Tag Archives: Spanish holidays in the 1970s

Benidorm 1977 – Food Poisoning and Guadalest

Benidorm promontory

The weather was good to us for most of our stay and mostly it was sunny and dry, which meant plenty of time for lying on the beach or sitting around the swimming pool that was directly outside the front of the hotel.

During the second week however there was a change and we experienced some very heavy showers.  One afternoon it rained so hard that the Avenida de Almeria, the road to the beach, was completely flooded and rather than a street instead resembled a river in full flow.  We couldn’t go out that afternoon so we sat in the bar with another older couple and shared a bottle of bacardi that I had won the previous day on a trip to the mountain village of Guadalest.

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Benidorm 1977- Beaches, the Old Town and Peacock Island

Benidorm 1978

During the day there wasn’t a great deal to do except to visit the beaches and spend endless pointless hours sunbathing.  Benidorm is famous for its two main beaches which stretch for four kilometres all along the bay.

The city enjoys a unique geographical position on the east coast of Spain because it actually faces due south and has two stunningly beautiful beaches on the Mediterranean Sea that stretch out either side of the old town, on the east the Levante, the sunrise, and to the west the Poniente, the sunset, and it enjoys glorious sunshine all day long.

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Thanks to http://www.realbenidorm.net/ for the use of the postcard image

Benidorm 1977 – First impressions and the Hotel Don Juan

Benidorm in the 1970s

In 1976 I travelled to Europe for the first time to Sorrento in Italy with my dad who obligingly stepped in at the last moment following a bit of romantic trouble when just before departure my girlfriend went off with the head reporter from the local newspaper (Rugby Advertiser).

Very soon after that we patched things up and in October the following year I went to Spain with my (now) fiancée, Linda.  We could have gone practically anywhere we liked, so long as it was within our restricted budget of course, but we choose to go to Benidorm on the Costa Blanca for two whole weeks and we selected the Don Juan hotel on the Avenida del Mediterráneo, just behind the Levante beach because Linda had been there some time before with her parents and had liked it.

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Thanks to http://www.realbenidorm.net/ for the use of the postcard image