We arrived home on 14th Feb following a week "won" via auction from Airtours (or Mytravel as they're now known) - 2 tickets, 2* half board, allocation on arrival, Costa Blanca region. Winning bid came in at £343 after the additional airport transfer and insurance costs were added. Five days before we were due to fly out we got a phone call - the flight home had been changed (didn't exist ?) to an earlier slot, which meant we'd lose most of a day. They offered £80 "compensation" for this immediately, which meant we weren't stuck waiting around the hotel all day waiting for a flight, bringing the total cost to £263 :-p
We departed from Manchester typically not to schedule - our plane was grounded so a plane was brought from Amsterdam (via London) and arrived 2 hours after we expected to depart. Taxi'd out to the runway, and whaddya know - hit by a snow shower - taxi back to the terminal to de-ice the wings :-} We arrived in Alicante without further delay, and were allocated a hotel called Albir Gardens and ushered to the right coach quite efficiently, which took around 40 minutes to get to the hotel.
We found ourselves in a place called (not surprisingly) Albir, which was about 5 miles out of Benidorm, and about a 20 minute walk to the seafront. The area is quite pleasant, without the plethora of skyscrapers as found in Benidorm - the hotel itself only about 2 storeys high, with some rooms in the main building above and around reception, but many in small blocks away from the main building, mainly around the pool area. These blocks had 3 seperate entrances with 3 apartments (or was it 4) per floor per entrance. The rooms were nicer that expected given the 2* rating, and each had a balcony with chairs and table provided. With the area being a lot less built up (nothing had more than about 4 storeys) decent panormic views of the surrounding mountains were possible. The location was quite good as far as self catering was concerned, with a sizable "supermarket" immediately opposite, and a larger one just 200 yards further down the road. The hotel had 2 outdoor pools (more like 1 seperated by thin divider in reality) and a heated indoor pool.
The food (both for breakfast and dinner) was buffet style and certainly passable, but may not be to everyones liking. There were several more eateries in the vicinity, although one notable place was immediately opposite the hotel - a Chinese Restaurant called Jin Long - where you can get a decent fixed menu for two (banquet style) for less than 30 euros. I'm not exactly slender, but there was far too much to eat for the money ! - you can of course choose from the normal menu and it worked out cheaper again for what we wanted for our second visit.
The hotel itself seemed to form part of the bus route depending on who was driving the local bus service that day - the stop was officially right outside, but they would often stop in the hotel grounds at reception and use their car park to turn around. There was only one bus service (I think) from this location, No.10, which seemed to vary routes for some unknown reason - and getting to Benidorm was only 80 cents each. They ran every half hour or thereabouts, and despite being in low season there was often only standing room - and the drivers sure knew how to pack 'em in and never left anyone behind at a stop ! This bus served Benidorm / Albir / Alfaz Del Pi and Altea.
OK, now onto something hopefully of more use to anyone going to the area - the excursions available (we can only comment on the ones we did obviously)
1) "Blanket Trip" This is a "freebie" where you are taken to a local market (the market varies depending on the day you go) - it was Altea in our case (on a tuesday) and we thought it was the better of the three we experienced (better variety, just as busy, but less packed due to the spacing of the stalls), followed by the "promotional" part of the "free" trip. You get ushered into what looked like a vacant ground floor apartment with about 40 seats set up, and a bed on a platform. You are then told in pseudo science quackery about the benefits of a merino wool underblanket, quilt, and a mattress they sell. This took in everything from bedbugs disliking lanolin, to the effects they say static has on sleep patterns. This sales pitch took around 50 minutes, but they have free wine and orange juice while you wait :-p and toilets were available. I'm sure you can imagine the cost implications of hiring a coach to carry 60+ people around for the morning on the hope of a sale or two, so to put you out of your misery, a full set of bed linen was in the region of £1100, and one of their beds was round £400 "made from special NASA developed Heliocell" which came vacuum packed and had to be left for 48 hours after you unpack it.
2) Peacock Island (Isla Benidorm) 10 Euros each, and you have to make your own way into Benidorm and get to the harbour. It consists of a 20 minute boat ride each way, and about 10 minutes in a bright yellow semi submersible "submarine" which does a little loop, and you can see shoals of fish through large plastic windows under the water line. The Peacocks (about 20 sad looking birds) were housed in what resembled a large dirty birdcage, and were not a nice natural way to see them. The island itself has a path you can follow to see other birdlife on the island, as well as offering a decent view of the waterfront of Benidorm. There's a "nice classic fish restaurant" described as being on the island, which I would liken to a greasy spoon cafe more equipped to selling bags of crisps. I decided against eating anything cooked "in-house" for health reasons... One note on the boat trip - it seems the captain of the boat has a little game with the passengers - every time someone stands up and tries to walk around or take pictures, he'd toss the boat around on the waves to make it feel like a rough trip :-p Don't be fooled into thinking the submarine comes into the harbour except when the day is over - we weren't told you got the boat across to the island first, so we were sat like lemons in the dock for over an hour waiting for it to arrive - if you get handed a leaflet with the tickets you'd already know this, but we weren't...
3) "Choc 'n' Shop" 16 Euros each, and consists of a trip to a chocolate factory (they make the stuff they sell in Harrods) where you're shown a 10 minute video then directed to a factory shop, a very short 45 minute trip to another market - very tightly packed / crowded, giving barely enough time to get around - we noticed live chickens being sold here and getting dragged out of cages, so this might not be for you :-} Finally the real "shop" part - Carrefour hypermarket - large, fairly cheap, and another mall-style shopping area called "Las Marinas" above and behind it. The time you were given for this was probably a little too short, and would have been better if they missed the live chicken show and went straight here. Las Marinas has some unusual shops, but due to time restrictions we didn't get to explore it as well as we would have liked to. Was this one value for money though ? - Carrefour isn't far if you go by taxi, and we noticed afterwards that the chocolate was cheaper in the supermarket :-}
Back to the area now...
The bus to Benidorm only takes about 20 minutes, but may be a little uncomfortable if you're standing. It would probably be fair to say that if you've walked 200 yards down the road and looked at all the shops, the whole of the rest of the shops are exactly the same. Prices vary slightly, but not by much. There's a cheap and cheerful cafe called the "OK" on the main road just off the seafront, and at the far end just past the bus depot (to the left of McDonalds) there's a nice "english pub" called the Duke Of Wellington - the food there can be recommended !
On a Sunday, the No. 10 bus goes past a "market" on the way into Benidorm. The place gets very busy but it is predominently 2nd hand junk and pirate DVDs - they're not even cheap pirated DVDs ! Having said that, there is a hand-made card shop just inside the entrance ran by an english couple, and they cards are quite nice - they cost about 2.20 euros each. I don't know if Benidorm has a Trading Standards, but they could do a lot of "business" clearing the mass of pirated wares on sale here.
Finally - Altea - a nice little seaside area not too encumbered by the commercialism seen in Benidorm. There's a nice waterfront that leads all the way back to Albir (its a good walk though !), and looks quite idyllic in Altea itself but turns into a dirt track just past the harbour for about half a mile until you get back to Alfaz Del Pi which seems to be as near as dammit the same place as Albir.
As ever with Spain, construction work was underway almost everywhere you look, so you're likely to be within earshot of clanging and banging almost anywhere you go.
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