Benicàssim: The Greatest Music Festival in Europe – Exploring Benicàssim

While at FIB you’ll probably spend most of your time down by the beach. Avenue Ferrandis Salvador lines the coast with cafés, restaurants, bars, and supermarkets.

The beach stretches for a couple kilometres and it is going to be packed with festival goers, tourists, and locals – and rightly so!

The Beach

The beach is covered in beautiful golden sand with no pebbles or stones to hurt your feet. When it comes to going into the water, the sand just where the waves hit the shore is a little bit coarser than the sand on the beach; however it doesn’t hurt and is lovely to walk on.

When you get further out the sea bed is lovely and soft to stand on and altogether it is just a glorious beach. The water is fresh and salty which is good for your body and will cure any hangover you might be suffering from the previous night’s concert – which will be every day.

If you are particularly bad and didn’t get much sleep, your tent is uncomfortably hot and you are moany, then I highly recommend getting down to the beach early, sometime around 9am, and renting a pair of sun-beds and umbrella for the day.

Renting the sun-beds and shade cost €20 for the pair of beds for the day and if you manage to get a friend or partner to split it with you, it can be the best €10 you’ll spend all week, except for the triple Jaëger and Red Bull, nothing beats that!

You will find people sleeping in any area of shade they can find, whether on the beach or in the town of Benicàssim itself.

We rented out the sunbeds from around 9am-4pm and they were the most comfortable hours of sleep I’ve ever had. Sleeping during the day on a sunbed leaves you well rested for the concert that night and if you need to wake yourself up, quickly run into the sea and then head for the bus!

Food & Drink

There is a good choice of cafés to go into during the day for food and they won’t break the bank! Most of them do special FIB breakfasts and lunches so you can bag yourself a hearty meal for €6-8.

A lot of them are the same however there is one restaurant, San Luis, you’ll find it on the map below, and it does fantastic Italian food for meat eaters and vegetarians alike.

We went there twice, once at night time and then once during the day. We enjoyed our experience during the night time better because the waiters and waitresses forgot some of our orders when we went during the day.

I can understand, working in that heat with a packed restaurant can be really challenging so I wasn’t too pushed, however if you are going to go, I would recommend the night time, probably the day or two before the festival officially starts if you are there – the food is delicious and it really won’t break the bank! Plus the beer is cheaper than the water, so…

Directly beside and above San Luis are two amazing cocktail bars. The first cocktail bar is Lounge San Luis. I think for locals this place would be considered to be a nice cocktail bar to go to that would be a little bit more expensive than the norm but worth it.

However coming from Dublin, Ireland where alcohol prices are ridiculous, the price was pretty standard, but you get so much more bang for your buck here than I do back home! The prices for the main cocktails were around €7/8 and didn’t get much more expensive than that.

The cocktails here were simply fantastic. The strawberry daiquiris were rich in both alcohol and strawberries; the sex on the beach was light, sweet, and again full of alcohol.

However my favourite was the mojito. I am a massive fan of mojitos and the ones available here were simply divine.

The second cocktail bar I would recommend is Ummo Beach bar which is right across the street. This place has a very open feel to it with cushioned lounge areas big enough to seat a party of five or so people.

The bar serves Shisha and has a Jägermeister mojito which is amazing! I would highly recommend going here, getting some Shisha between a group of friends, ordering some drinks and chilling out! It is the ultimate chill out spot during the night time after a meal! Again the prices were around €7 which is cheap for the standard of cocktail you are getting!

A word on ATMs..

When it comes to ATMs there is one located right beside Ummo Beach bar but it is not reliable as it can go out of service regularly enough! Other than that the only other ATM is in Hotel Orange, a ten minute walk away! However in Benicàssim town there are plenty of ATMs

Benicàssim Town

I didn’t spend much of my time in Benicàssim town to be honest. We went to the Supermarket a couple times and on our last day we went walking through it but other than that we didn’t spend much time there.

It is a pleasant, quiet town in general. The main streets are lined with what appear to be really nice restaurants and bars. There are around 3/4 ATMs here as well, so getting money out isn’t a hassle!

If I was renting out an apartment in Benicàssim town then I would be happy out because it is a genuinely nice town. But I still think that I would spend most of my time down at the coast by the beach!

There is the Aquarama waterpark right beside FIB’s arena, however depending on the restrictions you might have to walk through Benicàssim town first and then walk to the Aquarama which can be twenty minutes. So while it might look right beside you, you’ll have to walk a while.

The waterpark is just another great way to relax during the festival! The swimming pools are lovely and the rides are fun! You definitely have to go on the pink waterslide – it’s the biggest one there so you can’t miss it – it is awesome!

The general ticket is €23 and it is worth it for the day! It will be busy however so do expect to have to wait for some rides and the pools to be busy! I recommend doing all the rides you want to do as early as possible because around 2pm it gets very busy!

Pro-tip if you are going to Aquarama then pre-book your tickets, it will save you having to stand in a massive queue. If you’re not sure what day you are going then have at least one person bring a mobile phone who can buy all of you tickets online and then avoid the whole ticket queue – that’s what we did and it was awesome!

There is also a go-karting track practically inside FIB arena site. We didn’t do it but it looked like fun – sold cheap beer too!

Go out and explore Benicàssim town and the beach. If you are going for the whole week then you will have plenty of time to explore. If you are down by the coast enjoy the restaurants and bars mentioned above because they are awesome!

This was the final part in the FIB series. If you have missed out on any of the stories you can find them all under the FIB tag!