We had a wond erful (quick!) weekend in Canet d’en Berenguer, a small Spanish municipality along the beach near Valencia/Castellón, Spain. This was our third time visiting a suburb of Valencia, although our family ironically has never visited Valencia City itself. We’ve spent long beach weekends in Denía and Javéa, both by the Mediterranean along the coast of Valencia. While these are beautiful areas of Spain all worth a visit, we all agree we prefer other areas of Spain’s beaches, like most of their islands or southern/northern Spain. Still, we’re always grateful for a new experience in Spain.

It was our last niece/nephew on my sister’s side of the family to graduate from high school so we kept the tradition alive of taking them on a trip as their present. This was a tradition that we started back years ago with our oldest niece graduating. Since our family focuses on experiences more than things, it’s been fun to explore a new area of the world with them (and it’s their choice!) With our family having chosen to move to Spain, it was an easy choice for the last two to visit Spain. Maggie, our youngest niece, is a big fan of the beach, so we enjoyed sneaking out of cold, rainy Madrid in April for her to experience the Spanish beach lifestyle.

The Area

Canet d’en Buerenger is a cute little town offering lots of shoppes, restaurants, pathways, trails and entertainment. What we liked about this town compared to where we’ve visited in other Valencia beach towns is how simple and quiet it was. This town has beautiful beach views but it also had way less people and less traffic. We really liked how it was more natural, with lots of trees and trails for bikers, too. 

The Food

We wanted our niece to experience authentic Spanish food at the beach so we chose Restaurante Arrocería La Del Pulpo. Don’t be fooled by this restaurant not being located on the beach and being attached to a gas station: they had great food and it was easy to walk in without a reservation. We had great vegetarian paella there, along with calamari, whole fish Dorada and shrimp. We also had delicious gelato at Dessyrella and stopped in the morning for tostas con jamón at Restaurante Jesús Gor.

The Dog-Friendly Beach

There were great beaches in the area there but our favorite having brought our Nacho (our Cocker/Brittany Spaniel) were the dog-friendly choices. You could tell that many of the rocky beaches were perfect for dogs and they even had dogs off leash, playing with each other. Nacho loved it! It had us excited for our future beach life. 

We’re so grateful that we got to spend this whirlwind trip to the beach with Maggie and as a family. What a gift it is to us to share our love of Spain with our American family!