A week ago we went on a girl's weekend to Sitges, Spain. Sitges is a small beachside town, around 45 minutes outside of Barcelona. When planning the weekend we found that there wasn't much in the way of information on the Internet, so we thought we'd share some of our trip with you.
We were a group of seven girls, celebrating our friend's upcoming wedding. Sitges might be considered a strange choice of destination for a hen's (bachelorette) weekend as it is renowned for being the gay capital of Spain. For us though it was perfect: easy to get to, inexpensive, great beaches, sunny weather, yummy food, good bars and a few shops.
We stayed at the
Medium Hotel. This hotel is in a great location, amongst lots of shops and bars and within five minutes walk of both the train station and the beach. The hotel has a central courtyard with a really nice pool and a bar area with tables and chairs and loungers. A decent breakfast was included with the room rate and could be eaten inside or at tables around the pool.
We arrived on Friday evening and once we were checked in we walked down to the seafront and popped into a bar for our first glass of sangria and some patatas bravas. We then walked up to
El Cable and found the last remaining table and sat down to order a huge array of tapas.
Even though we were stuffed we then managed to only walk a few hundred metres before stopping again for gelato. There are gelato stores and frozen yogurt stores all over Sitges.
Feeling rather full and tired at this stage, we contemplated going back to the hotel for a quick nap, but decided we would be better to just stay out. We headed down towards
Parrots, a pub that had been recommended by a friend who had visited Sitges before. The intersection where Parrots is was already really busy, but we found an outside table at a bar (I think most of the bars in this area have the same owner) and sat down and watched the drag queen cabaret singer Lady Diamond performing outside Parrots restaurant.
On Saturday, we had breakfast at the hotel then managed to snag seven of the loungers around the pool. For the first time in years, we sat by the pool all day - leaving our loungers only briefly to pop out to the bakery to grab a bite to eat, and taking turns to have a quick stroll around the shops. The bartender at the bar by the pool was making us delicious icy cocktails of rum, pineapple and fresh mint.
As I mentioned earlier, we found hardly any newspaper, magazine or blog articles on Sitges before our trip. I did however, pick up a few tips from Tripadvisor including several recommendations for drinks at the rooftop bars of either
Hotel Platjador or Hotel Avenida Sofia. On Saturday evening we headed down to the
Sky Bar at Hotel Avenida Sofia. This is a bar on the roof of a hotel near the beach, with 360 degree views. There was a DJ playing music, a couple of people dining and a few other groups having drinks. It was a nice place to start the evening, watching the sunset and drinking cold champagne.
We then walked along the beach to a restaurant called Fragata, that is tucked in right at the end of the strip. The food here was delicious, although we didn't cope so well with eating so late and made the mistake of filling up on too many bread rolls before our other courses arrived.
I headed home after the meal, but the other girls stayed out for a few more hours in search of a club to go dancing in. The first of the successful chain of
Pacha clubs originated in Sitges and the plan was to head to the new
Sweet Pacha club at 2am when it started to get going. However, after a few drinks, the girls headed back to the hotel to bed instead.
This was probably for the best as on Sunday morning after breakfast we jumped into taxis from the train station and headed to the spa at
Dolce Sitges, a hotel about 10 minutes from where we were staying. We spent a few hours at the spa having a selection of treatments from pedicures through to facials and massages. The hotel itself is not one that I would choose to stay in as it looks to be primarily geared towards conferences and is outside of Sitges town. However, everyone loved their treatments, so we would all recommend a visit to the hotel spa.
For a late lunch, I went with MP to a cute place called
La Picara where we both had the excellent value daily special menu.
The afternoon was spent swimming, napping and walking around the town and beach. Everyone made a few purchases for themselves and for their children.
Later that night we went for paella down at
Restaurante Costa Dorada. This restaurant had been so busy during the day that we couldn't get in, but the wind picked up by the time we arrived in the evening, so we didn't linger too long.
We raced back to the hotel to get more layers and then ended up just going for drinks at the bar next door.
On our final morning, we rented loungers down at the beach. The sand was clean and soft and it was lovely to have a couple of dips in the sea.
All in all, it was a great getaway. We helped our friend finalise many of the details for her wedding, we had lots of laughs and got lots of rest despite quickly adjusting to the late night Spanish lifestyle. We had great meals, and exclaimed nearly every time the bill came how cheap the wine and Cava was. The only downer came right at the very end of the trip when one of the girls in our group realised that her wallet had been stolen by the man that had helped us get onto the train to the airport.
AD
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