My fiance and I visited Pescara for a 4-day break during July 06. Pescara is a fantistic beach holiday with mile upon mile of golden sand and a calm sea. The weather is great, it was 28-35 C every day and there is low humidity.

The best thing about Pescara is that it has not been ruined by tourism. The beaches are full of itallians on thier summer vacation. Nothing like some tourist filled resorts in Europe with packed beaches, bars filled with louts, restaurants serving full english breakfasts etc - you know what I mean. Pescara is a classy holiday destination and I hope it stays this way. You may want to brush up on you italian lingo before you go or do what I did and take a lady that can speak itallian. English is not widely spoken there.

We stayed at the Hotel Esplande which is easily the best hotel in Pescara - not cheap tho. We booked flights with Ryan Air and the hotel directly. Esplande is a 4* hotel and is right on the sea front. It is close to all the bars, restaurants and is across the road from a fantastic beach.

Our hotel room was great and it even had a seperate TV room where we dumped our luggage and clothes. Our continental breakfast was served in the roof-top restaurant with great views of the sea. I beleive it is worth while paying a little extra and the Espanade is definetly good value for money.

The only downside is that there is not much to do in Pescara. This is a holiday destination where you spend long days on the beach and relax in the evening with a nice meal and fine wine. This brings me nicely onto my favourite topic: food!!!!!! The food in Pescara was great!! - what else would you expect from italy?

The first restaurant that I would recommend is called La Sirienta (not sure about spelling). Walk out of Esplanade, cross the main road onto the beach side and walk towards the right - it's about 10 meters down. The pizzas and pasta dishes are fantastic and it's great value for money. We ordered the local house wine and that was great too!. Why pay silly prices for fancy food when you can have great simple food and fantastic local wine for a few quid? The food was so good we ate there on 2 nights of the 4 we were in Pescara!

The second restaurant I would recommend is called La Morales (not sure about spelling again!). This is an amazing 'manic' seafood restaurant full of locals. If you like sea food (like me) you will love this restaurant. I can just picture Rick Stein goin on about the food they serve in one of his cookery programmes. This restaurant is on the opposide side of the road from La Sirienta but alot further down (about 15 mins walk).

Just ask the hotel reception desk for directions to the restaurants. However, we didn't find the reception desk very helpful. They were not rude or anything, just a little quite and discrete.

Pescara is an great destination for a short break.

This hotel was so good that I was motivated to write my first trip advisor review. This hotel has fantastic service in its roof top restaurant that would not be out of place in a gordon ramsay restauraunt (although others may disagree, I found the waiters incredibley attentive and friendly, even if the food was of good rather than excellent quality). The decor was amazing with pluch flock wall paper and amazing vintage furnishing. The bed was soft and the comfiest that we had on our two week trip to Croatia and Italy. We had a brilliant sea view with our own balcony overlooking the sea front. If you dont believe us, check out hte Time Out review page on google , which sates that Esplanade is the best hotel in Pescara. Also, even though Pescara is a bit of a dump we found the shopping there excellent and the people amongst the friendliest we had ever met.

The Esplanade Hotel is one of the more traditionally styled hotels in Pescara and certainly the attractive exterior harks back to a time of elegance and style. The staff are friendly (with reasonable English skills for those linguistically challenged in Italian!) and helpful (a faulty shower head was replaced quickly without fuss) and housekeeping reached a high standard. Breakfast was nice with ample croissants, cakes, cereals, etc, although the hot buffet might be found a little wanting to English tastes.

Unfortunately the rooms were small and ours was, frankly, dreary. Grey flock wall paper, turquoise mock suede, a lack of pictures and chipped paint gave an impression of a rather utilitarian B&B stuck in a 1980's timewarp. The corridors are also far from inspiring (but at least they had pictures!). However, you may be luckier - we got a glimpse into one of the other rooms which seemed to have been refurbished to a better standard.

Our other gripe was that the hotel does not have a private beach as was advertised. This was disappointing as it had been a major factor in choosing the Esplanade. However, it is in an excellent seafront location opposite a public beach and has a special arrangement with an adjacent private beach to offer guests a discount on sunlounger/parasol rental.

Overall a nice hotel in a really excellent, central location, which seems to be as good as Pescara has to offer - it just isn't my idea of 4 star. Think of it more as an average 3 star and you shouldn't be disappointed.