A Week In Blanes
I’ve been blabbering on about this holiday for the past two blog posts but finally! It’s finally happened.
For those who don’t know what I’m on about, last week I went to Blanes (Spain) for a week with my Dad and boyfriend. We went in my Dad’s caravan, which given, isn’t the most glamorous of places to stay but it allowed us to do our own thing whenever (also my Dad is addicted to camping and refuses to stay in a hotel). We stay at the campsite ‘El Pinar’ which is the campsite we used to go to when I was small, so it was nice to have a little blast from the past, and also to introduce Ayden to it.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Blanes, not just because it’s familiar (even though I pretty much rediscovered it this time haha!), but also because it’s so sweet. There’s a promenade that you can walk or cycle down and you can see all down the coast, there are loads of shops and stalls you can buy stuff from, as well as having mini-markets dotted around in case you need to buy anything. As would be expected from Spain, you can’t walk three meters before encountering a tapas restaurant or a bar (which I did not complain about), but it’s also a really pretty and classically Spanish town. It’s about an hour away from Barcelona (parking is about 12-20€ in the center), and you can take the train in (12€ there and back per person which I find more than reasonable).
You can actually go through most campsites and they’ll reserve everything for you which is very cool and makes everything far easier (they can even reserve a parking space for you which I found endlessly cool).
El Pinar is about 20 minutes, half an hour from the center, but you can walk down the promenade which makes things a lot more direct. It’s a seafront site so if you get lucky with your space you’ll have a view on the Mediterranean (which was actually fairly rough when we went there). There’s also a pool and a kid’s pool with a green space to sunbathe.
The temperature is around 30 degrees, which, if you’re by the sea, varying between sunbathing and swimming, then it’s fine (I’d suggest factor 50 is you’re as pale as me, both Ayden and I got sunburnt), but if you’re cycling/walking into town, prepare yourself to sweat. It also has live music and a disco once a week, and the campsite has a bar/restaurant, a shop (which I find has a lot of variation) and a rotisserie.
We, totally unknowingly, found ourselves coming during the week of the Festa Major (22nd to the 26th of July) which from what I’ve gathered is the Costa Brava’s International Competition of Fireworks. It basically means that from the Monday to the Thursday night there’s a firework display that you can watch on the beach with a glass of wine and it’s bloody glorious.
One thing I like about coming to Spain is that even though it’s fairly touristy (mind the tourist traps on the promenade), it’s not too expensive, so there’s no need to save up for a age and a half to come. We went to a bar called ‘Els Terrassans’ for tapas and it came to about 10 or 15 euros per person including drinks which I found totally reasonable for the quality and the price (though obviously that depends on how much you get).
We pretty much just spent the week sunbathing and cycling around the center. In the evenings we mostly ate out simply because there is so much to note down that I honestly don’t think a week is long enough. We had paella on Friday night and it was something else, the restaurant was called ‘Santi’ and it’s overlooking the sea (there are about 3 or 4 restaurants down the promenade that overlook the sea and it’s honestly the most peaceful thing), the waiters are lovely and the decor is the most instagrammable thing in the world (I’m absolutely here for the pink flowers).
We also went to a bar on Monday that I can’t find the name of FOR THE LIFE OF ME, but I know it was also on the promenade and I had the biggest glass of sangria of my life, it was easily bigger than my head and it had pieces of lemon and apple and orange and ouuuh it’s great. They also do insane amounts of ice cream flavours (we had cheesecake which was nice but nothing exceptional).
We went to have a drink in a square that marks the start of the old town a few times and it was lovely, as was the sangria, and yes, as you may have noticed, I drank my body weight in sangria during that week and I have no regrets.
Saying all this, I would very much recommend coming towards the end of the season. I think it was a mistake to go in the middle of the season, there were way too many people, even in town, and having gone there at the end of August, I much prefer it.
M x
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