Benidorm, Costa del terror

Over the last year it's suffice to say I've travelled. A lot. Living in north-east France made it easy to visit Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland easily. I visited 5 more countries in Central/Eastern Europe in March and even made it to Italy for the first time in May (worth it for the food alone). Now living in Alicante, it's harder to jet-set across Central Europe, so being the traveller I am I do my best to explore the surrounding area. The resort of Benidorm lies a mere 70 minute tram ride away from Alicante, so it was this town I cautiously chose to explore one afternoon two weeks ago...

In a nutshell

Benidorm. Beni-York. Beni-Vegas. The most popular holiday resort in mainland Spain. Population: 100 000 (swells to 300 000 during the summer months). Benidorm boasts over 300 days of sunshine per year thanks to its 'Mediterranean microclimate'. It also boasts over 140 skyscrapers (buildings with over 20 floors) -more than anywhere else in the world if you exclude New York. Over 90% of people who travel to Benidorm will revisit at some point. Over 40 000 hotel beds (3rd highest amount in Europe after London and Paris). Over 800 bars. And a ridiculous amount of Brits.

After reading the statistics, I was curious. The rise of cheap package holidays and guaranteed sunshine tempted the Brits (and the Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians) and why wouldn't it? However the vision I'd had of Benidorm in my head was of red faced Brits getting pissed for less than 5 euros, cooked breakfast in tow. Was the stereotype true? And why do people keep going back to the jewel of the Costa Brava?

Upon arrival in Benidorm I was surprisingly optimistic. A new place to explore, maybe it wouldn't be as bad as the image I had in my head. 20 minutes later I was ready to leave again. All I could see were ugly buildings, buses, beer and Brits- far from idyllic. However it wasn't always like this...

In the early 1950s Don Pedro Zaragoza, mayor of Benidorm had a vision: to transform the sleepy fishing town into a tourist metropolis. Apparently his idea to build hotels upwards were to please the people and ensure that everyone would have a sea view (definitely not for financial gain then...). Zaragoza famously drove the 300 miles to Madrid on his Vespa to personally get Franco's permission so that ladies could sport bikinis on the beach (the first place in Spain that allowed this, interestingly). Regardless of his motives, old Zaragoza's plans were successful. Benidorm as we know it was born. The rest, as they say, is history.

Over 50 years later and there are still bikinis on Levante beach (which is surprisingly pleasant if you ignore the skyscrapers that surround it). There are also thousands of British people- red faced as they forgot the Ambre Solaire, wanting 24 hour entertainment and a decent cuppa. A mini England in the Spanish sunshine- Benidorm was exactly how I imagined. After wandering up and down the main 'strip' full of souvenir shops and British bars (I even found a Geordie bar, much to my amusement), I was ready to return to the safety of Alicante.

Now living abroad for the past year has definitely taught me not to pigeonhole and stereotype, 'don't judge a book by its cover' blah blah blah. Yet the all too negative stereotype other Europeans have of 'Brits Abroad' was unfortunately confirmed in Benidorm. I felt ashamed to be British as I witnessed my fellow compatriots drinking, shouting and swearing in the streets at one o'clock in the afternoon.

A moment of respite

A 5 minute walk from Levante beach, central Benidorm

As I walked uphill at the top end of Levante beach I turned a corner and found a cove, just moments away from the hustle and bustle of Benidorm. Barely anyone was there- British ignorance at its best, yet for me it was the only redeeming feature of the entire city. Maybe it's only a matter of time before 'Bradley's British Beach Bar' opens and the peace is gone...

P.S. This Benidorm article is great from The Guardian (where else?)

Bliss.

Enfin! Spring/summer is upon us! The last 2 weeks in Nancy have been beautiful, I really really really don't want to leave la belle France. I'm so so so happy right now- returning to England just does not excite me in the slightest...

Blog on trip to Champagne region and trip to the Vosges mountains to come soon!

My week

• Work, work, work. I'll miss it when I finish in 2 weeks. Highlights of my working week- filming my 4eme (year 9) students in the sun for the English project I'm doing with them (everyone is getting so involved and it's just so much FUN). Singing Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On with one of the teaching assistants (my new gay best friend) was another highlight.
• Went to the opera on Tuesday evening- found cheap seats (12 euros) so put our glad rags on and saw The Portrait, a Russian opera (luckily with French subtitles, my Russian is not really up to scratch). It was an experience to enter the building alone- right in Place Stan, it is beautiful. The opera was ok- quite strange and a bit morbid at the end. In a nutshell it's about a painter who finds success but eventually goes a bit mental. Enough said. Moved onto new favourite bar Le Berthom afterwards for some Belgian beer :)
Nancy, Opéra.

Lovely.

Been chilling in parks a fair bit this week- temperature has been 25 degrees the last few days. Luckily the gorgeous Parc st. Marie is a 3 minute walk from chez moi- was there with the Irish for 3 hours on Wednesday afternoon chatting and people watching and went for a drink in the park with someone from school this afternoon. Life is chilled. I love the fact that whenever the weather is good the French are out making the most of it. At home a hot weather spell makes everyone turn to the beer....

Last night a few of us traveled from Nancy to Luxembourg to see Stornoway in concert. They're one of my favourite bands, their album Beachcomber's Windowsill is pure perfection and has been the soundtrack to my Year Abroad. A perfect way to round off my time in France I guess! There were only 60 or so people at the gig which meant the band were able to perform some songs unplugged. Amazing! So stripped down, the lead singer has a great voice, felt like everything he was singing came straight from the heart.

Perfection.

2 weeks to go and counting.

Vive la France!

Wish I'd Brought My Sunglasses...

Time is creeping up on me. Every weekend I want to explore and last weekend I did just that, armed with a mini army of Geordies to escort me. For those who don't know, 'a Geordie' is an affectionate term for anyone who hails from Newcastle upon Tyne, possibly the greatest place in the world and my university city incidentally (or not...). I digress.

Why do ticket inspectors never check tickets?

Dan, my Geordie friend (and fellow language assistant) and I met up at Nancy Gare at 12pm last Friday morning armed with Lidl cereal bars, crap home-made sandwiches and Orange KitKats. During the course of the weekend we travelled from Nancy- Colmar (2 ¼ hours), Colmar-Basel (40 mins), Basel-Strasbourg (1 ½ hours) without our ticket being checked. Bof!

Bit of geography for you.

Ticket was finally checked 3 minutes before arrival in Nancy (Strasbourg-Nancy 1 ½ hours) the following day.

Ahh the French and their 'I don't give a shit so it's not my problem' attitude continues...

Colmar

The Petite Venise area of Colmar

I admit it, before coming to Nancy I had never even heard of Colmar, a small city halfway between Strasbourg and Basel. However literally EVERYONE at school has been telling me to visit ever since I started in October. Unfortunately, had no time to visit during the Christmas markets, reputed to be some of the most beautiful in the world.

The February afternoon Dan and I spent in Colmar was B-E-A-utiful weather wise, bright sunshine, etc- luck was definitely on our side. It became apparent early on that everywhere in Colmar is beautiful, there's no shabby shite end- even around the station was pretty. If you've ever been to the Petite France area of Strasbourg, you'll know how beautiful it is. Colmar is like this partout. I wonder if the cute twee houses ever get on the inhabitants' nerves, whether they want a bit of grime and dirt à la Brussels.

Food was also a high point of our trip to Colmar. Had a Forêt noire- i.e. a black forest gateau. Heaven. And after meeting up with our assistant friend (and Geordie) Sian who is spending her year abroad in Issenheim, a tiny village close to Colmar, we headed out for pizza. It would have been nice to try some traditional food from Alsace- sauerkraut or something like that but pizza is always a winner.

Granted there is not a great deal to do in Colmar. Walking around 'oohing and aahing' at pretty buildings is the main attraction, although there are a couple of museums and a museum dedicated to Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi- the guy who designed the Statue of Liberty (of course, he was from Colmar). Maybe if the weather had been awful, I would have come away with a different impression. Yes I was lucky, but come rain or shine Colmar is a place not to be missed.

God I sound like I'm presenting 'Holiday' or something. Désolée.

Basel

After realising it would only cost another 10 Euros or so to get to Basel, we figured it made sense to kill two birds with one stone and visit Colmar/Basel in the same weekend.

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Basel was to tick another country off the ever expanding list of ‘Places I have been to’. However I also wanted to play around with Swiss currency (dangerously akin to Monopoly money) and leave the ‘safety’ of the European Union for the first time in nearly 6 years. Not nearly as dangerous as it sounds, Switzerland is about as bad-ass as Tom Cruise. I didn’t quite know what to expect from Basel but was pleasantly surprised.

Went to the Botanical Gardens, attached to the University of Basel, the oldest university in Switzerland, had a 12CHF meal in McDonald’s (about 9 euros, Switzerland is EXPENSIVE), spent a LONG time in a beautiful chocolate shop and saw the (very red) Rathaus, or town hall for those who don’t speak German.

Basel is a city of trams. So much so that ‘death by tram’ is probably the greatest risk to your health. Nearly got mowed down by 3 of them- they’re almost as bad as the street cleaners inNewcastle (incidentally, just why are there so many in the toon?!). Thanks to the tourist office, we found out that Line 16 is the picturesque route, showing tourists all the sights, slowly weaving its way through upmarket neighbourhoods of Basel. Great fun!

After our kitsch little tram ride we headed towards the banks of the river Rhine, desperate to catch some rays. Seems like everyone else in Basel had the same idea- the banks of the river were packed, so much so that there was no room for us! After eventually finding a comfy place to perch, we proceeded to sunbathe for almost an hour. IN FEBRUARY. Extraordinary. Weather hit around 14 degrees Celsius, but felt warmer in the sun. Brilliant atmosphere anyway- lots of students, families, young professionals. Switzerland is effortlessly cool, no wonder Roger Federer bought a pig farm there with his winnings from his first Wimbledon title. Oink.

Just an average February afternoon on the banks of the Rhine

After a quick stop in H+M (we had to use up our Swiss Francs somewhere...) it was time to leave Basel. It had been a brilliant day and a great introduction to Switzerland. Hopefully I'll return soon, sunglasses in tow next time....

Luxembourg and sunshine!

Luxembourg, cute as!

After a long absence, the blogging business is back in full swing. Felt another one was necessary after the really nice weekend I've just had. Sorry if I sound smug....

Perhaps the main reason for my good mood is the weather. Living in a notoriously rainy city, any sunny day that comes your way is worshipped to an almost ridiculous level. Today (Sunday) was a blinder of a day, so Jackie and I headed to the other end of town for a walk along the canal. Beautiful! So many people were out on their bikes/running, felt very French all of a sudden. Apart from a hilarious incident where we ended up running away from hissing swans it was a relaxing Sunday morning stroll. We finished in Place Stan with a cup of coffee from a bar right opposite the town hall and indulged in some people watching- a great way to spend time if ever I needed another excuse to procrastinate. Amazingly we had our coffee outside, sans coat! Was so warm and a rare treat to soak in the sun in the industrial heart of France. Job done.

The weekend got off to a good start on Friday evening when Jackie, Michelle and I were invited to dinner with an English class. An English tutor (and Anglophile to a downright weird extent) organised a soirée featuring a ''traditional'' English meal (more on that later) and English conversation. As we had been invited, our three meals were free which was pretty convenient. The ''English'' meal consisted of coleslaw (never have I eaten coleslaw as an entrée), strips of rozbif (or roast beef) and gravy accompanied by a hash brown and salad. Yes. SALAD. A true Brit knows that roast beef would NEVER be accompanied by salad, and hash browns are for breakfast! Dessert was cheesecake (nice, but American...) so although it wasn't a particularly English meal it was nice all the same to have a free meal in exchange for speaking some English. The English learners were mainly middle aged/ retired but were lovely and very interested in what I had to say. After the meal I moved onto another table and everyone was looking at me like I was a famous person/ alien (take your pick) asking countless questions from 'What is the weather like in England?' to 'What do you think of Sarkozy?'- the perennial question really. When posed this question, I tend to just mumble something along the lines of 'He was alright before he came to power but now he's just a short idiot' which seems to do the trick...

Anyway, I met an English lady who's been living in Belgium/France for the last 50 years so it was interesting to talk to her (she's been in France so long that even her grandchildren can't speak English). She lives in a village about half an hour away from Nancy and invited me to her house for lunch one day which was nice of her. She even took the time to draw me a map of how to get chez elle- including which bus stop to get off at. Will definitely take up her offer, think it would be nice to hear all her tales of France (I'm sure of which there are many). In addition to this I've also been invited to a French woman's house for some proper Champagne (she comes from the Champagne region and was horrified to hear that I'm yet to drink any of the stuff since my arrival in Nancy (True dat). La vie est belle!

Went to Luxembourg yesterday (Saturday) for the day with 3 other assistants which was great! It's the sort of place you'd never think of going for a weekend but it's actually a really nice city/country. Had a bit of bother with the trains- our train on the way there was late and took 2 hours instead of 90 mins and our train on the way home was cancelled! Had to change and wait 50 mins in Metz but at least we weren't stranded. Upon arrival in Luxembourg we headed to the nearest eating place as we were all starving after our long train journey. Went to a Chinese buffet which was a bit crap if I'm honest- not much choice and the food wasn't very hot (avoided the chicken). Norah, an Irish assistant exclaimed ''I never wanted a fekkin' Chinese anyway!'' upon our exit. Don't mess with the Irish....

Still, the dodgy Chinese didn't ruin our day in Luxembourg. Did a walking tour of the city which is built on two hills. Ended up walking down below in the valley which was pretty and wandered round the old fortifications just as the sun was setting. Got some nice pictures (hilarious ones involving coloured vases and our reflections). I'd definitely recommend Luxembourg for a day trip- there's not loads to do (a few galleries, a history museum but that's about it) but it's nice for an amble.

After my four day weekend, it's back to work tomorrow. Probably should start doing something more useful with my time. A la prochaine fois!