Help! I need a holiday! (Salou)

Member Name: janharper

Product:	Salou
Date:	05/09/04 (1533 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: bouncy, lively

Disadvantages: noisy traffic

I recently returned from a week?s holiday in Salou and I really need a rest. This busy town is situated in NorthEast Spain, just a short distance from Barcelona. I can describe it in just three words: dusty, noisy, and very hot.

August is the hottest month of the year in Salou and the glorious beach got too hot to walk on in the afternoons. The traffic belched smoke and ?honked horns? at all times of the day and night. Even cars stopped at traffic lights got ?honked at? by other motorists. The only thing that moved fast in Salou was the traffic.


Now, back to the beginning. We arrived in Salou at around lunchtime to find most of the shops in the old town closed for Siesta but the shops in the tourist end of town were still open. The first shock was the price of bottled water at the nearest supermarket to our hotel. It cost 1.85 for a half litre bottle and the prospect of keeping two of us in water for a week looked kind of expensive.


The tourist part of the town is very expensive in general and it is full of souvenir shops, restaurants, and bars. There are a couple of internet cafes and masses of telebanco machines to get your Euros from. The telebanco machine near our hotel (The Belvedere which resembles Fawlty Towers and is a subject for a review of its own). never had anything but 50 euro notes in it. It offered 70, 90, or 120 euros but then came up with a message that it only contained 50E notes. This meant that you had to withdraw 50, 100 or 150E from it.


The old town of Salou is a short walk along the seafront and prices were much more reasonable here. There are lots of restaurants, cafes, and small shops selling everything from fish to lingerie. The centre of the area has a small roundabout where the inevitable traffic jams seemed to start. The railway line which runs through the town has barriers to stop the traffic but the local people just looked both ways and continued to cross even when the barriers wer
e down. This caused great amusement to the tourist population.


Parts of Salou are very pretty as there is a lovely beach, a palm tree lined front and lots of fountains in different places which are cool to sit by in the day time and lovely to look at night when they are lit up.


The Universal Studios theme park, Port Aventura, is on the outskirts of Salou. This was a great experience as there are lots of rides included in the entrance ticket including the highest log flume in Europe (yes, I did go on it, and, no, I didn?t enjoy it. I must be getting too old for rides like that.) The park is divided into various countries, or areas, including China, Wild West, Egypt, Mexico, etc. Each of these has the relevant theme for the country represented.


The Studio was wonderful. We starred in our own Western. I had to be the Indian of course and ended up tied to a totem pole. It was great fun and there was such a lot of laughter.


Perhaps the best highlight of the whole trip to Salou was the firework display at Port Aventura, which is the artificial lagoon built at the theme park. It was a gigantic display of lights and sounds representing cowboys and Indians, a stagecoach, Chinese kites and a dragon and even pyramids. The display continued the theme of different countries. Here again, the Theme park needs a review of its own.


All in all Salou is a place full of fun and energy. You need a lot of stamina to keep up with the pace. There was music and dancing until 6 in the morning for those with the energy for that and even the shops were open until 2am. It was quite normal to go for a meal at 2am, which is really quite early in Salou.

If you want a quite, peaceful, restful holiday, give this place a miss. It bounces with life!

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