Ciao review formatting seems tottally screwed, sort it out guys its making it hard to read anything
Ciao review formatting seems tottally screwed, sort it out guys its making it hard to read anything
Member since:29.08.2002
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As I'm sure some of you will be aware, I was in Barcelona for a long weekend to celebrate my 21st birthday, well one of the most important things, after booking your flights is finding a place to stay. And as one of the guys we were going with is at Uni, we needed to find something reasonable but cheap for the 4 nights we would be staying there. Well that's where the Hostal Lami comes in. Not exactly a Hostel more of a cheap hotel a bit like our Travel Lodge.
Booking & Pricing ***************
Obviously when we decided to go to Barcelona a couple of months ago we needed a decent place to stay so by chance having bought the flights through Opodo.co.uk there was a small advert for a hotel at just €38. That works out at roughly £25 a night, which when you consider hotels right in the centre were about €138 a night that’s really quite good value. Of course you have to add on top of that 7% local tax for the entirety of your stay but that’s something that applies to all hotels.
But what did our €38 get us, well from the description on the website we were expecting single rooms. However when we actually got there it turned out that we had actually got twin rooms and ended up with 4 twin rooms and 4 people. So obviously not the best thing but at least we ended up with a big room for the duration of our stay and if we ever go back we know not to book as many. Along with the description on Opodo not being quite right, other disadvantages are that the room price doesn’t include breakfast, however I’ll get
onto that in a bit.
The rooms are easy enough to book just give Opodo your details and how many rooms you need and they will do the rest, confirming it within an e-mail. The only major problem we found with booking at the hotel, was that anymore than 3 rooms was considered a group booking, and they wouldn’t take it, so we had to book the rooms in 2 sets of 2, meaning 2 of us were on the second floor and the other 2 on the fifth floor.
Of course not everyone has the same room requirements as we did so here are the prices for all types of room and also if you have your car the price for the car park. This price doesn’t include the 7% tax. And the £ side of it is worked out on an exchange rate of about €1.5 to the £1.
First tip straight away if your not sure where the hotel is get a Taxi, we almost got the bus into the Centre, where we would have found that the hotel was about as far away from there as it was from the Airport. Instead we grabbed a Taxi, who didn’t know where the hotel actually was but we got there. The trip cost us about €17, which included a supplement for our bags.
Straight away you will notice that security is fairly tight here, you have to get reception to buzz you in before you can enter. And again when you want to go out you need to be buzzed. Reception is pretty standard with a few sofas a check in desk, which is manned 24 hours a day and the one thing I was most grateful for all weekend, a vending machine that sold 1.5lt bottles of water.
Check in again is fairly simple give reception your name and passport and you will be handed back the key to your room and the remote control for your TV. We paid our bill for the weekend up front so that meant I could lock my credit card away in the safe, so I couldn’t spend too much more money on it. The safe is kept in Reception but they give you a receipt for everything so there’s no fear of anyone else running away with your valuables.
Every time you leave the hotel you leave your Key behind reception, and just ask for it when you come back in, again they give you a card with the address and your room number on it, which is easy to keep with you. This saved us a lot of problems as no doubt one of us would have lost our key somewhere and been stuck without any clothes, which makes this a very good thing in my view.
As for disabled access, well the front door has a ramp up to it instead of steps, as it’s only a matter of cm above the pavement. And the lift, which whilst hung over on the Saturday morning caused a little laughter as Michael pointed out that, and this is quite a bad joke, it was “Schindler’s” Lift. Although for some reason it still makes all of us laugh, sad I know, but we were hung over.
Apparently there was a canteen somewhere in the hotel for those that wanted breakfast but we never found it and weren’t told where it was, not that we had any need to use it, but it is there, apparently on the 6th Floor.
The Room *********
Well as this was going to be my home for four days it really was quite important that it was comfortable and had the features that were needed. The hotel had 75 rooms and all the twin rooms were exactly the same. As you walk in to the room there’s a short corridor, with an en-suite bathroom on the right, before you get to the main part of the room. The en-suite has pretty much all you’ll need a toilet, sink and a reasonably sized shower, which certainly worked wonders on me when I woke up each morning.
The actual room itself, well its reasonably sized with a huge wardrobe, which runs half the length of the room, although I didn’t really use it. A desk with the small portable TV on, which had about 14 Spanish channels and BBC world Service on, kept us entertained while we waited on people getting up. The two beds were pushed together and made for plenty of room to get comfortable every night.
However I think the best feature of my room, on the 5th floor, had to be the view. Straight through between two buildings on the opposite side of the street you could see for miles. It also came complete with a blackout shutter, which closed out the noise on the street below. Also in each room was a phone, linked to reception, where they could put you through to any other room you wanted or give you an outside line.
All in all there really were no faults with the rooms, they were cleaned daily, with fresh towels and bed sheets provided and you could chose to either be on one of the smoking floors or non smoking floors.
Location *******
As I already mentioned it was about as far from the Airport as it was the city centre, located within the Esplugues de Llobregat area of the city. The cab ride everyday cost us about €8 or €9 each way so really it wasn’t that bad and it sure as hell beat walking every time. And didn’t really add that much onto the cost that would have made it any cheaper to be staying closer in.
Of course the main problem was getting taxis. On the way into town we had to wave one down at the side of the road, we could have got reception to order one but that, he told us would take 30 minutes so it was quicker to wave one down. The other problem was on the way back to the hotel as none of the drivers had any idea where the Hostal Lami was, so again the orange cards given by reception come in very handy, as they come complete with map.
In fact on the Sunday night two of us were heading back to the hotel, got into a cab and because he couldn’t find it on his a-z he refused to take us back there, but another came along straight away who decided to wing it, and found it fairly easily.
Final Thought ************
Well that’s pretty much the hotel, definitely a reasonable place to stay if you’re on a budget like we were. May seem like a bit of a trek from the city centre but it was ideal for what we needed. No real frills to speak off and fairly comfortable beds, as I normally have a problem sleeping in Hotel rooms, as I can never get comfortable on the beds.
The hotel on the whole was clean, the staff were all very friendly, although only the reception staff spoke English, which did cause a few problems telling the cleaner that we weren’t ready to have our room cleaned. The area of town the hotel was in was fairly nice, again nothing fancy, a few shops including a small supermarket and an even smaller off licence type shop.
Despite the few flaws if I do go back to Barcelona I would consider going back to the Lami despite its distance from places like the Place De Catalunya. A nice hotel, that didn’t have the frills but certainly had the service and quality and of course the Schindler's Lift.
Contact Info:
Hostal Lami Laurea Miro 278 Esplugues de Llobregat Barcelona Spain 08950 Phone Number: 49-211-1390150 Fax: 49-211-1390155 E-mail: info@cih-hotels.com
Booked through www.opodo.co.uk
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
I apparently stayed in a 3 or 4 star hotel and ended up have having lunch and dinner at McDonalds every day! It put me off it for life! Would have preferred staying there! Jane
Groovee 22.01.2004 11:07
At least you had plenty beds to choose from! Will check this out if we are going to Barcelona! Love Louise
Ingridi 18.01.2004 16:37
I know Esplugues de Llobregat, but not that hotel. Normally when I go to Bcn I sleep at home of ome friends I´ve there. Regards!!
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