutes or so.

The seafront and the painted houses

From the tram stop, walk down to the Playa Centro, where a paved seafront promenade runs along the beach. It is level, with benches, and the best view of the painted houses is from the sand or the promenade looking back at the old town. Walk along the front towards the river mouth and up into the old quarter, a short climb on sloping lanes, to see the houses up close. The streets there are narrow and uneven but not steep.

The chocolate factory

Chocolates Valor has made chocolate in Villajoyosa since 1881, and its factory on the edge of town has a museum with guided tours in Spanish and English. The tour lasts about 45 minutes: an audiovisual history, a view over the production floor and a tasting at the end. Entry is free, but you need to take a ticket from the dispenser at the entrance, and groups are limited to 50. Tours run from 10:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and on Saturday mornings only; the museum is closed on Sundays. The walk from the town centre is flat, and a Monday visit after a Sunday race works well.

Vilamuseu, the town museum, covers Villajoyosa's history from its Roman past and is an indoor option on a grey day.

Lunch and the return

Rice and fish dominate the menus on the seafront and in the old town, and a long lunch before the tram back is the natural rhythm of the day. Trams return to Alicante until the evening.