Holiday In Hell (Benidorm)

Member Name: Hunting_Bears

Product:	Benidorm
Date:	03/06/02 (2044 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: hot weather

Disadvantages: dirty, full of english drunks, not very interesting

Benidorm is a strange place. I can say with honesty that I never want to visit the town again. It's as a very odd atmosphere in which you find yourself in a hot version of England. The Spanish seem like second class citizens (they are not!). The tiny bits of Spain that I saw underneath the English shroud were superb. I highly recommend staying in the "Old Town" because where I was staying was disgusting, dirty and offered nothing interesting at all. I will start from the very beginning.

I went to Benidorm with my brother and two friends. The best part was that my mother paid for me to go. All I did was save my pennies to spend on whatever I desired (staying Benidorm, desire for anything fades rapidly). I love airports but hate the actual flying in the air bit. Airports are cool because everybody is going to somewhere. I love travelling and I was very excited about going to Spain. My brother and two friends had been several times before and they assured me that I was going to have a great time. I want to return to Spain in the near future but I will stay away from resorts.

The journey takes just over two hours. The plane journey was nice, there was no turbulence and the view from my window of the Pyrenees Mountains was beautiful. My friends and I arrived at Alicante airport at around nine thirty a.m. Then we embarked on an hour-long journey to Benidorm. Southern Spain is quite barren and is covered in a red dust (it reminds me of Mars). I remembered that Sergio Leone had filmed his classic "Spaghetti westerns" in the region. I just imagined Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef having a shoot out in front of me. Yes I know it's silly but coach journeys are so boring sometimes that my mind wanders. Driving through Switzerland is amazing because of the Alps but southern Spain is just barren. After dropping the world and his grandmother off to the hotels (I am always last to be taken to hotels. Maybe I shoul
d write an opinion on the conspiracy theory section) my friends and I were driven up a steep hill with so many twists and turns I felt sick. Another reason to be afraid was that this particular driver thought he was driving at the Grand Prix. Arriving at the hotel was another shock. It was horrible and dirty. It's called "Sunsea III" if anybody has ever had the displeasure of staying there. Benidorm on a whole is quite poor and it reflects in the architecture. All the hotels look like they were erected in about five minutes. Benidorm reminded me of the infamous slums that you see in Naples and Sao Paulo. The people of Benidorm (those who aren't English) are incredibly nice and the women were nice too.

The sun was shining and my friends and brother decided to go to a local bar that they knew called "The Harley Davison Bar". It plays rock music and had a huge python in a glass cage. The beach was nice and a cool breeze swept in from the ocean. The first day all we did was get really drunk and then vomit repeatedly. It wasn't the greatest day of my life (that was reserved for Rome). A big down side to going away with brothers and friends is that all they want to do is get drunk and score with chicks. That's all well and fine (to a point) but I wanted to explore and take trips to guitar factories in the mountains. My biggest freak-out was when I wanted to go to Valencia and nobody would go. I wanted to see Valencia cathedral badly. I wanted a bit of culture but I found none in Benidorm.


Benidorm is divided into two sections. England and Spain is what I call them. In one part the place is covered in English owned bars and they are filled with foulmouthed yobs, and they always want to fight with the locals. They cannot grasp the fact that they are in Spain and should behave. The other part is reasonably Spanish. The old town is filled with little shops and lovely narrow streets. The harbour
is very serene. I wish I had stayed in the old town. I learned from my brother that Benidorm was a one-horse town back in the 1960's. It became popular with English tourists, who started to develop the town into the wonderful place it is today (being sarcastic).


The clubs and pubs in Benidorm are ten a penny and I was constantly confronted by a lot by English people attempting to persuade me into going into their pubs because they said that they were amazing and full of women. I can recommend a cool little Spanish nightclub called "La Racha". It is devoid of English people (apart from us) and the music was great (it was dance music).


The problem with Benidorm is that the Spanish culture has been taken from them. They seem fed up with the English invasion. It seems that every person in Benidorm is a waiter or waitress. They have to put up with rude people and constant abuse from drunken fools. I didn't fly a thousand miles to eat steak and chips. I wanted to go to a nice local restaurant that didn't serve chips or eggs.

I never did find a nice restaurant. I was pissed off with the holiday. I had a good time on a superficial level but on the inside I wanted to go home after the second day. There were some good moments like my brother trying his hardest to chat up a young lady in "La Racha". At first she was amused and then scared. Another funny time was when my brother discovered a porn shop. He tried to go in but kept running away when he reached the door. We all plucked up the courage to enter the shop. The nipple clamps, whips, gas masks and some truly disturbing pornography, scared us. We fled in childish glee that we had been in a porn shop. The female clerk gave us a look that said; "Grow up" as we left.

Another good time was the market day. It is situated in a scruffy looking square and sells lots of cheap and useless crap. But I liked it because I wa
s interacting with real Spanish people. Beware of pickpockets and beggars. It was incredibly overcrowded and hot but it was fun. After wandering around we all went to the hotel and decided it was a good idea to swim in the hotel pool. The water was freezing cold and I was pushed in repeatedly by my friends and brother (it's worth adding that I cannot swim).


If you are in Benidorm then I recommend the trip that most hotels do to Terra Mitica. Terra Mitica is a theme park that is bad it's actually good fun. It has one roller coaster and a bunch of crappy log flumes and that's about it. But it is cheap to get in and they were building new rides when I was there.


Spain is a lovely country (so I am told) and it was to my lasting regret that I never did get to see any of it. Benidorm is not a place I would recommend. The Spanish people are nice but there are too many English bars and people. The weather was hot and other than that, I really didn't like it. If I got to Spain again I will go to Barcelona and Madrid. I like museums, ruins, cathedrals, café's, landmarks, architecture and nice food. Benidorm is a cheap holiday and a cheap place but I just didn't like it.

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