Balmins Beach Welcomes All

Balmins Beach is an exciting time for all, as it caters toward the beach bum who wants to relax and soak up the sun as well as the active children. There are plenty of children and active games or sports to participate in on the beaches. Families enjoy a relaxing day in Sitges as parents can recover from long, fast-paced days, as children get their energy out in the water. It is highly recommended to visit as you are sure to see and meet some very interesting people.

The small bay welcomes all kinds of people and families.  Clothing or swimming trunks are not required on this beach, with many people choosing to go in their own birthday suite. In any case, it is still an experience and sure to provide a fun, warm day at the beach.

Loving Apartments have various apartment rentals in Sitges and can provide a place extremely close to the Balmins Beach. One place in particular is the Playa Balmins #1 that gives guests stunning views of the sea. There are plenty of restaurants near the apartment, but cooking in is another option as the apartment comes with a fully equipped kitchen. The spacious and contemporary rooms are bright and filled with modern furniture. The apartment can sleep a total of seven people with three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, two bathroom, a balcony, and upon arrival, a free bottle of champagne. The apartment also has access to a pool. For more information visit the Loving London website: http://www.lovingsitges.com/.

Sitges Carnival

The carnival in Sitges is a fun-filled week full of fantasy and imagination.  Nominated by the press to be one of the wildest parties in Sitges, it tops the charts of participation of Sitges.

This year, the carnival will take place in early March.  This week will be packed full of events, beginning with the arrival of the King of the Carnival at 19.15, closely followed by the arrival of the Queen of the Carnival.

With huge turn outs, Sitges can often expect more than 250,000 visitors during Carnival week.  With events beginning around 9.00 every day, the last event can expect to cease when the sun rises.  Many events during Carnival go well into the night, many not even beginning until midnight.

The Carnival ends in a religious ceremony on Ash Wednesday.  The burial procession begins usually around 19.00 and continues until around midnight.  Between the beginning and the end, visitors and locals alike will have the time of their lives.

Festivities hardly have an end when it comes to the week of Carnival, and Sitges and its residents prepare for Carnival all year long.  When it is finally here, the community never sleeps.

We hope that you’ll join us in March for the 2011 Carnival of Sitges.  Loving Sitges Apartments would love to have you stay in one of our many apartment accommodations across town during this time.  With apartments in the hub of activity and some a little further away for those who enjoy a quieter getaway, we are sure to have a location for anyone.  All of our apartments are fully furnished with a full kitchen included to serve you best.  For more information and a full list of apartments, please visit our Loving Sitges Apartments website.

Port D´Aiguadolç Brings Different Light to Sitges

Port D´Aiguadolç is a small village off the town of Sitges.  Just a 20 minute walk from downtown, and possibly a shorter distance from your Sitges apartment, Port D´Aiguadolç offers food, shopping, and sights that are just a little off the beaten path.

With more than 10 different food varieties,  the area has all kind of restaurants to offer.  Pizza, seafood, steak, and a classic café, among others, line the port, making the short scenic walk well worth it.

If you’ve already eaten and are looking to have some fun before heading back to your Sitges apartment,  Port D´Aiguadolç has 5 bars within that fit any taste.  Bars in Port D´Aiguadolç include anything from a nightclub with an in-house DJ, to a laid back lounge for you and your friends to enjoy time together.

Eating and drinking are not all the Port D´Aiguadolç has to offer, either.  Groceries, sales and mechanics, nautical schools,  painting and maintenance,and even an art gallery can be found in the Port D´Aiguadolç.

The weather and walk on the beach to get to the Port D´Aiguadolç make the attraction a must see from you Sitges apartment.

Loving Sitges Apartments has many apartments very close to Port D´Aiguadolç.  These apartments are for a range of visitors, from budget to luxury, or small to large groups.  Visit our Loving Sitges Apartments website for full listings of apartments in Sitges.

groceries, painting and maintenance, nautical schools, sales and mechanics, and even an art gallery.

Annual Events in Sitges to visit when staying in a Sitges Apartment

 

Corpus Christi in a Sitges Apartment

We will be listing annual events in Sitges very shortly

Our Favourite Restaurants in Sitges when staying at a Loving Sitges Apartment

At Loving Sitges Apartments we love the restaurants in Sitges, and so here are some of our favourites for you to try when staying in your Sitges apartment.

When spending the day on the beach, around lunchtime leave your towel on your lounger and have gourmet meal at the restaurant Picnic.   The cafe / restaurant is located on the promenade across the road from the Hotel Calipolis.  You can have a quick snack in the cafe, but for fabulous gourmet Catalan food have a long lunch on the terrace overlooking the beach.  It is very popular with locals as well as tourists so book your lunchtime table in the morning when you hit the beach.  It’s on the more expensive side so save it for a treat.

La Santa Maria Restaurant in Sitges

For a more budget lunch on a terrace, try La Santa Maria.  The huge terrace is a buzzing and busy and is great for people watching.  There is a huge menu, with a great range of seafood dishes, with huge portions, it sometimes feels like the Mediterranean has been dredges and served up to you.  The food is great value and the service can vary from fast and efficient to rather Fawlty Towers-like with food being placed on your table before ordering, and desserts arriving before main courses, but it’s all very entertaining.  The various areas of the terrace are managed by different lead waiters and they compete fiercely to seat you in their section, so if you go several times, and you sit in the same section, you may get a sneaky free beer as a reward!

If looking for somewhere that is more of an occasion, and worth dressing up for, there are 2 restaurants that stand out form the rest.  La Fragata and Maricel again are both along the seafront just at the foot of the church.  Both serve modern Catalan gourmet food at quite a price, but it is well worth it, and the food from both is superb.   Both have beautiful terraces from which you can watch other diners and passers-by in view of the church and the sea.  If the weather is inclement then the interior of La Fragata is contemporary and plush whilst still being cosy and intimate, whereas the interior of Maricel is old fashioned and lacking atmosphere.

When spending a day at Balmins beach there is La Caleta restaurant.  With a loungers for sipping a cocktail whilst you wait for your table, this is a very relaxed, chilled lunchtime venue.  Serving a great paella, and other fresh fish dishes, as well as a great range of tapas including the usual fried calamari rings, patatas bravas and bocherones, all go down well with a crisp chilled bottle of rose.

There are many more restaurants in Sitges, some great, other best avoided, but the venues mentioned here are genuinely our favourites and we thinks rather special.

Guide to Shopping for Fish to Cook for Yourself when Staying in a Sitges Holiday Apartment

When you stay in Sitges in a Sitges Holiday Apartment not only do you get to indulge in the fabulous Sitges restaurants but you also have the opportunity to wander through the Sitges Market and local shops buying succulent fresh local produce which you can prepare in your fully equipped Sitges Holiday Apartment kitchen.

The next village along from Sitges, Vilanova I La Geltru is where all the local fishing boats dock and unload thier catches, and a lot of it finds it’s way to the restaurants and shops in Sitges.  Below is a guide to the fish that you will find there, so you know the fish are, what to ask for, and what to do with it.  This guide is especially handy as the not many of the local fish-mongers speak English, so at least you will recognise the Spanish names and be able to point!

• Dorada – meaning Golden is so named because it has a golden patch just above the eyes, hence also its English name Gilthead Bream.  Very common in the shops and restaurants of Sitges served encased in salt or on a bed of potato and onion.  Easy to roast in your oven in your Sitges Holiday Apartment.
• Sardines – The small silvery fish with the same name in English, typically served up in the Tapas Bars, but easy to grill in your Sitges Holiday Apartment kitchen.
• Boquerones – Anchovies marinated in olive oil and vinegar and delicious in home prepared salads or served up with a cervesa (beer) in a locals’ bar.  They are also served up in big bunches deep fried, good for soaking up a hangover.
• Gambes – Bursting with the flavour of the sea, juicy prawns (or shrimp) are cooked ‘a la plancha’, that’s on the grill, or ‘a la brasa’ over coals or lightly fried in a little olive oil.  Get stuck in with your fingers, snap off the head, suck out the juices, then peel back the shell.
• Langostinos – A larger version of Gambes, with a more subtle taste but meatier texture.  Peel and dip into ‘alioli’ a garlic mayonaise.
• Calamars – sliced up squid, depending on how it’s cooked can be chewy rubbery and tasteless, or when cooked just right, melt in the mouth delicious.  They can be simmered with onion and potato, or as in most Tapas bars, fried in juicey cripsy batter, but beware of some bars that just deep fry from frozen!

All of the Sitges Holiday Apartments’ kitchens offered by Loving Sitges Apartments are fully equipped and a joy to cook in, so buy yourself some local produce, put your pinny on and start cooking!  It’s also a great way of saving money too, and eating out every night can all add up.

Beaches in Sitges

There are all kinds of beaches in Sitges to suit the mood you are in, from tranquil and quiet secluded, to frenetic people watching.  Here is our low-down:

Apartments overlooking the Beach

• Main Beach in front of ‘Sin Street’.  A busy family beach renting out kayak’s and pedallos with massage tent and kiosk.
• Gay Beach at the Calipolis Hotel.  Very busy, lots of posing, great for people watching.
• Quieter beaches further along towards the Teramar Hotel.  For more space and peace and quiet.
• San Sebastian Beach. Prettiest little bay, crowded in peak times but usually a little quieter than the main beach.
• Balmins Beach.  Nudest beach, mixed with families and gay men, with little kiosk bar, and great Caletta restaurant for lunch.
• Dead Mans Beach.  A gay nudest pebble beach that’s a long long way away, several people die each year trying to get there, walking through the railway tunnel instead of over the hill.

Loving Sitges Apartments have several apartments over-looking beaches, and most apartments are within a few minutes walk to the beach.

Finding the Best Sitges Holiday Accommodation

Fabulous Sea Views

Are you looking for a great apartment in Sitges?  We have created the website Loving Sitges Apartments to enable you to quickly and simply find your perfect apartment in Sitges.

Having lived in Sitges for many years we extended the technology that we built for our original Barcelona business to Sitges enabling visitors to this beautiful town an easy way to compare prices and features, check availability and see large and lots of photos.  With honest descriptions, guest testimonials and lots more features you will easily find what you are looking for.

Just some of our fantastic features:

• My List.
  Create your own list of favourite apartments and email it to yourself and your friends.
• Best Price Calender.
  Flexible with your dates?  Looking for the cheapest deal?  Use our calender to find the cheapest day to start your holiday.
• Big Group Booking Tool.
  Coming to Sitges in a big group? With our unique Big Group Booking Tool simply tell us how many are in your group, the dates you are staying, and we will instantly show you all the buildings we have with multiple apartments in, allocate your group into them, and tell you the all-inclusive price, and the price per person per night in any currency.  You can even specify people in the group will share beds and whether they will want to use sofa-beds or not.

…and we are adding more features all the time.

Beautiful Sitges holiday accommodation with a large private garden.

If all those features and information is too much for you to cope with, simply call or email us and we’ll be happy to help using our knowledge of Sitges and our apartments here.