After Huesca we drove south to the coast of Spain, to the beach side resort town of Salou. Salou is just south of Tarragona and about an hour and a half south of Barcelona.
We when booked accommodation in this area, we were looking for a family friendly resort that was close to the beach and La Siesta Salou Camping Resort turned out to be perfect! Just what we were hoping for.
Salou is home to a large theme park / water park called Port Adventura and it had a similar vibe to Surfer Paradise on the Gold Coast in Australia. Very much orientated towards either tourists or retirees. But we didn’t mind, all we wanted to do was enjoy the sunshine, the beach and the pools of the resort - we had some fantastic weather for it too, although the day that we arrived there was a huge downpour and the roads were nearly flooded as we arrived into Salou.
We had three full days in Salou and the first day happened to coincide with when my sister, Claire was going to be in Barcelona as part of a work trip. We made plans to drive up towards Barcelona and then park at an outlet mall near the airport where we then caught the train into the main train station of Barcelona. Claire was conveniently staying in a hotel above the train station.
It was great to see her and catch up over lunch, but we decide to head back to the resort for the afternoon to make the most of the pools and the hot weather, rather than explore Barcelona. Do I regret not seeing more of Barcelona when we had the opportunity? Maybe a little. The kids definitely had more fun swimming but in hindsight perhaps I could have spent the afternoon in Barcelona with Claire, while Braino took the kids back and I could have made my way back later in the afternoon. But to be honest, Claire had already seen a lot of Barcelona on previous holidays and my brain was in relaxation mode.
La Siesta Salou Camping Resort had camping, caravan and cabin facilities with five different pools, a playground, a kids club, restaurants. It was only two blocks back from the beach. The pools were amazing, we had a lot of fun swimming in them all together. Hallie especially loved the waterslides. We were staying in a little holiday cabin so we bought groceries and cooked a lot of our meals in our cabin. We did eat at the buffet on the first day but we found that the buffet was rather expensive if your kids don’t tend to eat much.
There was a family of kittens that roamed the area around the cabins. They looked quite healthy and were very friendly, Rooney loved playing with them. They did get a bit too cheeky and tired to come inside our cabin on a few occasions.
The beach of Salou was amazing! On one of the days the weather was absolutely perfect, we spent close to 4 hours at the beach! We got the girls a little inflatable board to ride the waves on, which they loved. The waves and the water temp were perfect for the kids, I stayed in the water myself for hours which is quite rare.
