Package Holiday to Benidorm

In 1976 I travelled to Europe for the first time to Sorrento in Italy with my dad who obligingly stepped in at the last moment following girlfriend trouble.  Very soon after that we patched things up and in October the following year I went to Spain with my fiancée, Linda.  We could have gone practically anywhere we liked, so long as it was within our restricted budget of course, but we choose to go to Benidorm on the Costa Blanca for two whole weeks and we selected the Don Juan hotel on the Avenida del Mediterráneo, just behind the Levante beach because Linda had been there some time before with her parents and had liked it.

We flew from Luton Airport in Bedfordshire (made famous by Lorraine Chase in the 1970s Campari television adverts) on Monarch Airlines which was in the days before low cost airlines when flying still felt exclusive and glamorous.  The pilots were all ex RAF and called Toby or Edward and the air hostesses were tall and elegant, wore smart uniforms and looked like catwalk models.  The seats were comfortable with generous leg space and there was a free meal thrown in.  There was a drinks trolley at below United Kingdom prices (today a cup of tea on Ryanair costs nearly £3) and a genuine duty free service for spirits, tobacco and perfume.

The flight lasted a little over two hours and then we landed at Alicante airport about sixty kilometres south of Benidorm and as this was in a time before Spain’s modern motorway network had been constructed the coach took the old coast road north through a string of small towns and villages.  Just past Villajoyosa on the coast and the one thousand four hundred metre high Puig Campana Mountain to the west we snatched our first glimpses of Benidorm out of the right hand side windows of the coach and we could see a ribbon of golden sand at the fringe of the magnificent bay and behind it a strip of concrete skyscrapers towering into the blue sky above.

Once in Benidorm we went through the tedious process of dropping people off at their hotels and as the Don Juan was at the far end of the eastern Levante beach we had to wait quite a while to arrive there.  Thirty years or so later the Don Juan isn’t there anymore and I might be mistaken here but it might now be the refurbished Helios Hotel.  It certainly looks similar and it is just about the right location.  If I am correct it is only two hundred metres from the Hotel Los Pilicarnos on the Calle Girona, which is famous for being the setting of the Television comedy series, Benidorm.

The Don Juan was a typical 1970s Spanish seaside resort hotel with a cavernous reception and public area, a dining room that was little more than a school canteen and an entertainment room for evening activity.  The hotel was an eight storey concrete and chrome building and we had a room on the front about half way to the top with a good view out to sea.  In the 1970s rooms could only be described as functional because these were the days before mini-bars, televisions, internet wi-fi access and complimentary cosmetics in the bathroom but it was nice enough and it was going to be our home for two weeks.

Later that day we had our first evening meal at the Don Juan and it has to be said that this was by no stretch of the imagination a gourmet experience.  The menu was limited and consisted mostly of the sort of food that British holidaymakers, unfamiliar with Spanish cuisine, would have insisted upon in 1977, beef burgers or chicken, chips and overcooked vegetables, and for sweet it was a restricted choice between crème caramel or ice cream and it was the same for the whole of the fortnight.  One thing was certain – it was unlikely that we would be introduced to traditional Spanish food on this holiday.  To be fair however anything ethnic may have come as shock because like most English people I wasn’t ready for tortilla and gazpacho and although I am now rather partial to tapas and paella I had certainly never been introduced to these Iberian gastronomic delights in 1977.

If the twelve million visitors to Benidorm came in equal numbers each week, which of course they didn’t, then there would have been nearly a quarter of a million visitors to entertain every night and after dinner we walked to the old town, which even in October was bursting at the seams with visitors wandering around the bars getting lashed and in the shops buying things they didn’t really need.  In 1977 most of Spain was still shaking off the restrictions of the Franco regime, in June there had been the first elections to the National Parliament since 1936, but Benidorm was way ahead of the rest of the country.

It was loud, brash and noisy and so was the hotel when we returned later on.  There was entertainment on the ground floor and even though we were at least four floors up the noise from the discotheque could be heard all the way up to our room.  The booming of the bass kept us awake and so did the loud German couple sitting on the balcony of the room next door who were having a conversation with someone in Hamburg – without a telephone!  Sleeping has never really been a problem for me and I eventually managed to drop off but sometime in the early hours of the morning I woke up and found Linda on the balcony tired and sobbing and desperately in need of sleep.  I think that it was at this point that I wondered just how we were going to survive fourteen nights in Benidorm!

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Other posts about Benidorm:

Benidorm – The Anticipation

Benidorm 1977 – First impressions and the Hotel Don Juan

Benidorm 1977- Beaches, the Old Town and Peacock Island

Benidorm 1977 – Food Poisoning and Guadalest

World Heritage Sites

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First Passport

In the spring of 1976 I made arrangements for my very first trip to continental Europe and booked a Cosmos holiday to Sorrento in Italy.  Having never been abroad before or flown on an airplane I needed to apply for my first passport.

This was quite a different process in 1976 because although now over 80% of the UK population has one, thirty-five years ago it was less than 20% so to have one and to travel felt a little bit exclusive.

My first passport was issued on 16^th May 1976. It was a 32-page document with a dark blue cover, known nowadays as the old blue. This much loved style had been in use into use in 1920 with the formation of the Passport Service following international agreement on a standard format for passports, and remained in use until replaced by the European-Union-style machine-readable passport in late 1988. Details were handwritten into the passport and included: number, holder’s name, profession, place and date of birth, country of residence, height, eye and hair colour, special peculiarities, signature and photograph and, at the back, details of the amount of foreign exchange for travel expenses because only a limited amount of sterling, typically as little as £50, could be taken out of the country.

And so, on the appointed Saturday, we travelled to Luton airport for the Monarch Airlines flight to Naples.  Apart from the Isle of Wight this was the first time that dad had been overseas as well and to be honest he was slightly overdressed for the occasion in his rather formal sports jacket and tie.

As well as passports and foreign currency exchange, airline travel was different in 1976, the flight had proper seat allocations and the plane had comfortable seats with adequate legroom and stewardesses who wore smart orange uniforms and served a complimentary hot meal and we both enjoyed our very first airline journey.

The plane landed at a Spartan military airport base near to the city of Naples and after I had already taken a picture of the plane we were firmly warned against taking photographs.  It wasn’t an especially welcoming sort of place as we passed through a rather austere passport control and baggage reclaim hall both decorated in drab grey and in dire need of a welcoming makeover and made our way through to the coach that was waiting for us.

It is hard to remember how different travelling was thirty years ago.  Staying in touch was difficult because there were no mobile phones, no satellite television with United Kingdom news broadcasts and whilst I could happily do without those today there were no bank debit cards or ATMs if you ran short of cash, which I now find rather handy.

Getting holiday spending money estimates right was quite important because getting a top up if you needed one was a real problem.   Dad and I had taken £60 each for spending money, which I suppose would be about £200 now and although this didn’t sound a lot we were on full board arrangements at the hotel and I didn’t drink quite so much beer in those days!   In 1976 £60 in sterling converted to several thousand Italian Lire and so for a few days we were able to spend as though we were millionaires.

A Life in a Year – 8th October, Package Holiday to Benidorm

In 1976 I travelled to Europe for the first time to Sorrento in Italy with my dad who obligingly stepped in at the last moment following girlfriend trouble.  Very soon after that we patched things up and in October the following year I went to Spain with my fiancée, Linda.  We could have gone practically anywhere we liked, so long as it was within our restricted budget of course, but we choose to go to Benidorm on the Costa Blanca for two whole weeks and we selected the Don Juan hotel on the Avenida del Mediterráneo, just behind the Levante beach because Linda had been there some time before with her parents and had liked it.

We flew from Luton Airport in Bedfordshire (made famous by Lorraine Chase in the 1970s Campari television adverts) on Monarch Airlines which was in the days before low cost airlines when flying still felt exclusive and glamorous.  The pilots were all ex RAF and called Toby or Edward and the air hostesses were tall and elegant, wore smart uniforms and looked like catwalk models.  The seats were comfortable with generous leg space and there was a free meal thrown in.  There was a drinks trolley at below United Kingdom prices (today a cup of tea on Ryanair costs £3) and a genuine duty free service for spirits, tobacco and perfume.

The flight lasted a little over two hours and then we landed at Alicante airport about sixty kilometres south of Benidorm and as this was in a time before Spain’s modern motorway network had been constructed the coach took the old coast road north through a string of small towns and villages.  Just past Villajoyosa on the coast and the one thousand four hundred metre high Puig Campana Mountain to the west we snatched our first glimpses of Benidorm out of the right hand side windows of the coach and we could see a ribbon of golden sand at the fringe of the magnificent bay and behind it a strip of concrete skyscrapers towering into the blue sky above.

Once in Benidorm we went through the tedious process of dropping people off at their hotels and as the Don Juan was at the far end of the eastern Levante beach we had to wait quite a while to arrive there.  Thirty years or so later the Don Juan isn’t there anymore and I might be mistaken here but it might now be the refurbished Helios Hotel.  It certainly looks similar and it is just about the right location.  If I am correct it is only two hundred metres from the Hotel Los Pilicarnos on the Calle Girona, which is famous for being the setting of the Television comedy series, Benidorm.

The Don Juan was a typical 1970s Spanish seaside resort hotel with a cavernous reception and public area, a dining room that was little more than a school canteen and an entertainment room for evening activity.  The hotel was an eight storey concrete and chrome building and we had a room on the front about half way to the top with a good view out to sea.  In the 1970s rooms could only be described as functional because these were the days before mini-bars, Televisions, internet wi-fi access and complimentary cosmetics in the bathroom but it was nice enough and it was going to be our home for two weeks.

Later that day we had our first evening meal at the Don Juan and it has to be said that this was by no stretch of the imagination a gourmet experience.  The menu was limited and consisted mostly of the sort of food that British holidaymakers, unfamiliar with Spanish cuisine, would have insisted upon in 1977, beef burgers or chicken, chips and overcooked vegetables, and for sweet it was a restricted choice between crème caramel or ice cream and it was the same for the whole of the fortnight.  One thing was certain – it was unlikely that we would be introduced to traditional Spanish food on this holiday.  To be fair however anything ethnic may have come as shock because like most English people I wasn’t ready for tortilla and gazpacho and although I am now rather partial to tapas and paella I had certainly never been introduced to these Iberian gastronomic delights in 1977.

If the twelve million visitors to Benidorm came in equal numbers each week, which of course they didn’t, then there would have been nearly a quarter of a million visitors to entertain every night and after dinner we walked to the old town, which even in October was bursting at the seams with visitors wandering around the bars getting lashed and in the shops buying things they didn’t really need.  In 1977 most of Spain was still shaking off the restrictions of the Franco regime, in June there had been the first elections to the National Parliament since 1936, but Benidorm was way ahead of the rest of the country.

It was loud, brash and noisy and so was the hotel when we returned later on.  There was entertainment on the ground floor and even though we were at least four floors up the noise from the discotheque could be heard all the way up to our room.  The booming of the bass kept us awake and so did the loud German couple sitting on the balcony of the room next door who were having a conversation with someone in Hamburg without a telephone!  Sleeping has never really been a problem for me and I eventually managed to drop off but sometime in the early hours of the morning I woke up and found Linda on the balcony tired and sobbing and desperately in need of sleep.  I think that it was at this point that I wondered just how we were going to survive fourteen nights in Benidorm!

Benidorm – The Anticipation

Benidorm 1977 – First impressions and the Hotel Don Juan

Benidorm 1977- Beaches, the Old Town and Peacock Island

Benidorm 1977 – Food Poisoning and Guadalest

World Heritage Sites

A Life in a Year – 16th May, My First British Passport

In the spring of 1976 I made arrangements for my very first trip to continental Europe and booked a Cosmos holiday to Sorrento in Italy.  Having never been abroad before or flown on an airplane I needed to apply for my first passport.  This was quite a different process in 1976 because although now over 80% of the UK population has one, thirty-five years ago it was less than 20% so to have one and to travel felt a little bit exclusive.

My first passport was issued on 16^th May 1976. It was a 32-page document with a dark blue cover, known nowadays as the old blue style. This much loved style had been in use into use in 1920 with the formation of the Passport Service following international agreement on a standard format for passports, and remained in use until replaced by the European-Union-style machine-readable passport in late 1988. Details were handwritten into the passport and included: number, holder’s name, profession, place and date of birth, country of residence, height, eye and hair colour, special peculiarities, signature and photograph and, at the back, details of the amount of foreign exchange for travel expenses because only a limited amount of sterling, typically as little as £50, could be taken out of the country.

And so, on the appointed Saturday, we travelled to Luton airport for the Monarch Airlines flight to Naples.  Apart from the Isle of Wight this was the first time that dad had been overseas as well and to be honest he was slightly overdressed for the occasion in his rather formal sports jacket and tie.

As well as passports and foreign currency exchange, airline travel was different in 1976, the flight had proper seat allocations and the plane had comfortable seats with adequate legroom and stewardesses who wore smart orange uniforms and served a complimentary hot meal and we both enjoyed our very first airline journey.

The plane landed at a Spartan military airport base near to the city of Naples and after I had already taken a picture of the plane we were firmly warned against taking photographs.  It wasn’t an especially welcoming sort of place as we passed through a rather austere passport control and baggage reclaim hall both decorated in drab grey and in dire need of a welcoming makeover and made our way through to the coach that was waiting for us.

It is hard to remember how different travelling was thirty years ago.  Staying in touch was difficult because there were no mobile phones, no satellite television with United Kingdom news broadcasts and whilst I could happily do without those today there were no bank debit cards or ATMs if you ran short of cash, which I now find rather handy.

Getting holiday spending money estimates right was quite important because getting a top up if you needed one was a real problem.   Dad and I had taken £60 each for spending money, which I suppose would be about £200 now and although this didn’t sound a lot we were on full board arrangements at the hotel and I didn’t drink quite so much beer in those days!   In 1976 £60 in sterling converted to several thousand Italian Lire and so for a few days we were able to spend as though we were millionaires.

A Life in a Year – 18th February, Italian Unification inspires my Travels

Although not confirmed for a couple of weeks or so, on February 18^th 1861 King Victor Emmanuel of Piedmont and Savoy assumed the title of King of a united Italy.  I studied Italian unification at school and university and became obsessed with the idea of visiting the country and soon after starting work and earning money I fulfilled that ambition.

In the spring of 1976 I made arrangements for my very first trip to continental Europe and booked a Cosmos holiday to Sorrento and so, on the appointed Saturday, we travelled to Luton airport for the Monarch Airlines flight to Naples.  Apart from the Isle of Wight this was the first time that dad had been overseas as well and to be honest he was slightly overdressed for the occasion in his rather formal sports jacket and tie.

Airline travel was different in 1976, the flight had proper seat allocations and the plane had comfortable seats with adequate legroom and stewardesses who wore smart orange uniforms and served a complimentary hot meal and we both enjoyed our very first airline journey.

The plane landed at a Spartan military airport base near to the city of Naples and after I had already taken a picture of the plane we were firmly warned against taking photographs.  It wasn’t an especially welcoming sort of place as we passed through a rather austere passport control and baggage reclaim hall both decorated in drab grey and in dire need of a welcoming makeover and made our way through to the coach that was waiting for us.

The twenty-five kilometre drive to Sorrento took about forty-five minutes along a busy road running alongside the Circumvesuviana railway and on the way we got our first look at Mount Vesuvius which towers up dangerously close to the city, and then as we swooped down through cypresses, citrus groves and vineyards around the Bay of Naples we could see the Mediterranean Sea and the Island of Capri.  The sea and the sky were so intensely blue that at times it was difficult to be sure where one finished and the other started.  This was exciting stuff because previously we had never been further than Cornwall or Norfolk and the blue, almost luminous, water looked a lot more inviting than the grey North Sea that’s for sure.  When the coach arrived in Sorrento it started dropping off the passengers at their various hotels and finally drove to Sant’ Agnello and a position directly on the coast on the top of the cliff and guests stopping at the Hotel Mediterraneo were invited to leave the coach.  This was our stop and we were immediately impressed with where we would be staying and I secretly congratulated myself on a good selection.

The hotel was six stories high and painted a dazzling white with smart green shutters on the windows.  At the front trees with attractive pink blossom surrounded it and at the back there was a secluded garden full of citrus trees.  Our room was on the fourth floor and the hotel had one of those old fashioned lifts that were little more than a metal cage that went up and down the shaft and you could see the walls flashing by through the grill.  This was the sort of lift that you don’t see any more and have been consigned to history by European health and safety legislation.  Our room was on the back of the hotel overlooking the garden and although it was basic it was clean and comfortable and we agreed that it would do very nicely.  There was a tiled floor and real wooden furniture, beds with crisp linen sheets and a bathroom with an old-fashioned bath suite.  Being 1976 there was no mini-bar of course and no television and certainly no Internet access.

It is hard to remember how different travelling was thirty years ago.  Staying in touch was difficult because there were no mobile phones, no satellite television with United Kingdom news broadcasts and whilst I could happily do without those today there were no bank debit cards or ATMs if you ran short of cash, which I now find rather handy.

Getting holiday spending money estimates right was quite important because getting a top up if you needed one was a real problem.   Dad and I had taken £60 each for spending money, which I suppose would be about £200 now and although this didn’t sound a lot we were on full board arrangements at the hotel and I didn’t drink quite so much beer in those days!   In 1976 £60 in sterling converted to several thousand Italian Lire and so for a few days we were able to spend as though we were millionaires.

In the late afternoon we had been invited to the Cosmos welcome meeting and as we thought that this was probably compulsory we went along to the hotel lounge with all the other guests to get the information that we all needed.  Later on, on package holidays, I stopped going to the welcome meetings because they began to tell you less and less and only wanted to sell you more and more but this one turned out to be very worthwhile.  The holiday representative was an attractive Italian woman called Maria who was very informative and gave us good advice before she sold us our trips.  We planned our fortnight to go out every other day and chose to go to Amalfi, Capri, Naples, Vesuvius, Pompeii and Rome as well as two entertainment nights in Sorrento.  That was just about everything that was on offer although we did pass on the Monte Casino option.  Trips must have been a great deal cheaper then and much better value for money because even after we had paid for them all we still managed to have plenty of spending money left over.