Glyn
Some holidays you come home from raving. Ten days in Benidorm across the 14th to the 24th of July, and we came home thinking, right, never again in July.
That is not the whole story, and I will get to the good bits, because there were plenty. But if you are sat looking at flights for next summer, this is the honest version.
The night before: a hotel, and a taxi lesson
We booked the Radisson Blu at East Midlands Airport the night before. Three reasons. An extra hour in bed, which at our age counts for a lot. Sam loves that hotel. And once you factor in the parking, fifteen nights of it for a ten-night trip, because that is what we had to pay for, the room worked out only about £40 more than the parking would have cost on its own.
The snag is that the Radisson have stopped running their shuttle bus. Nobody tells you this when you book, and it is a little over a mile to the terminal, so you need a taxi.
The hotel’s recommended firm wanted somewhere around £14 to £15. For a mile. That felt steep, so I had a look online, and that is where it got silly. Some outfits were quoting £40 to £50 for that same one-mile hop. Genuinely, forty pounds. I assume they are relying on people who have already had a drink and cannot face the argument.
Then I remembered I had Uber sat on my phone doing nothing, because there is no Uber where we live. Roughly £4. That is a figure I was willing to pay.
If you are staying there before a flight, put Uber on your phone before you leave the house. It is the single easiest £10 you will save all holiday.
The transfer
We used My Transfers Benidorm, who sponsor this site, so take this with whatever pinch of salt you feel is fair. I will say it anyway, because it is true: they were excellent.
No waiting about. Our driver was stood there when we came through, board in hand, my name on it. Polite, genuinely good company, and he happily waited while Sam had a cigarette, which is a filthy habit and I have said so more than once.
No dramas, no meandering pickups, no sitting on a coach for ninety minutes while it tours every hotel on the Costa Blanca. I am not being paid to say that, and if you look at their Trustpilot you will see I am not the only one who thinks it.
Where we stayed: Madeira Centro
We stayed at Madeira Centro, as we have many times before. It remains a good hotel and we will almost certainly book it again. But it needs some love in the rooms, and I am going to be straight about that.
Check-in was quick and efficient, no complaints there. We paid to upgrade to a room with a balcony, classed as Deluxe with sea view. The balcony was a proper size and the view was genuinely lovely, sat out there of an evening looking down the coast.
What made it “deluxe” is less obvious. A pair of slippers and a small box of chocolates, as far as I could tell. If they want the word deluxe on the door, the bare minimum would be better towels and a decent coffee machine, a Nespresso or similar. That would cost them very little and would change how the room feels entirely.
The room itself sat just above basic. The architrave at the bottom of both the bathroom and bedroom doors had rotted away, almost certainly a flood from the shower at some point. The architrave on the door was hanging off. Several bulbs were not working. The short flush on the toilet had given up. And the coffee top-up was, let us say, a lottery.
Now, and this matters, none of that spoiled our holiday. Not one bit of it. The air conditioning was superb, which this year was not a luxury but a necessity. The water was hot with good pressure. The cleaners do a genuinely brilliant job. And the restaurant food has stepped up a level, properly hot rather than lukewarm, which is not something you can say about every half-board hotel on that strip.
I did not complain. I did not raise a single one of these things with anybody except Sam, who ignores most of what I say anyway. These are just my thoughts, written down, in case they are useful to you.
The weather: too warm
There is a Peter Kay bit about liking it warm, but this being too warm. That covers it.
Daytime, people were hogging every scrap of shade and huddling under the mist sprayers. Which meant everybody came out at night instead, and it was still hot then. One evening I was sat at midnight with my shirt wide open, sweating. Not as glamorous as it sounds.
I know it was a heatwave and I know that is not Benidorm’s fault. But it did change the shape of the holiday, and not for the better.
Food and drink
Half board at Madeira, and the food was good. Hot, plenty of variety, and dishes that actually went together, so I never got bored of it. Sam’s main reason for staying there is the fresh orange juice machine at breakfast, and I would not want to be the hotel that takes it away.
Which meant our eating out was mostly ice cream and tapas.
La Krem had a whole run of new flavours this time. The pick of them was a raspberry, white chocolate and chocolate, which I went back for more than once. There was a cherry and chocolate one that was fine, no more than fine, and I was a bit disappointed by that because I love cherries. Everything else was excellent, and they still let you taste before you commit.
For tapas we stuck to two places. La Tapita first, partly because it has air conditioning, which this year was reason enough on its own, and partly because it is cheap and it is good. The best croquettes I have had anywhere, and the tomato sauce on the meatballs is genuinely incredible. I have no idea what is in it and I do not want to know.
The other was Pintxos Aurrera, which I have always gone to because I knew most of the staff. The food is still good and there is a proper draught blowing through that covered passage, which we needed. The staff, sadly, have all moved on. That is the way of it, but it is not quite the same.
Evenings
It was the World Cup, so on match nights you could not get near a bar, never mind find a seat. I am not a football man but I did get quite into this one. What I could not get into was standing shoulder to shoulder with three hundred people in that heat.
On the non-football nights you needed to be outside, and the heat never really let go. We very nearly made it up to Planta 20, the rooftop bar at the top of our own hotel, and got as far as the sixteenth floor before we bailed and went back to the air conditioning. Not our finest hour.
Would we go back?
We sound very boring, I know. And Benidorm was still a proper rest, which is what we went for.
But we will not be going in July or August again. The heat spoiled it, and the crowds were bigger than we have ever known them, I think because everybody was chasing the same patches of shade. We just wanted space.
The other thing, and it pains me to write it, is that Benidorm looked scruffy. We have always said how clean it is given the sheer number of people it absorbs. This time there was rubbish about and broken glass on the ground. Hopefully by the time we are back it will have had a tidy-up.
None of which has us looking anywhere else. We are not shopping around for a different resort, we are shopping around for a different month. September or October, most likely, and probably Madeira Centro again. I would prefer the H10, if I am honest. But we have pennies to look after like everyone else.
