The location was excellent, the rooms were clean, the breakfasts tasty, the bed was comfortable, the refrigerator was stocked, and the TV worked just fine. So what was the problem? The problem was that the placed has been “modernized,” in the worst sense of the word.
There was, for example, a bewildering array of a half-dozen light switch options – bienvenido, trabajo, tenue, lectura, relax, y dormir. All we wanted was a single switch for “on” and “off”! And as if that weren’t bad enough, some of those switches also controlled the bathroom lights, so in turning off a room light you could also accidentally turn off the bathroom lights while someone was in the shower (which happened to us).
By far the worst two problems were with the a) night light, and b) air conditioning.
Our room had a "modernized" night light that was high up on the wall and so BRIGHT that you could actually READ by its light!!! It lit up the whole room. When I asked the hotel staff for help so we could sleep, they refused to do anything, merely stating the interrogation light...uh, I mean "night light" was obligatory.
The thermostat was so “modern” that it took us a long time to finally figure out how to make it run. Then, when it did run, it didn’t work – it was cooler outside than it was in our hot room. The front desk clerk neither believed me (we had the conversation in Spanish) nor asked anyone to fix it until the next day.
There were other minor difficulties associated with the “modernization” process. Neither of our key cards worked, so we had to leave our luggage outside the door, return to the front desk, and have them reprogrammed. Also, in the small bathrooms, while the shower was nice and warm, the handle that controlled which shower head to use was tricky: if you pushed it forward, hot water came out of the top showerhead. If you pulled the handle back to neutral, it turned it off; but if you pulled back just a teeny bit too far, very COLD water came spraying out of the OTHER shower spout.
Also, the hotel doesn’t carry electricity convertors. We traveled with one that we had used in several different countries, but the wall sockets in Spain have a round recess (our convertor worked on flat wall sockets), so we couldn’t plug ours in. We asked for one on loan - at least until the next day, as it was Sunday and all the stores were closed. But they wouldn't do that.
Individually, no one item was too bad. Collectively, however, they added up to one thing: annoying. Thus, given the fact that we were paying money for a hotel where we did not want to be kept awake by a bright night light and instead wanted to relax, sleep, shower easily, have a working thermostat, flick the lights on and off, and plug in our electrical appliances, we were disappointed. This was the worst hotel we stayed in during our two-week trip to Spain.
