Again, Alicante (Dec 31-Jan 4)

Full disclosure--I'm writing this on Jan 8 in an attempt to catch up.  I'll cover our final days in Alicante first. 

Regarding the kidney stone, I had the worst pain on New Years Eve.  I barely got any sleep, the pain robbed me of appetite (so you know it was bad), and even the painkillers didn't help that much.  It finally did subside in the early morning and I did get some rest.

Over the next few days, I had good spells where I felt fine and bad where the cramps and pain returned, but nothing as bad as on NYE.  I was getting hopeful.

We did see some of Alicante during the good times:

¡Feliz Navidad!

Banyan tree.  I found out its part of the Ficus family.

Canalejas monument

More banyan trees, Plaza de Gabriel Miró

San Francisco Street, aka Mushroom Street

Fe under a mushroom

Alicante Market

Another view

Angel in  Plaza San Cristóbal

Bas-relief sculpture on a building

Co-Cathedral of St. Nicholas of Bari.  It's a huge building jammed into the Old Town.  This is the best pic I could get of the outside.

Walls of the cathedral.  I read somewhere that the writing on the walls is hundreds of years old.  Probably been retouched, though.

Inside the cathedral.  Very few windows, and those that are there are pretty small.

Church organ

Here are some pictures of Alicante's Christmas lights:

The world's largest nativity at night

Main drag

We did not see or go to all the places above in one day--I'm grouping them by "day" and "night" pictures.  We would go out while I was feeling good, then head back to our apartment when the pain returned (though the cycle was unpredictable).  I was getting worried about this pain ruining the rest of the trip. 

I wanted to talk about the hospital cost.  I went to the ER on 12/28 and was admitted that night, then stayed until 12/30 when I was discharged at 10 am.  We had to put a 5500 EUR (5663 USD) deposit down since my Aetna card wouldn't work here--I'm glad my credit card did.  I was kind of out of it but Fe said the lady at admissions seemed sorry to have to charge that much.  I got the invoices after I was discharged and the whole stay was just over $4000 (they refunded the difference on the deposit).  Not cheap but that included a CT scan, EKG, ambulance ride to the main hospital from the ER facility, all the drugs, visits from three doctors, and a private room.  I had great care and while not everyone on staff spoke English (except the doctors), I was able to get most of what they said.

Now like any good HMO member, I called my Aetna to inform them that I was admitted to an out-of-network provider--way out of network.  I filed a claim with them online once I got all the paperwork--the hospital admissions staff really helped out here--and as of 1/8, it's still being processed.  We'll see how much they cover.  We also had trip insurance through Booking.com, but they wouldn't pay anything until I got a statement from Aetna detailing what they would cover.  I'm afraid that extra insurance will be a waste of money.

I felt I was ruining this vacation since we didn't get to go up to Santa Barbara castle for the views or the town of Benidorm up the coast.  But we had to get to Valencia on the fourth, so we'll just have to see these things another time.