Thinking about visiting Benidorm with kids? You have come to the right place! Benidorm, Spain is not a well known vacation spot to people who live outside Europe. This popular Spanish resort town is also a favorite destination of those from the UK. I discovered Benidorm by chance. A hotel search took me there because a hotel chain was having a special offer in that city, and I was instantly intrigued by the scene of the long stretch of high raise buildings along a beautiful sandy beach.
It reminded me of Waikiki in Hawaii. Then once I zoomed into the boardwalk and saw restaurants, clubs and bars, one after the other, it brought to mind South Beach in Miami.
This resort town may traditionally be known for its long, sandy beach and packed nightlife scene, but dig a little deeper and visitors can get a true sense of Spanish culture during a visit to this Costa Blanca resort town.
You will easily find authentic Spanish tapas in old town, lively party scenes at the bars and clubs along the beach boardwalk after dark, that appeal to younger visitors, while the resorts and amusement parks slightly more inland are better suited for families with children.
Stay
There are many hotels and resorts that cater to different styles and needs. You can read this article about how to maximize saving, when booking the accommodations. We wanted to have a separate bedroom for our son, a front unobstructed ocean view, and most importantly it needed to fit our budget, so we opted for an Airbnb.
We found this small 2 bedroom condo right on the boardwalk of the most famous Levante beach, with wrap around view of both beach front and the mountain in the back. It had the most breathtaking view of any accommodation we’ve had so far.
Because it is on the beach, we ended up taking our son to play on the beach everyday. If you are more of a pool kind of person, there are plenty of resorts with big pools to choose from as well.
Food
Just like most other cities in Spain, you are going find most of the restaurants serve tapas, grilled meats and seafood. You can also easily find kid favorites, like hamburgers, pasta and pizzas.
If you stay in the Levante beach area like us, this place called “El Galeon” on Avenida del Doctor Orts Llorca, became our “go to” place, when we didn’t feel like searching for a place to eat. It is right around the corner from the beach walk. It serves traditional Spanish grill dishes, and also has live guitar and singing in the evening. Most importantly, it serves the salted grilled baby octopus I couldn’t find else where!
There is not a big Chinese population nor visitors in Benidorm. So, if you are looking for a Chinese restaurant, it might be challenging. It just so happened that next door to the El Galeon is a pretty authentic Chinese owned, Chinese restaurant, called Restraurante Chino Dafa (大發酒家). It’s not Chinatown authentic, but it’s still pretty good compared to other Chinese restaurants we’ve visited in other Spanish cities.
If you feel like having a night out for real authentic Spanish tapas (really, who wouldn’t when you are there?), head over to Old Town, where you will find tapa restaurants one next to the other with outdoor seating. The best starting point would be at the corner of Pl. de la Constitucio & C. Jose Martinez Oriola. You can use Google map to pin point “Marrs Bar Benidorm”. Once you are there, you will see lots of bars and restaurants on small tiny streets.
When visiting Benidorm with kids, sometimes you just need to keep the little ones happy on their meals, before the grown ups can enjoy yours. So, we have to mention that there is a Mc Donald on Av. del Mediterranean in Levante beach just right about running into old town area. Usually before we heading over to old town enjoying our tapa dinners, we would stop over this Mc Donald to let our son have his early dinner. Unfortunately, he was not a 6 year old tapa lover 🙁
When visiting Benidorm with kids, you have to try their ice cream shops a few times! There are many ice cream parlors on the streets closed to the beach or on the beach walk. We loved to stop by one of them after dinner on the way back to the condo, and try a few from 30 to 50 different flavors of ice creams. One flavor I would not recommend though, which is black charcoal ice cream. There might be some people like it, but just not our cup of tea.
Things to Do
Beach
When visiting Benidorm with kids, it is easy to keep them entertained with all the beautiful sandy beaches. There are many beaches in Benidorm. Levante beach is the most popular, packed with bars and restaurants on the beach walk. It also is the Central beach of Benidorm. It is the second largest beach in Benidorm, its length is slightly over two kilometers.
As our accommodation was in the center of Levante beach on the beach walk, we went there every day to enjoy calm waves and warm sand. You can rent beach umbrellas and chairs, but we brought our own, as our Airbnb host provided a few. Our son enjoyed playing in the sand and chasing waves.
On the promenade along the sea front, there are an abundance of cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants, most of them from early morning until late at night came the music, and idle youth fun lights with a glass of beer or cocktail in hand.
At the night time, Levante beach turns into parties. It is the main nightlife beach area of the Costa Blanca.
Amusement Park
Visiting Benidorm with kids is a perfect holiday choice as there are many amusement parks in town. They are more of smaller scales of amusement parks you would see in Orland, Florida. As we did not visit any of them, I cannot really drill into much details. Listing here for your references:
- Terra Mitica – Discover ancient Mediterranean civilizations and be blown away by the rides. Egypt, Greece, Rome, Iberia and the Islands! There are rides, pools and shows.
- Aqualandia – Water park. Slides, pools and games for kids are the main features of this aquatic park covering 150,000 square metres, featuring 17 different rides.
- Mundomar – This is a bit like Sea World. It’s a a park with exotic and marine animals, covering 60,000 square metres, complete with tropical vegetation, large waterfalls, caverns and rustic buildings.
- Terra Natura – A spectacular park offering visitors the chance to immerse themselves in the world of a zoo. It consists of four areas: Pangea, America, Europe and Asia.
Walk Around Town
We enjoy walking around town in Benidorm. Our typical day started with breakfast in the condo with breathtaking ocean view and breeze. Headed over to the beach across the boardwalk, after lunch. Sometimes had lunch on the beach. Came back to condo to clean up late in the afternoon. Had a nice walk on the Levante beach walk, and also, the pedestrian only roads in the area where Levante beach meets old town, where you can find many shops and outdoor café and restaurants. We then slowly ended up in old town around dinner time, ready for some yummy tapas!
Biking/Electric Skateboarding/Electric Car
If walking is not your thing, you can try biking or even electric skateboarding. There are many bike and electric skateboarding rental shops around town where you can rent the equipment for reasonable rates. For toddlers 5 year old or less, we found this place called iGOO on Av. Bilbao renting electric car for kids. My son had a blast slowly cruising the beach walk back and forth.
Overall
Benidorm, a Costa Blanca resort town on Mediterranean Sea, offers beautiful weather all year long. It’s a lesser known vacation destination to most of America and Asia side of worlds, but offers many different styles of attractions for different types of visitors. It is the city with the highest number of inhabitants and is the touristic capital of the province. Popularly known as New York of the Mediterranean, because it comes second as the city with the most skyscrapers per square meter. It’s unique combinations of high rises and the coastline makes a perfect postcard shot from any angle. It had became one of our favorite city to visit in Europe.
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Vincent Robison
I have strong passion of traveling, and finding great travel deals. I was born and grew up in Taipei, Taiwan. However, I had lived in New York for most of my life, and travelled all over the world.
