Hotel Canada (Hotels in Barcelona in general)

Member Name: sy2kgbr

Product:	Hotels in Barcelona in general
Date:	10/07/01 (400 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Swimming pool, air con, close to beach, helpful staff.

Disadvantages: The cleaners, the food, the non English speaking staff.

On my recent holiday to Spain, I stayed at the Hotel Canada in Barcelona. It's marked as four stars and on entering, it definitely gives the impression that it is. It's tastefully decorated inside, there's a lovely spiral staircase to your left and if you look straight ahead you can see sliding glass doors opening out to a swimming pool complete with palm trees to its right.

As I said, it gives the impression that it's four stars.

The rooms are all the same size, irregardless how many beds have been put in. Each room comes with a colour tv as standard that gives you access to various Spanish channels. If you want a remote control, you have to put a deposit down at reception. (This means communicating with the people there. How good's your Spanish?) The bathroom comes with a powershower that works best when handheld. For some worrying reason, if you want to create a couple of shelves for your shower products, then you tilt a glass panel that looks into a dark area. This space in fact leads to someone else's bathroom. If both rooms have the glass moved, anyone can see in or out. Creepy.

Some of the rooms have small balconies complete with a couple of chairs and a table. These balconies overlook the swimming pool - if you're on the other side of the hotel you just get a window overlooking a car park.

The two major plus points to the hotel is the swimming pool and the functional air conditioning in the rooms. The two areas of concern are the cleaners and the food.

The swimming pool is deep enough in places for you to dive into, and there is a small area sectioned off that can be used as a paddling pool for younger children. Simply put, it's like a jacuzzi minus the bubbles. The hotter the weather gets, the more the temperature of the water is lowered. Nice.

Like most hotels, the air con requires the key card to be left in the room. This is so you can't use it when you're out of
the room. Like most hotels, all you need is any other card. Ahem.

Anyway, back to the bad points. The cleaners and the food.

The food looks British, but it just tastes weird. The kitchen staff have obviously tried to recreate the home cuisine of the people bringing in the most money, but it hasn't worked. This isn't because they're bad at cooking, it's because they've used Spanish products. The meat there is quite disgusting. I'm backing British meat anyday.

Now, as for the cleaners. They pick up your stuff, throw it around the room, hide it under beds, bung it in drawers and they get their kicks by scattering a big bucket of sand in random places. If I knew the Spanish for "Go away! Please!" then I would have written it on the room door.

Like most English people, Spanish people only speak their native language and expect everyone else to understand them. In Spain, pointing at pictures is a good way of communication between tourists and natives. The same applies for Hotel Canada, although more complicated pictures are probably needed for "Help help I lost my room key." Interestingly enough, the person looking after reception when I was there spoke Spanish and French. Luckily for me I've got a basic grasp of French. At another time of the day there was a different guy there who spoke Spanish and English. You really have to time these things.

So, four stars or not?

Well, I would go back to Hotel Canada, but I'd probably refrain from eating there. I'd also ask the English speaking guy to keep the cleaners out of the room. The food can't be helped because of the country that the raw materials are produced in, but the cleaners are a nightmare. They're the only factor that's really keeping my rating down.

Summary: