The NYT Gets All Cinematic at Hotel Astoria7 in San Sebastián
If you were in New York at all over the weekend, you would have noticed the throngs of European tourists enjoying our thoroughly American holiday that is Black Friday—we mean Thanksgiving. To return the favor and send American tourists back their way, The New York Times profiles a European hotel—Hotel Astoria 7 in San Sebastián, Spain—in its latest Check In, Check Out review.
The first thing we learn from the Gray Lady is that while San Sebastián “may best be known for stars of the gastronomic variety,” it is also a cinematic center, and the Astoria7 is happy to indulge in this theme. A handwritten sign above the reception desk even reads, “Which star will stay with you tonight?” (If we answer, will room service send them up?)
Highlights: The hotel is just one block from the main bus terminal and close to central bars and shops. The Times enjoyed a double standard room with “a dash of 1950s-style Modernist panache” (mock-Danish midcentury modern furniture and fabric accents that “recalled the set of Mad Men. The cafeteria downstairs does “an excellent Spanish-style buffet breakfast (toast with tomato, hams of various incarnations, yogurts, fresh fruits, eggs on request)”— free with the room—while room service was cheap (16 euros) and “arrived in 14 minutes, hot and perfectly prepared.”
Lowlights: There was a sad brown banana on that room service order, but otherwise there wasn’t a whole lot to dislike. The bathroom was “sizeable though unremarkable” and the Wi-Fi “free but was faltering.” Posters of movie stars decorate the rooms, and the NYT scored Orson Welles, which the reviewer found “peculiar.” Without exactly saying this was a con, she also pointed out that the hotel is a “solid 20-minute walk from both the beach and Parte Vieja, or Old Town.”
Bottom line: “The décor is best described as kitsch,” but the Astoria7 “supplies sorely needed beds” to a city that sells out quickly during the summer and the San Sebastián International Film Festival in September. High-season doubles start at 160 euros, or about $243.
We say: How soon can we get to Spain?
[Photo: Matias Costa /The New York Times]
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