Torremolinos

The town of Torremolinos is located in the sunny south of Spain on the Costa del Sol. Torremolinos is big, brash and offers lots of fun. This is not a place to holiday and expect a cultural experience or to discover the 'real Spain'. Life in Torremolinos in high season is noisy, fast-paced and the partying just keeps going on and on.

With about nine kilometres of wide, sandy beaches, a large selection of water sports, a never-ending range of bars, shops and restaurants and a throbbing nightlife, the resort attracts people of all ages. Visitors from all over Europe flock here in the summer months for bucket and spade family holidays, gay holidays and teen scene fun.

The town is dominated by high rise hotels and apartment blocks but with many landscaped areas within the concrete jungle. More than a thousand species of trees, shrubs and flowers have been planted around the town in public gardens which provide a welcome reprieve from the beach and sun.

Back in the 1960's, mass tourism arrived in Torremolinos and transformed it into one of the biggest resorts on the Costa del Sol. Look hard and you'll still find traces of a by-gone age when life was slower. In the middle of the main shopping centre there are still some of the town's original fresh fish bars, still holding their own amid pizza joints, designer boutiques and souvenir shops.

In the old part of the town, near the town hall and Casa de Cultura, the narrow cobbled streets, balconies bedecked with geraniums and tiny tapas bars give a flavour of Spanish life as it's still lived in thousands of inland Andalusian towns. The tapas bars are the places to go for delicious fresh snacks - spicy prawns, mussels, calamares, local "chorizo" sausage - at ridiculously cheap prices - makes a change from the fish and chips available everywhere nearer the beach.

Torremolinos has an excellent range of shops and besides good quality clothes, cheap leather goods, jewellery, crafts and gifts shops, and you'll find international supermarkets stocked with those items 'from home' which you simply can't go without. At the heart of the shopping centre is an attractive pedestrianised street flanked by small shops and cafes.

To the west of the town centre is the original fishermen's district of La Carihuela, where you will find some excellent seafood restaurant and a modern seafront promenade which stretches all the way to the neighbouring resort of Benalmadena.

As for entertainment.well, it's all here in Torremolinos - beach sports, water sports, golf, tennis, nightlife which includes everything from top class clubs and restaurants to raunchy late night cabarets and all night clubs.