NeilF135
Couples · October 20256/10
With my Partner, spending 10 days at this hotel is a fair time. Review comments here are those starting with the balconies on our 8th floor room. Usually the view and environment on balconies are very...With my Partner, spending 10 days at this hotel is a fair time. Review comments here are those starting with the balconies on our 8th floor room. Usually the view and environment on balconies are very enjoyable. Alas here the quality of the air on the balconies was very poor which resulted in this facility being a waste of money.
The reasons are that the hotel is located within a "rabbit warren" of a considerable number of very narrow streets and passageways with cars being prevented from travel.
Numerous eating establishments are situated along all the main and side streets. The buildings are about 5 stories high. Almost every eating establishment has a large extractor pipe going to the roof. Thus the air on our balcony smelt of curry/cannibas/numerous cooking oils/bar b-q /burning food and other unpleasant odours. Very little wind was available.
Visible were probably 50 plus chimneys across the whole nearby horizon.
Access to the Hotel is very difficult by car, but Google STREET VIEW on the street opposite to the Hotel shows check-in parking exclusively for the Hotel. Their car park is around the back. With residents parking only locally, the €140 additional cost to our hotel bill was a shocker. We were not previously advised.
I would recomment a genuine TomTom GPS and not a google maps app to get high accuracy, with so many narrow streets making Google GPS reception very difficult.
Lots of streets are only 3 metres wide with no pavements or kerb stones, but with flat cobble stones. Some SUV cars are so wide that they almost touch pedestrians, squeezed flat to the adjacent buildings. Watch your feet at all times.
With so many bollards in the streets/passages. the road traffic is full of automatic transmission motor scooters and bikes or electric scooters. Not pleasant to walk through with urine odours also.
On a positive side, diretly opposite the Hotel entrance 20 paces or so is a Carrefour Express supermarket with normal prices. Very handy for water and snacks.
Studying a printed form in the restaurant entrance revealed that lots of small coach/air parties (but not hen or stag parties) . Notices indicated that with the narrow streets, it is not possible to bring normal sized coaches to the Hotel, but a 16 or so seater type of transit minicoach would take clients some 250 metres to their transport.
Our room comprised two parts with sliding doors for a large lounge/sofa bed to a bedroom/bathroom area. The woodwork was a little tired and some wall paintwork damage was visible.
For a 4 star establishment we expected tea and coffee facilities to be include with an iron and board.
The safety deposit box is alas payable.
For us the most important aspect of a holiday is the quality and range of food.
A wide range of dishes were available but on the central hot area, were only 7 dishes and vegetables were available.. The cold salad and sweets area had frost/snow surfaces indicated a super effective chiller system.
Also strange that traditional Spanish dishes were mostly lacking with lots of pasta and chicken nuggets and chips (also available at breakfast) and pizza.
It was very clear during our varying restaurant dining times that some of the coach parties had instructions to only appear after 8:30, when several dozen clients would occupy the remaining tables.
The Hotel caters for clients from nearby Barcelona and also France. French or a version of French could be heard everywhere.
Noises:- Unfortunately, it was possible to hear people in the upstairs (9th floor) bedroom, walking or "clomping" about.Similarly the use of water from an adjacent room was exceedingly noisy. Then cleaning staff would move lots of furniture preventing morning sleep.
Within the restaurant, it was strange with the "baine-maries" that the electric were hot or very hot but the contents such as chips were cold or luke warm.
It was noticeable that the Hotel has a Policy of "When its gone - its gone", with replacements of hot or cold sweets not being replaced.
It goes without saying that the French or Germans did not queue at reception or the restaurant but insisted on "pushing in Front". Only some Spanish Clients who were also trying to push in front were politely told to join the end of the queue.
During our stay, various problems were reported to the Reception.
The telephone did not work displaying "Emergency Calls Only".
The Toilet Sisten would randomly continuous run without stopping - making timing of usage very tricky !
Strange that on the 8th floor in our bathroom, we were visited by Cockroaches during the night.
Some other Good News was that the room airconditioning work a treat.
Remember to keep the second swipe card in the front room door slot to keep the refridgeration in the minibar on.
My Partner had a detailed meeting with the Hotel Manager over our concerns but no compensations were offered, as in cashback.
Suggestion - do not go All-Inclusive as it is not worth the money.
We had room 805.Show More
