Top Things to do in Costa Blanca
The 10 Best Hidden Gems Things to do in Costa Blanca, Valencian Country
Costa Blanca is the name given to Alicante's coastline in Spain, which stretches over 200 kilometers. It is an incredibly popular holiday destination for tourists, because of the marvelous weather and beaches. Costa Blanca is family friendly, thanks to the huge range of activities available there from beaches and golf to museums and parks. There are the beaches, such as Los Náufragos in Torrevieja with its volleyball nets, golden sands and Blue Flag status, or smaller beaches like Serragrosa with its crystal waters, ideal for swimmers. But there are also golf courses (particularly the Villaitana club de golf near Benidorm) and watersports facilities and cultural sites like museums and galleries, such as the La Asegurada Municipal Museum in Alicante which has extensive collections of Spanish art. You will need a couple of weeks on the Costa Blanca just to scratch the surface of its entertainment potential.
Restaurants in Costa Blanca
1. Las Antipodas Watersports
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 80 reviews
Reviewed By WaldoC37
Very nice, friendly and motivated instructors! Material for hire is in perfect condition. Been there several times, every time the same excellent service.
2. Club Hipico Calpe
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 87 reviews
Riding club and "Happy family orientated stables". A great place for people of all ages to get in touch with horses.
Reviewed By 769sofyag
Super professional and very caring for both horses and people. The horses are marvelous and Patricia (the teacher) is superb!!
3. El Sueno (The Dream) Botanical Garden
Overall Ratings
5.0 based on 31 reviews
In the middle of Costa Blanca region, 8km far form Denia, you can find El Sueño Botanical Garden. Enjoy more than 5000 different species in a unique paradise in the world. Visit his cave and museum of fossils and minerals. Explore the antiques museum and the exhibition of drinks. savor the exotic fruits of the season which grow in the botanical garden. Discover endless curiosities by hands of their creators. Reserve your visit. We are waiting for you.
Reviewed By Salshayd - Greater London, United Kingdom
Enjoyable 2 hour tour of the gardens with the charming owners. The tour is in Spanish but you do not need to speak it fluently to appreciate the visit. So much more than a garden full of plants especially cacti - also a little bodega in a cave, natural history museum, pond, stream and water features, patios, birds, frogs, terrapins and tortoises! It is best to ring to make a reservation for your visit. There is parking on site and it is all level with good access.
4. Iglesia Ortodoxa Rusa San Miguel Arcangel
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 347 reviews
Reviewed By Nomad778408
Beautiful russian church .so unusual to find in Spain .we viewed it from the train window from calpe to benidorm .thought whats that in the middle of the woods ? Drove there by car .parking bays on hillside road outside the church .beautiful inside and out.so much detail and made of wood .its a nice detourif in the area .so glad we made the time to visit it .
5. Mirador Monte Toix
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 204 reviews
Reviewed By BVI1954 - Almaty, Kazakhstan
My tips would be: go on foot but take a lot of water - just avoid very hot and sunny days. I was in Calpe in October, 2019. One pretty cloudy afternoon I decided it was time for me to take a good view of the town and places around it from above. It took me about 1,5 hours to get to walk to the top from the Iglesia Antigua in the Old Town. The walk was not physically difficult – I live in Almaty, Kazakhstan and a hike in the mountains is like a walk in the park in some cities, but it’s pretty tedious for most of the way for you have to walk between luxury villas behind monotonous high stone fences with occasional luxury cars superciliously passing you by trying to make as much dust and roar as they can – at least that was my impression, but then maybe I was just fastidious for not being able to stay away from such signs of civilization (pretty naïve of me, too). On the other hand, you can always get back at those luxury villas – at least those on your left-hand side as you walk up – for they are all open to your curiosity as you pass them by – maybe hence the reaction of the car owners. I am not sure I would like to live in a place worth a few hundred thousand (maybe over 1 million) euros open for peeping, gaping or staring into - except for the inside of the house - to all the idling passers-by even if they don’t have any field-glasses nor sit on the road side above your swimming pool where you wanted to have a few moments to yourself. All the way I kept wondering what were those 3 metre high stone fences for if one could easily view the whole of your property from the road above. Actually, some of the swimming pools are so close to the road that on a hot summer afternoon one could be easily tempted into jumping into them from above – just to refresh oneself. Well, I was on top at about 3 p.m. and it looked more and more like rain, maybe due to that for a while the place was all to myself. I need hardly say – it’s been done thousands of times before in all tourist guides etc – that the views from Monte Toix are really magnificent; you can have a good picture of Calpe, its surroundings and more importantly – of the sea. It seems to me that if you are on the shore the sea doesn’t show how great it is, especially on a sunny quiet day, but if you look upon it from above it really looks awesome. Boundless, so that the town and all its neighbourhood seem to shrink before it. I believe that Monte Toix is really one of the places one must go to while in Calpe – and if possible – on foot, I don’t think I would have half enjoyed the views and the visit itself had I come by car. I walked another 200 metres or so towards Altea (away from Calpe) and but for the rain might have tried the path to see how far it would take me, but then changed my mind in favour of some lunch. I came back to the top with some benches over there and decided I had deserved a small picnick. Besides the water (at least 1l per person is absolutely required if you walk up, better more) I had some excellent Spanish brandy (Magno, I believe) so much underestimated in the world in favour of its French neighbour’s cognac/Armagnac) and no less wonderful Spanish 50% cocoa dark chocolate with whole almonds and I just started to enjoy them all when a strong 4-wheel drive stopped about 100m down the road and a man with a serious looking dog (Alsatian I believe) appeared from it – both looking strangely native to the place – kind of security maybe. I fortunately asked him if one could walk from that place to Altea or near it (there is a beautiful Russian Orthodox Church between Altea and Calpe but they told me I could only get there by car – which I didn’t want to get at all), he told me I couldn’t, which saved me maybe a couple of hours of a tiresome and fruitless exercise. Before taking my leave I drank a drop of Magno to Monte Toix and the views I had from there and began the descent happy that the rain had started on my way back and not the other way around. I decided that under the rain it would be wiser to trust the Android navigator rather then my own eyes. I did use it going up, but only to make sure that it agreed with my eyes and the road signs. I wasn’t so lucky on the way back. For some reason the navigator told me to turn left when I was sure the way back to Maryvilla (the urbanizacion between Calpe proper and the Monte Toix) was to my right. Well, I don’t know why but I decided to follow the unnatural instinct (I am a rather old man – past 60 when I was there, so for me the navigators and other gadgets still seem to be less natural than my own eyes, though I believe the younger generation would see it the other way about) and followed the navigator. Well, I wasn’t lost or anything, maybe actually the route proposed by the phone was even shorter than the one I had used before, but as I went down, I found myself on the motorway between Calpe and Benidorm – N332. It’s a very good road for all sorts of vehicles, including huge trucks and buses, but absolutely unfit for pedestrians. In some places it had no pavement or foot-path so that I had to walk on the carriage-way with all those huge buses and lorries rushing by at 80 or more km/hour. If you do go to Monte Toix on foot, don’t follow the navigator if it takes you to that highway – better follow the winding road among the villas – they begin to look tiny and friendly compared with the monsters of the highway. I left it as soon as I had a chance – after about 10 minute walk along it – and turned into a maze of winding small streets between still more villas even though less luxurious and standing on a flat ground (Canuta Baja is the name of the “Urbanizacion” I believe). It all looked fine after the highway venture, but the rain was getting stronger and the streets were a real maze, not just metaphorically speaking, and absolutely empty. A couple of nice ladies doing something in the patios did give me some advice as to how to walk back to Calpe (the idea of getting there without a car seemed a folly to them), but still it took me nearly 2 hours to find myself in the same place where I started my upwards journey. That not to count the time for getting down to that maze, twice the time I had spent in going up. Well, the reward was that I entered the town in a place that looked weirdly Spanish and un-tourist like – close to the Old Town (Casco Antiguo) with tangerine trees along the streets with fruit rotting on them and beneath because of the humid autumn, never saw such a waste of the New Year symbol of my childhood. It was dusk when I got back to Calpe proper, I was all wet in spite of the pretty good coat for rough weather and tired. Fortunately, I remembered the Café Bar Sport that was nearby and went there for something to fortify my fallen spirits and buy some honey, too. If you care for real home-made honey, not the stuff they sell under the name in supermarkets, the Café Bar Sport is the only place in Calpe to buy it. Isn’t it funny that in a place with so many real natural wonders like Monte Toix, Ifach, el Paseo Ecologico to Benissa with its tiny and cozy coves, Salinas, etc, there is only one place where one can buy some real honey!
6. Museo Paleontologico de Elche
7. Museo de Belenes (Nativity Scene Museum)
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 108 reviews
Reviewed By dancook747 - Leeds, United Kingdom
Arguably one of Alicante’s best kept secrets, it is worth taking some time to visit the Nativity museum. Tucked away in the Old Town, not far from the Basilica Santa Maria and MACA. Visited one evening, this small museum contains a breathtaking array of hundreds of carefully crafted figurines and models depicting the Nativity and various Biblical scenes. Well worth the visit to see the intricate detail of each model; some of which are crafted in a picture frame, others are larger in size. Free entry which is another major advantage.
8. La Cruz de Benidorm
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 941 reviews
Reviewed By Kathleen19792000 - Sint-Niklaas, Belgium
If you are in Benidorm, please do the walk to La Cruz de Benidorm. It's really worth the climb. The views on top are very amazing!
9. Cala del Moraig
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 381 reviews
Reviewed By Discover147542 - Bangkok, Thailand
Great little beach with crystal clear water. Currently shut due to works on the cliffs. It's a step walk down and up but worth the trek!
10. Bodegas Enrique Mendoza
Overall Ratings
4.5 based on 195 reviews
Reviewed By karenwO7657NX
This was a great tour, very interesting, and we tried 7 different wines with delicious tapas after the tour. Our guide was very knowledgeable and while we were sampling wines, Enrique Mendoza himself came out to meet us which was a real treat. Definitely great value and a fun way to spend a couple of hours.
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