An Undiscovered Gem (Miami Playa)

Member Name: grahamt

Product:	Miami Playa
Date:	10/11/00 (584 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Uncrowded, Good beach

Disadvantages: English not widely spoken

I had never heard of Miami Playa, only the Miami in Florida. We were looking for a holiday location in Spain and I had a stack of British Airways Air Miles to use up and came across a hotel (Pino Alto - review elsewhere) located there in the BA brochure. It looked nice so we decided to take a chance.

It was definitely one of our better decisions!

We flew to Barcelona and took the train south. We didn't actually know exactly where Miami Playa was. The address was given as Tarragona. We got off the train there and took a taxi. This probably was a good decision as it happened because, although Miami Playa was another 15 miles or so further south, we got to see a bit of the countryside and were taken directly to the door of the hotel.

In fact, we could have gone all the way to Miami Playa by train. The nearest stop to our hotel was one stop further, at Hospitale de Infante, about a mile from the hotel

Miami Playa is a small fairly modern town but unspoilt, unlike Solau just a little way up the coast. It seems mostly to be where people have there holiday homes. There are beautiful properties everywhere and not expensive. We were very tempted to buy one ourselves.

The beach is excellent and uncrowded. There are dozens of super restaurants. There are hotels and apartments. We can only comment on the one in which we stayed but they all looked very good quality. I'm sure you would enjoy any of them.

If you want a really crazy nightlife, Solau is just up the coast. It's a bit like Torremelinos and not much to our taste but it does have a very good waterpark, which we visited and greatly enjoyed.

Much better is Porto Aventura, the theme park, to which you can easily get by train (it has its own station). I can't recommend it too highly. It is one of the best in the world. The only better that I've visited is Alton Towers. It certainly has one of the greatest rollercoasters in
the world, Dragon Khan. We rode it three time and came off grinning every time.

It now has a new double wooden rollercoaster, like the Grand National at Blackpool. It was being built when we were there but wasn't yet open.

We hired a car for a couple of days and toured the region south of Miami Playa and up into the hills back from the coast. It's a beautiful area. I wish we had had more time to explore.

We also took the train to Barcelona for the day. What a wonderful city. One day isn't enough. We took the all day ticket so we could get on and off the sightseeing tour bus whenever we wanted.

I suppose the only problem with recommending a place so highly is that people start going there themselves as well. If you do, please don't tell anyone else about it(;-)

We have promised ourselves to go back again, a rarity for us. I think that next time we will hire a car at Barcelona airport for the whole week. The trains are quite good enough but, like us, you will want to see more of the area.

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