| | De La Encarnacion, Fuengirola, 29640, Spain
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Overall Community Rating: |   7.6 (based on 4 user reviews) |
 Fuengirola Beach: WINTERBBRAKE by Gordon King |
| Posted 17 February 2008 about a visit in February 2008 | Overall rating: 8.6 |
Just returned from Fuengirola five days ago and thought I’d get this report in while the memory is still fresh.
The first thing I must comment on is what happened at Malaga airport. when we first got there and went to get on to the transfer bus, my wife and I were almost the last people to get both our cases off the carousel. most of the others had already left to go for the bus, after getting our cases we went over to the kiosk where the Thomsons rep told us where to find the bus. it took us about three minutes to get there and when we did, we found only two other couples on the bus, and for the next fifty five minutes we had to just sit there while the other couples kept arriving from every direction.
as i said it only took us three minutes to find it, why had it took the others so long.? it had taken us about one hour and five minutes before we got on the road, and after going to numerous other hotels on the way, of course my wife and I were the last couple to be dropped off at our hotel, and so from then on i expected the worst.
We walked into the Fuengirola beach lobby and things seemed to pick up.
we went up to the desk and were given a second floor apartment, asked if we could be changed onto a top floor room. the girl did it without any hesitation. we were put on the sixth floor over looking a lovely view of the castle and the beach both about a quarter of a mile away, we had the sun on our balcony from morning till about six pm at night, and the first few days, it was in the thirty’s for most of the time, even though there was quite a strong wind it was still nice. but dull and cold the last three days, the ones overlooking the pool are on the other side, and I never saw any one ever out on them as they were always in the shade from morning to night and in constant wind. so I would never pay extra for a pool view as you will never in my view be able to sit out on the balcony in the winter months.
the hotel it’s self is very clean and tidy, and each room as a very large balcony, we found the food was good with quite a good choice, there is nightly entertainment starting at ten pm which we never went to, so can’t comment on.
but the hotel is quite isolated a good thirty minutes walk into the town but the beach is only a ten minutes walk away, we found the staff very friendly, the side of the hotel we were on was quite a busy road, but the hotel is so well sound proofed that this was no problem night or day, just one little criticism there is no electric socket in the bedroom, so if you like a bedside clock like I do, too bad. but I bought an extension cord from the super market next door so I could use the clock for £2.85p. the swimming pool area is very large, the pool itself one of the largest I’ve seen, with plenty of tables chairs and recliners, and in a summer this would be heaven for those who just go on holiday to just lay by the pool and have a few drinks.
so we think that this is a good hotel with good food, and coming from me is high praise indeed as I’v been told more then once that I’m hard to please when it comes to hotels.
there’s a large mall next door called the Miramar Centre that has a great supermarket in it called Eroski so if you’re self catering get all your food from there it’s so cheap, I got all my drinks from there.
a six pack ( small tins ) of a lager called Cervez Aurum Special, which I thought was one of the best lagers I’d ever tasted 5.4 vol, equivalent to four pints, was £1.48p, yes that’s 37p a pint, San Miguel 49p pint, and Amstel 58p a pint, a one litre bottle of the best sangria ( Cruz Garcia ) £1.57p. you can also get a cheaper one litre box of sangria which I thought was just as good for 81p. note the difference to what I had to pay at an ordinary supermarket for one Amstel £1.15p.
when we arrived we had sun from morning till dusk the temperature being in the thirty’s for the first four days, then it was all down hill,
we went down to Gibraltar, get your tickets from one of the ticket offices on the front, they all charge the same price £9 and they pick you up and drop you off at your hotel, you get five hours there, it takes just over one hour, when we went, we got there at twenty to eleven and wanted to leave ten minutes later, it was so dark and cold with a gale force wind and beginning to rain, lots of people on the coach had come in tee shirts and shorts, and had to buy warm clothes, and when you do get there all there is a street about half a mile long with shops selling stuff at twice the price you could get back in Fuengirola, the only thing we found cheap was bottles of spirits which cost about half the price of that back in Fuengirola but that didn’t help us as we don’t drink spirits,
and when we got back we had the other two days very dull cold and windy, earlier in the week we took the train a couple of times to go to Torremolinos and to Bendalmadena, I can’t remember the price but it was quite cheap, and they run every half hour, there’s a very large market in Torremolinos, but if you take my advice you’ll give it a miss, you reach it by walking (did I say walking) what I mean is climbing a one and a half mile street and when you do finally get there, we saw a few elderly people give in and go back. all you find is about two hundred stalls selling clothes shoes handbags and cheap jewellery, every stall selling the same as the next one, and the one in Bendalmadena has just the same stalls but there is only about one quarter as many, there’s a very nice big garden in Bendalmadena where you’ll come across chickens rabbits and all other thing running around free, there’s a lot of nice fountains and a cactus garden and it’s free to go in.
we never saw hardly any one on the beach all the time we were there, due to the fact that the sea was so rough, the waves were starting around a quarter of a mile out and by the time they got to the beach, they were around four to five feet high, this was not only in Fuengirola but as we saw it all along the coast from Torremolinos, down to Gibraltar. I don’t know if it will be like this all the time at this time of the year, maybe we were just unlucky.
when you are picked up to go back to the airport you will most likely be the first pick up, we were held up at one hotel for nearly twenty minutes and then the people still didn’t turn up, one last comment, as you may know the coach’s invariably pick you up right outside the hotel door some times with great difficulty because of parked cars, well i take my hat off to these coach drivers, being an H,G,V driver, dragging a 38ton jugganaught around Britain for most of my life up to now, they do a great job, on every street there are cars parked both sides of the usually very narrow streets, and you may also notice that nearly every other one of them are either scratched dinted or damaged in one way or another.
the exchange rate when we went was 1.22€ to the £1, over there it was 1.33€.
would we go back to this hotel, perhaps not, as it is so far from the town centre, but then we never tend to go back to the same resort twice anyway.
This review is the opinion of a diytravel.co.uk user and not of diytravel.co.uk. |
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 Fuengirola Beach Reservations |
| Fuengirola Beach: Not so much 'Fuengirola Beach' as 'Fuengirola Hypermarket' by Andrew Wilkinson |
| Posted 04 December 2005 about a visit in November 2005 | Overall rating: 7.3 |
Location:
First thing to say is that the Apartments are along way from the city centre (and beach in fact), but please don't let this put you off. If you don't mind walking or have no qualms about using public transport then for couples, the apartments are fine. If you have children then you should be looking for a poolside based holiday as the Fuengirola Beach Apartments are no where near the beach. There is a hypermarket 100m away with shops, bars/restaurants, cinema, even Burger King. The ladies will feel quite at home given a few Euros to spend. Transfer time, 20 minutes without other pick ups.
Rooms:
Excellent rooms, spacious, well equiped, two halogen rings, microwave, toaster, kettle, TV etc. 2/3rds of rooms have poolview, remainder benefit from the afternoon/evening sunshine. At present there are new Apartments going up opposite, so you could expect some disruption.
Tip: The TV does have a scart lead socket, so if you have games consols, portable DVD's or the like this may help while away the hours.
Staff and Reps:
All friendly and hard working. Excellent English spoken everywhere don't think you will have any problems in this respect. One of the barmen is William, or otherwise known as 'Seen Your Willie!' which gets quite interesting after a few beers. Firstchoice have an 'In2Action' team based at the hotel, who try to get you into sporting activities, in addition to a full time entertainment team.
Facilities:
Bar (and late night adult only bar), Dining room, Library, fully equiped Laundry Room, Children's room with machines and pool tables, Table tennis, Nightly entertainment and 'inhouse' first choice reps.
Food:
Usual buffet style Spanish fare, not a lot of choice for the kids, but I did go out of season, so might be better in summer.
Local Transport:
A local urban bus (route 4) runs half hourly from the Hypermarket, 100m from the hotel entrance to the city centre, takes 10 minutes and costs 1 euro at present for an adult. The same journey by taxi is about 6 euros, so can be convenient if there are three or four of you. From the bus garage you can pick up coaches quite easily (and cheaply) running up and down the coast from Marbella to Malaga and all the towns in between. The train station is opposite the garage and will take you up the coast to Malaga, stopping at Benalmadena, Torremolinos, and a host of other towns. Like the bus you will be had pushed to find a fare over a couple of euros one way.
Fuengiriola:
2nd largest city in the region, probably 500 bars and eateries of all pursuasions, absolutely kilometres of sandy beach. Most popular area of town is probably Torreblanca completely the other end of Fuengirola to the Fuengirola Beach Apartments. Competition steep so prices low in a majority of cafes/bars etc. Avoid the London, Irish and Linaker bar type places for the best value for money. All the usual warnings needed, Touts/Timeshares/Lookie Lookie men/and occasional pickpocketing prostitutes late at night.
Suggested days out:
Marbella: (Bus 220 about €2.40 one way) Shops and film stars
Porto Banus: (Euro bus ride from Marbella) Tremendous harbour, millions of £'s of floating real estate, plus Ferrari's Porsche's Rollers and really expensive restaurants. Cheapest is probably 'Jack's' (not difficult to find - look for the most popular venue).
Benalmadena: (€1.20 ish by either bus or train) Try the Cable Car if you have a head for heights, tickets sold either one way or return (€8 and €11). Can't understand who in their right mind would walk 5 miles back down a winding mountain track! Probably best to buy a return ticket. Views are stunning, you even lookdown on the aircraft arriving into Malaga Airport. Gibralta and Africa can be seen on clear days.
Mijas: 10 minute (€1) bus ride into the mountains behind Fuengirola, look back at the reverse view seen every morning from your hotel window. Shops and Bars to visit, will only take a couple of hours of your time, but temperture does drop but a couple of degrees, so can be a real blessing at times.
Overall: Nice clean Hotel, with hardworking staff, acceptable food, and good facilities. Only drawback is the distance to the town centre, I would suggest that the Hotel invests in a minibus, to drop holiday makers at a central or beach location during the day. Yes I would consider going back, but might try a more central hotel next time for comparison first.
This review is the opinion of a diytravel.co.uk user and not of diytravel.co.uk. |
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| Fuengirola Beach Reservations |
| Fuengirola Beach: Great place, just to far out of the way by Brendan Mcnally |
| Posted 27 October 2003 | Overall rating: 6.0 |
Travelled here in July 2001, two adults, three children, 14,11,8) We found the Fuengirola Beach Apartments quite nice, friendly, clean and with what we thought, a good range of timetabled daytime activities for all the family. Location was a bit out of the way with a hazardous journey to the promenade if you decided to take the motorway route. As the crow flies, the apartments are not that far away from the promenade but there is no direct route from the apartments. One advantage was that the waterpark and zoo are about 10 mins walk ( no need to be ripped off by the reps ). 10 mins walk also takes you to Dunnes Stores and Lidl which were much cheaper than very limited onsite mini market. The nearest beach is a about 5 mins away but is quite rough. This beach is taken over by the locals every weekend when they camp along the entire beach and have live bands etc. The timetabled activities were not reliable. My children were disappointed with this because they were ready to take part in the football or foot tennis etc, but 50% of the time these did not take place and there weren't really any activities for women here (perhaps aerobics or something ).
We have travelled to all the Balaeric Islands several times and the Algarve and Tenerife and I found Fuengirola to be the least clean of these. Many people have dogs here and they seem to be allowed to litter the promenade at will. Scooters here are numerous and pay no heed to pedestrian crossings ( nor do many cars for that matter ). We enjoyed our holiday mainly because we never saw a cloud in the whole two weeks we were there. We also found Fuengirola the most expensive holiday we have ever had and will most likely not return here again.
This review is the opinion of a diytravel.co.uk user and not of diytravel.co.uk. |
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| Fuengirola Beach Reservations |
| Fuengirola Beach: Baltic Pool by Danny Carr |
| Posted 29 January 2003 | Overall rating: 8.5 |
My family and I were there in February 1/2 term 2002, it was quite warm for the time of year which is not what I was expecting at all, the hotel had plenty of sunbeds to go around (there werent that many people there though). HOWEVER, the pool was absolutely baltic,
I swam two lengths of the bloody thing after recovering from the initial shock when I jumped in, and my muscles seized up! The sea was even warmer than the pool!! Hotel bar was good, however Guiness is a tad pricey- local stuff is cruzcampo or san miguel which is a bit cheaper, they even had Everton V Arsenal on the telly which was good (pity cos Everton lost) and other sports etc on during the day. It also has a multi sports court for playing footer and tennis etc on. Evening entertainment was poor as it was mainly aimed at the older folks who were staying there (i.e. bingo/cabaret). Overall though it is a relaxing place to spend a week doing absolutely sod all and relaxing!
This review is the opinion of a diytravel.co.uk user and not of diytravel.co.uk. |
| 1 of 2 users found this review helpful. Did this review help you? | |
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| Fuengirola Beach Reservations |
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