Spending a week alone in a hotel is fairly daunting, and so I selected my accommodation carefully.
I decided my priorities would be:
1. Safety – a large hotel in town, manned reception 24 hours and near the town’s facilities.
2. Swimming pool – Spain is hot in September and the idea of a dip on hand was more attractive than having to go off to the beach.
3. Dining facilities – in case I didn’t want to wander out alone at night to find food. In the end I never ate at the hotel at all.
4. High standard of accommodation – I didn’t want a mean, noisy or dirty room.
So what was my experience?
1. The room itself was excellent. Smallish, but it had everything I needed including a very comfortable bed, TV, great sized en suite with bath and powerful shower, free washing items and dressing gown to use, and a safe in the room. It was wonderfully quiet (facing a courtyard) and although the safe stopped working three times, a member of staff fixed it cheerfully each time.
2. The location was also great. A few minutes walk took me to a main square (Conception) with bars, restaurants and shopping streets all around. As the food was expensive in the hotel and the ambience formal and off-putting, it was easy to pop out for all meals, especially evenings as the Spanish are around until late each night.
3. The staff were helpful and there is a taxi rank just outside, so printing my boarding pass, calling a cab at 5 am and getting help at any time were all easy.
What took the rating down were:
a. The very late room cleaning – often not done at 3 pm or so when I got back from sightseeing, so that they tried to come in when I was resting late afternoon.
b. Constant lack of tea or milk packs – I had to ask regularly for a top-up.
c. The pool. It was quite horrible. Considering this is meant to be a 5 star hotel, they had squeezed in seating in a very small, cramped area with NOT ENOUGH SEATS and no umbrellas. Many of us were perched in the boiling heat on beanbags!!! Both ladders into the pool were badly fixed and wobbled horribly. And again, the atmosphere was stilted and unfriendly – a little lady would scuttle out to serve the odd cocktail but it was not a place to linger and lounge.
