La Siesta

La Siesta is the reason Javea’s locals will tell you, with a straight face, that the best beach day in town is not on a beach. The club spreads its Balinese beds, hammocks and low tables along the Primer Montañar, the shelf of pale fossil rock that runs between the old fishing port and the sandy Arenal bay, and it has been doing it long enough to earn a spot on a Forbes list of the best chiringuitos in Spain. The water in front is the deep, glassy blue the Montañar is famous for, and the whole place runs on a bohemian rhythm that no purpose built venue on this coast has managed to copy.

On the Costa Blanca club directory we rank it first, and the reason is simple: everywhere else on this coastline you choose between a proper kitchen, a proper scene and a proper swim. La Siesta is the only address that delivers all three within ten steps of your bed.

The club’s own feed calls its mornings blue, calm and silent, and for once the marketing is accurate. Turn up at opening and you get coffee over flat water, early swimmers doing lengths off the rock, and first pick of the beds before the sun finds them. That morning window is also the tactical one, because with no reservations the beds are a land grab, and in July and August the regulars have colonised the front line before you have finished breakfast. Midday is long lunches and slow service in the best sense, plates arriving to the bed while the Mediterranean does its work a metre below you.

Then comes the shift that defines the place. From Wednesday to Sunday the volume starts climbing at 4pm for the tardeo, the Valencian art of beginning the night while the sun is still up, and by golden hour the crowd has doubled, the cocktail shakers barely stop and the DJ is playing to people dancing between the tables. At 11pm on a summer Saturday it is a party with the lights of the port strung along the water behind it. The kitchen holds its own through all of it, a long menu that runs from breakfast eggs to late dinner, though reviews are honest that on packed evenings consistency can wobble as the bar takes over the show.

The shortfall is built into the setting. There is no sand here, the shore is a flat stone shelf, entry to the water is a step or a ladder rather than a wade, and anyone with small children or unsteady footing will find the Arenal ten minutes away far easier. And the no reservations rule cuts both ways: democratic, but merciless if you stroll up at noon in August expecting a bed.

The Montañar is Javea’s local secret hiding in plain sight: a couple of kilometres of low fossil stone where residents lay their towels flat on the rock and swim in water that gets deep and clear within a few strokes. It never builds the crowds of a sandy bay because it never looks like one from the road. Bring swim shoes, claim a flat slab, and you have the town’s best swimming for free either side of the club. For soft sand and shallow water, the horseshoe of the Arenal is a short drive south along the same avenue.

La Siesta fronts the Avenida del Mediterraneo, the seafront road linking Javea’s port with the Arenal, and street parking along the avenue is the usual game: easy in June, a patient loop or two in August, so early arrival solves the bed and the car in one move. There is no booking system to outsmart. The club takes no reservations for the beds, the phone number on its site is for the restaurant side, and the only currencies that matter are your arrival time and your bar tab.

What we can do is ask on your behalf: leave your date and how many you are in the form below and we will contact La Siesta about table availability, any VIP bottle terms for that week and how early the beds have been going, then send you the answers for nothing.