HotelChatter Flickr Group member Pine Nut dropped this photo in our pool of room 402 inside the Hotel Covadonga in Barcelona, along with this note about the hotel:
Quiet hotel. Absolutely spotless and excellent staff. Good breakfast although the coffee is awful. No bathrobe.
Now it could be the lighting but that place looks severe, cold and unwelcoming. It actually looks just like what we imagined the nun's lodging for the Super Bowl would look like.
Monica Guy, our own younger, blonder, more attractive but still curmudgeonly version of Andy Rooney has returned yet again. This time, she's giving us the lowdown on the Barcelona hotel scene. Enjoy.
The hippest hotel you've never heard of in Barcelona is the 124-room Casanova, love-child of the concept designer Samir Saab.
Saab's a funny character. His La Pleta Hotel in the Spanish Pyrenees is apparently a favourite of both the stern Spanish King Juan Carlos and the rather less stern Victoria Beckham. So we're on tenterhooks to know what to expect in this one.
The Casanova was there before - the building's been there since the 18th century - but Saab's come in to give the place a make-over. He's ripped up all the carpets, thrown anything soft or fluffy out of the window, spray-painted the floors, walls and furniture with shiny brown and black wood-polish and hired a complement of young, attractive, gel-haired, tight-assed staff to lure in the trendy crowd.
Monica Guy, our own younger, blonder, more attractive but still curmudgeonly version of Andy Rooney has returned yet again. This time, she's giving us the lowdown on the Barcelona hotel scene. Enjoy.
All this talk about a room with a view. Here's a challenge: find a hotel with a view as gobsmackingly stunningly superb as that of the hotel Abat Cisneros in Montserrat, near Barcelona.
The hotel itself is a rather standard 3-star affair. Apart from a fairly cosy 16th-century stone-vaulted restaurant there's very little to say about it. But there's an awful lot to say about the view.
Monica Guy, our own younger, blonder, more attractive but still curmudgeonly version of Andy Rooney has returned yet again. This time, she's giving us the lowdown on the Barcelona hotel scene. Enjoy.
Barcelona's Gothic Quarter.
We don't mean rubbish lovers, of course. Or people who love budgets. We don't think much of either. We mean lovers on a budget.
Because why assume that all lovers are loaded? Ours never are. Seduction's easy when you're rich. Ask the guy in Pretty Woman. But try making love while you're counting your pennies.
So keep the romance and your dollars by staying at El Jardí, the best budget hotel for lovers in Barcelona for lovers.
Monica Guy, our own younger, blonder, more attractive but still curmudgeonly version of Andy Rooney has returned yet again. This time, she's giving us the lowdown on the Barcelona hotel scene. Enjoy.
We were going to tell you all about the Hotel Arts, the most extravagant, ridiculous, luxury hotel in Barcelona. As everyone knows.
But we're sorry to announce that our Barcelona hotel snoop got hit by the prices while enjoying a G&T at their bar, and is currently in a critical condition in hospital. Our prayers are with her.
The Arts charges €475 ($700) for the cheapest room with the ugliest views. Enough to knock anyone out. €12,000 ($17,600) for a Royal Suite. Bet if it got out that the Spanish royal family stayed there regularly, there'd be a revolution.
So here instead, on a silver tray, we offer you one of the newest, shiniest pearls of the Barcelona hotel scene: the Hotel Banys Orientals.
Monica Guy, our own younger, blonder, more attractive but still curmudgeonly version of Andy Rooney has returned yet again. This time, she's giving us the lowdown on the Barcelona hotel scene. Enjoy.
The Barceloneta
Barcelona is the most butt-smackingly beautiful, hip, trendy city in Europe. Possibly in the world. Also the most hyped. But for a reason. If you haven't been there, go now. If you already have, go again. The city's growing, changing, evolving, faster than its ridiculous Sagrada Familia cathedral by Gaudí.
And if Barcelona is the place to be seen, you want to be seen staying in the right places...
Once again, HotelChatter flies to the rescue, with your top handy hints on what's caliente and what's plain frio in Barcelona's hotel scene. We'll follow on tomorrow with individual reviews.
If you're mixing with the wealthy holiday makers at the Ritz-Carlton owned Hotel Arts in Barcelona, then it's right that you have a view that suits a wealthy holiday maker. Like this one that shows you yachts--a lot of yachts.
The Hotel Arts is located right on the Mediterranean Sea at Port Olimpic and it's probably the ultimate in seaside living in Barcelona. With views like this it's a good alternative to staying in the arguably more atmospheric downtown areas along La Rambla. Like much of Barcelona, it operates on a truly 24-hour basis, plus it's got a great spa on the 42nd and 43rd floors, and this offers the same brilliant marina view.
If you're hip enough to head to Barcelona (and let us tell you, according to some people that means pretty hip), then you're probably up for staying at the "newly re-fashioned hip and elegant" Casanova Hotel, along with the other "chic trendsetters and savvy urbanites who flock to Barcelona".
The opening-in-November Casanova is also proud of its many "firsts". Not only is it the first hotel in Barcelona to include solar panels, it's also the first with an indoor and outdoor garden spa, the first with an on-site choreographer who changes the restaurant theme and decor every month, and it's the first with a hotel restaurant offering Mexican-Catalan-Mediterranean fusion cuisine.
Despite sounding more than a bit too proud of its new self, the Casanova Hotel is worth a look. Rack rates start around $458 but they have a reopening special price of $190 per night in a double room, available for stays until March 2008.
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by juliana
