COSTA DEL SOL 2001

Torromelinos, Beach Club

From the 15th to the 22nd February, we as took a family vacation to Torromelinos in the Costa Del Sol (ie. Southern Spain), the hotel which we chose to stay at was the Beach Club Hotel on the seafront which has a 15 minute walk to the centre of the resort.

We departed from Humberside International Airport (near Scunthorpe), and flew to Malaga International Airport (which is 10 mins from Torromelinos), the airplane took the root of turning back towards Birmingham and then down past London and through the centre of France before coming down past Madrid and Seville in Spain, the whole flight took 2 hrs and 39 minutes.

The temperature during the week was not too warm which was good for the twins, the highest the mercury got to was 24'C (74'F), but it averaged at around 17'C (66'F) which is still a good 10'C warmer then the UK for the time of year.

The hotel served good food, but the twins decided from an early visit to the food hall that all they wanted to eat for the week was chips, sausages and tomato sauce, although they occasionally tried other foods such as Ham Fingers, Battered Chicken etc.  For me and Emma they had plenty of choice from Roast Pork in Sherry Sauce to Squid Rings.  Each day luckily they also had chips and beans lol.

The state of the high chairs in the hotel were not very good, on the first evening Chloe fell out of a badly designed chair and fell onto the floor leaving her with a large bump and graze on her forehead, luckily the head waiter (Denis from Ireland) acted quickly to get ice onto her forehead to reduce the swelling, after that Chloe had made herself a friend for the holiday, in fact all the waiters seemed more then happy to play and talk to the twins, and one called Justo even made Shannon eat her chips one evening by playing aero planes with her fork.

The Hotel room was not suited to families though, because it had two single beds and two sofa beds, me and Emma decided to push the single beds together and sleep in them with the twins, this was okay until Chloe starts stirring in the mornings and throws her arms around, each night both me and Shannon had left hooks from Chloe.

The entertainment laid on by the Hotel Staff included a Parrot Show which the kids enjoyed and they even held a parrot each after the show, for the adults the hotel staged shows by a group called The Debonnaires (a mid-aged Irish man), Ray Howard (a Yorkshire comedian), Steve Cane (singer and comedian), as well as resident singer Paeblo.  Each night staff work Fernando stages the bingo in 5 different languages, with prize money of around 21,000 pesetas each night.

The main part of Torromelinos can be accessed in three ways, these been by using the very good bus service which luckily dropped off and picked up right outside the hotel, this bus costs 135 pesetas (around 50p) and arrives in the centre of the resort in around 10 minutes.  The other ways into the centre are on foot either up a steep slope or the main way up around 100 steps, which get steeper as you get nearer the top, these steps are accessible with a pushchair because they have had ramps built into them.

We bought the girls a new dress each whilst in the resort, this dress been a replica Spanish national dress, one in blue and one in red.

During the stay it was interesting to see the price of spirits (alcohol) compared to the UK, a major difference was for a bottle of ABSINTHE in the UK a 50cl bottle of this costs around 25 pounds, in Spain a 70cl bottle costs 2,270 pesetas which is around 9 UK Pounds, makes you wonder what a rip-off country England is at times!!!

On arrival back to the UK, the kids have had to get used to temperatures of around 4'C which is very cold and not unexpectably both the girls have had a runny nose and chesty coughs, in fact Chloe this week had a body temperature of 39.3'C but this went off after a day of sleep and she is now feeling much better.  Shannon also had a temperature but she has hopefully brushed it off.  Now we are just hoping for some warmer weather in the UK in March as I write this the snow is coming down again and it is bitterly cold.

They would be some photos of the holiday BUT after taking 36 pictures we found that the roll of film in the camera had already been re-wound at a previous time hence we have no photos to show from the visit to Sea Life or in the food hall and beach.