Our Week at the Beach ~ in 10 Minutes
After an active 10 days and 5 cities, we were ready for a long stay to relax for a while. We had hit many spots throughout Southern Spain in Andalucía and La Costa del Sur. We thought a week at the beach on the Mediterranean Coast would be just the thing. We found an apartment in Benidorm just a block from the beach and headed northwest from Granada. We had a beautiful drive through the mountains with many amazing views of the cave homes in southern Spain. When we arrived in Benidorm, however, our week of relaxation did not start off well. We met our host and took the lift to the 9th floor. She apologised that she had not changed the sheets and handed us a bag of sheets still in the packaging (not washed!) and walked us through the flat. We weren’t paying close enough attention, and said good-bye. Only then did we realise that there were only two clean towels, but 3 dirty ones hanging in the bathrooms, with dirty sinks and toilets along with that! We turned the heater on to warm the place up, and immediately tripped the fuse. We turned off as many lights as possible, flipped the fuse switch, and tried the heater again, this time at a lower setting. Tripped again! After two more tries of this, the heater stayed on for a good 5 minutes, finally warming the place while we put sheets on the bed and searched for cleaning supplies to clean the bathrooms. We began to put groceries away when we noticed that the dishes drying in the rack were dirty too! Then boom, darkness again. This time the fuses were all still on, but there was no power in the entire flat. We were fed up and in the dark; dirty bathroom, dirty dishes, dirty sheets, dirty towels, no power, no heat!! We picked up our still packed bags and left. We can laugh about it now, but at 10:00 at night, we weren’t laughing. We went to a hotel nearby vowed to pay more attention at check-in!
Fortunately, our night in the hotel helped us realise that the city of Benidorm is just a bad case of tacky Vegas on the Spanish coast. The place is so overbuilt and filled with tacky bars and souvenir shops. There was no soul, and certainly not many Spaniards there. We felt lucky that we got out after just one night. We had to pick a new destination, and fast. We needed a place that afternoon! We looked on the map, and thought the city of Valencia looked interesting…
SLO Lerners 