A beach promenade, lovely views to the port and the mountains, a wide choice of sea food tapas and a small but select craft fair – if that sounds like an ideal combination to you, you should go to the Port of Jávea on 12, 13 or 14 October. The local shop keepers association has organised for those days the seventh edition of the “Mar de Tapas” festival and, for the fourth year running, this is combined with a typical AMATA craft fair.
If you think that the fairs that you find everywhere along the beach front are all the same, you haven’t been to the one in the Port of Jávea. Here, the regional craft association AMATA carefully selects the participants – and you will see the difference! Everything is made by the people on the stalls, people who have decided to spend their lives making objects that please themselves and which they hope will please others.
They use natural or recycled materials, a few hand tools or perhaps a simple machine, and they often can make something to suit you – in a special colour, with a name or in a particular size. Perhaps a little early for your Christmas shopping, but on the other hand, where are you going to find such nice and original presents for all your loved ones?
The fair is held on the sea side boulevard near the Port of Jávea. Some twenty craftsmen and women set up to show what they have made – ceramics and decorated stones (mandalas), traditional wooden toys, embossed leather bags and pictures, made-to-measure leather dog collars, wrought iron, water colours and oil paintings, special T-shirts, candles made from real beeswax, and jewelry using macramé, aluminium from recycled soft drink cans, silver and copper. And a potter will bring his wheel, so you can even have a go at making your own cup or bowl!
On the same weekend the bars and restaurants of Jávea Port hold a “Mar de Tapas” week-end. The name is a game on words: a mar is a sea, but can also mean ‘a lot, abundance’ – so there are a lot of different tapas, and they are all made of sea food. You buy a set of tickets at a stall next to the Craft Fair, and then spend a convivial hour or more sampling various tapas taken with a drink or two here and there.
As Friday, the 12th of October, is a bank holiday, the fair opens already in the morning; opening times of the fair during the three days are from 11 am till 11 pm (on Sunday it will close earlier). The tapas festival doesn’t start till Friday afternoon and lasts till Sunday lunchtime. You’ll find the fair on the boulevard in the Port of Jávea (https://goo.gl/maps/rx5uWDjHiYs , or look for “Feria de Artesanía Jávea” in Google Maps). Photographs of last year’s fair you can find at http://www.amata.es/Javea_Oct_17.html .
More information about the fair (also in English) at the number of AMATA: 639 979 678.
