Greetings from Torrevieja!

As you can probably tell I have been absent again from blogging. I will explain part A of where I have been.

For ten days in mid-September Stephen (my boyfriend) and I escaped the fast approaching British autumn, to the sunny Torrevieja, Spain. 

I’m not going to lie to you, this time last year I had not heard of Torrevieja, so heres a quick geography lesson. Torrevieja is located in Spain’s southeaster Alicante province and sits along the hugely popular and sandy Costa Blanca. The nearest big airport is Alicante, and from London the flight will take you little over two and a half hours. The average price for an off peak flight is about £40 to £50 each way. Taxi’s from Alicante airport to Torrevieja are about €50 and don’t really need to be booked. Few, now onto the fun stuff.

After waking up at 3am, or say after having a short nap and leaving the house shortly after 3am, we took the short journey to Luton airport to begin our holiday. Being at an airport at stupid o'clock is such a mundane experience. You have to force yourself to stay awake, whilst I attempted to force some Pret porridge down me (which is simply amazing), to avoid getting hungry later on. It wasn’t long until the gate was called, and then it really began to feel like we were heading on holiday.

When arriving at Alicante airport, we were tired to say the least, but had to wait for the bus and had a mammoth journey to the apartment, lets not go into this here. A taxi is the way forward, and this is the advice I will give to every member of my family. The extra bit of money is SO worth it. About four hours after we landed, we arrived at the apartment. And the only cure for the sticky tired way I was feeling was to jump in the pool, I can confirm this made me fell so much better. Until I fell asleep on the sofa in my towel after my shower. 

Luckily we were able to stay in my Uncle’s apartment, otherwise, both of us having just completed a years masters degree wouldn’t have been able to go on holiday (our total holiday came to under £400 each). Furthermore, the state of the euro and the uncertainty of BREXIT only emphasised the close reality that this year we would not be able to go on holiday despite desperately needing to. This presented us with a self-catered reality, something that I have never personally done before but I honestly completely recommend it. Especially in Torrevieja, the local supermarket was only a short distance from our apartment, and was filled with lots of extremely affordable groceries, (€1 large bag of croissants made our life, then the muffins yay for convenience food) and most importantly, eating out was ridiculously cheap. On average our food bill for three courses, and most of the time a bottle of wine (ice cream is often complementary) was about €40 or £35 (£18 per head). I know what your thinking, ‘well Steph, thats all well and good but I bet the food is disgusting and barely edible’, well you would be surprised. Every meal we had was amazing. From Indian food (haha) to tapas, there was not one meal that we had that was even below decent. The requirement to go out and eat rather than amble down to a hotel restaurant made the holiday so much more adventurous whilst supporting the local economy and small businesses. 

Like most apartments in Torrevieja, we had access to the private apartment pool, and the sandy beach was a mere 20 minutes walk away (in the heat the it felt so much longer, I will be honest there). But as we went slightly off season, we had the pool largely to ourselves despite the beach constantly being packed.

Although we went in the middle of September, the weather was still amazing, averaging about 28 degrees celsius during the day and 24 degrees in the evening. We both tanned amazingly, and didn’t burn! Thanks in part to being sensible and staying out of the sun at he hottest part of the day.  Our days were completely relaxed, often spent on the patio by to pool reading a book. This was exactly the holiday we wanted after the past four years of intense studying, and the city break we had last year in Bruges.

We do plan on going back next year, this time having a hire car so we can see more of Torrevieja Southern Spain. I believe Stephen is planning on attending a football game, yay(!). I want to do some shopping. So lets hope this time I actually have some money.

I couldn’t recommend self-catering enough, it brought a level of flexibility to our holiday. No running to make breakfast like last year. And I would recommend checking out Torrevieja if you are looking for a cheap relaxing holiday with guaranteed sunshine.

Next post will be autumnal, I promise.

All my love,

Steph x