Kiwi Roaming

We wanted to stay on the Costa Blanca as part of this trip and Benidorm had the best options for good services and transport and for us importantly to get a self catering apartment with a balcony overlooking the sea. Benidorm is beautiful so we can see why the Spanish started to holiday here in the 1950’s. It has two main beaches – Levante Beach and Poniente Beach – and a 3rd cove where we swam. But as everyone likes to point out Benidorm also has its downsides.

TLDR – we enjoyed our time in Benidorm, we had a wonderful spot with a view, had a wee kitchen to cook yummy food, knew where to get €1.30 gelato and the bar with €3 wines and a view, and importantly found the supermarket the locals use with €3 bottles of cava. And it was hot 25//27C every day.

With a permanent population of just over 70,000 and just over 3,000,000 visitors per annum it is also massive – and kinda hard to get your head around. In some ways a little like Surfers Paradise but at the same time nothing like Surfers other than the taller buildings set back from the beach (not shading the beach like in Surfers). We stayed in the old town, where the two main beaches intersect with a wee peninsula, in a cute apartment with a balcony overlooking the marina and beach. 2 mins walk for us in both directions are swimming beaches, one a small cove which is sheltered and simply lovely with clear water and soft sands.

With 252,000 people here a month you can imagine it’s full, the beaches are covered in lounger chairs you pay €6 to use for the day, and almost every lounger has a person on it. The beach in front of us stretches 4km, every 100m or so there is a boardwalk down to the water, a tap setup for washing your feet and rubbish bins. Then every 500m or so up on the road there is a container toilet setup. The boardwalk down on the beach and the footpaths above are wide and suitable for walking, cycling and mobility scooters.

Mobility scooters – yep! single ones like you get at home and new to us, double ones, are everywhere. To be honest the most surprising thing about Benidorm is the demographic. During the day the majority of people you see are older, there are lots of multi-generational groups here with young children, but the majority out and about are older than us! and hundreds if not thousands of them are using mobility scooters. To be fair we’ve seen more wheelchairs this week than ever before too, the place is so well set up for them. The other interesting thing is the dog strollers – small and large dogs being pushed along in a stroller (pic below).

The other surprising thing is the main population of holiday makers are Spanish, yes there are lots of Brits here too and yes there are bars and restaurants just catering for the Brits – with 5 x beers that come with 5 x tapas for €14, or full English (breakfast) for €5.90 offers – but there are so many other places catering for the more diverse population too. Sooooo many bars with huge screens showing football every night it’s crazy. There are also Germans and no Americans (who have been everywhere else so far).

There is so much going on here and people watching from our balcony (see the skinny building below right). In the mornings there is an exercise group of 50+ people on the beach, then about midday a singing group (in Spanish) who sing for over an hour. The playgrounds are always covered in children and there are so many people below is it’s always busy.

A second main beach, 2 mins walk from our apartment behind us, is 3km long. We love the no cars promenade vibe here with the palm trees and gelato shops. Both the 3km and 4km beach stretches are lined on the other side of the promenade with buildings, lower rise nearer the beach and higher rise behind. Many of these buildings are older while new high rises are popping up everywhere, there is a mixture of apartments and hotels. The old town is a bit of a rabbit warren and all bars, tat shops and restaurants – and no matter what time of day it’s packed here! wall to wall people. Away from the old town the density of buildings is greater, we were amazed when we discovered a massive main shopping street, casino, the 4th Ale-hop store in town, 3rd McD’s and KFC all well away from the beachfront areas we’d been frequenting.

I guess I need to talk about the Brits. I lived in the UK so I know that Brits are not one universally homogenous people – but here you could be mistaken other than the fantastic range of accents. Only 1/3 of the tourists who come here per annum are Brits. I read that the British tourists spend more than the Spanish tourists per head, and we could see there were plenty of great budget friendly Spanish customer focused restaurants back from the strip in the old town, while it’s easy to go to the shiny British focused places with no prices on their menus and spend more I expect. We did see Brits behaving badly but we were always home by 9:30pm so know we missed the worst of it all.

Benidorm surprised us. It is beautiful and so very hot, the coolest it got to in the evenings was 21C but for the most part it stayed much warmer day and night. Luckily a cooling breeze came in most afternoons. That said it’s 30C while I write this!!! too hot to even go and swim today!