Costa Blanca is the name given to Alicante's coastline in Spain, which stretches over 200 kilometres. It is an incredibly popular holiday destination for tourists from the UK, because of the marvellous weather and beaches, and low-price flights have been operating to the region since the late 1950s! Costa Blanca is both UK friendly and family friendly, thanks to the huge range of activities available there from beaches and golf to museums and parks. It's the perfect area to take a large family, find holiday rentals, usually villas, and relax for a week or two in the sun with plenty of space for the children to run around.

You can do just about anything you can think of in Costa Blanca, which is why it's so great for kids. Obviosuly 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.

Rightly or wrongly, the British don't always have the greatest reputation for their behaviour while holidaying in Spain, so a lovely rural villa will give you the advantages of greater privacy, a large amount of space for the kids to run around, most often a private pool, and also a degree of separation from any of those lager lout types you may have seen on documentaries. That may be unfair, but it has to be said that when you do go to a popular tourist area, it's good to be staying somewhere just a little off the beaten track, and holiday rental villas enable you to just that. The same is true of rented apartments in towns such as Alicante, and both options are certainly a lot cheaper and a lot more fun than checking into a tourist hotel with a full English menu. Go for holiday rentals, and get a taste of the real Spanish lifestyle.