Benidorm is part of "Costa Blanca" which translate to White Coast. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea north of Barcelona. We chose to go here first because we basically did a google search on the top ten places to see in Spain and this was one of them. Our hostel was really great, the lady was so nice and it was in a great location and we had a room to ourselves with out own bathroom.
There wasn't a lot to sight see but you could definitely tell that it was an older and more vacationing scene. So we mostly just hit the beach which was so nice!
Enjoying some Sangria at the beach!
The beach was gorgeous!
Not sure why, but Katie thought it would be funny to take weird pictures on my camera.
ALL made of sand!!! That's crazy
This is Katie & I before we went out to explore the night life, which didn't last long needless to say.
We stayed in Benidorm for a day and 1/2 and then bused up to Valencia which is about 2 hours north of Benidorm. Valencia has more history and so there was more to explore and a great beach. It is a gothic influenced town and bigger than I expected. Our hostel was great there too, we had a dorm room full of girls and we had free breakfast and internet and it was in the best location, right in the center of the city. I really loved Valencia.
we were excited that Valencia is like Sevilla with orange trees but with lemon trees!
The Cathedral:
A store we stumbled upon
The Central Market
This was a castle like place we ran into:
Fella Girls: Every year in March, there is a Falla Festival in Valencia. It is where people can build huge things or people made of combustable materials and display them around the city. The festival is going on when we will be in Morocco but we did go to a museum of some of the works. It was crazy cool! They were so realistic, I thought maybe one was a street performer and going to scare me! After the festival is over, the town burns all of it.
Being a more touristy town, they had this cool futurist place that was basically a science center and aquarium. We didn't go in but we walked around. It reminded me a lot of Seattle.
&& the BEACH!!!
Katie & I at a fountain in our favorite Plaza in Valencia
The bull ring
The train station
We had to take a 9 HOUR train ride back home, it was rough. We brought our own cheap food and tried to stay entertained but we just got really giggly and loopy and were bored out of our minds. But we saw a lot of countryside Spain that was so beautiful. Then we caught the sunset on the train and that was really the only thing that made the ride worth it. It was so gorgeous!
Overall, it was a fabulous weekend. We got to stay in Spain and go see somewhere just new. It was hard on our Spanish though because they spoke Catalan Spanish. There are four official languages in Spain, all similar but just regionally different so that really threw us off but we managed.
