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The hotel San Diego is part of the Best Hotels chain in the Costa Dorada. Best Hotels is quite a popular chain in the Costa Dorada & you will probably see it a lot when you see a hotel with an American style name you can bet it is part of the Best Hotels chain. The hotels are what I would ... Read review
incl. Breakfast - HRS Rating: /10 - The historic Lafayette Hotel is indeed the lodging ... more
choice in San Diego. Built in 1946, the hotel was a favorite stop of Hollywood stars like Bob Hope, Ava Gardener, Betty Grabel & Johnny Weissmuller. San Diego Zoo/Balboa Park Sea World Seaport Village Balboa Park Museums Southern California Beaches Mission Beach/Belmont Park Historic Old Town Gas Lamp District
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Advantages: Excellent value for money, brilliant location & good sized rooms Disadvantages: Maids didnt change beds & didnt see them clean pool
...a 1 or 2 star hotel in a very central location (in other words above or across the road from a loud nightclub) for a price that is not cheap but sound like a good deal.
Working in the travel trade helps a lot & even though I am not a travel agent I k now how to get a good deal. I always book my own holidays & never go for a package.
When I decided to go on holiday I asked my sister along & two of our friends.
So that's 4 girlie ... ...I had to find a hotel I searched all the usual hotel search engines & I came across a few which seemed the cheapest by about £10 on a website called Go Spain which I wasn't familiar with so I wasn't confident booking with them. So for my peace of mind I opted for Alpharooms.co.uk, which I knew, were respectable & were only around £10 more expensive, but that is a small price to pay for peace of mind that your holiday is going to run smoothly. At ... more
I went on 4 holidays last year so I thought I would give it a miss this year & try & save my money. However when your boyfriend turns round & tells you he is going to Malia for 2 weeks it changes your mind big time!
THE SPECIFICATION Ok so now it is hotting up everyone is looking to get a good cheap deal abroad. They don't care where it is as long as it is cheap. In my case it was very different. Even though I am only 20 I have travelled to many different places & have extensive knowledge on mainland Spain. I know that if you are looking for a cheap deal you are more than likely going to end up in a 1 or 2 star hotel in a very central location (in other words above or across the road from a loud nightclub) for a price that is not cheap but sound like a good deal. Working in the travel trade helps a lot & even though I am not a travel agent I k now how to get a good deal. I always book my own holidays & never go for a package. When I decided to go on holiday I asked my sister along & two of our friends. So that's 4 girlie girls aged between 18 & 20. Nightmare!!! Everyone left it to me to book everything but expressed on several occasions they wanted a 5* Ritz where it is scorching hot, has good nightlife & some hunky men for the 2nd week in July for £200. After searching the Internet I thought this is never gong to happen as everything was coming up just that bit too expensive & by the time we added up all the costs we were looking at £300+ & I knew this just wouldn't do.
HOW DID YOU COME ACROSS THE SAN DIEGO? About 5 years ago me & my sister went to Cambrils with our parents, which was quite a nice holiday. For those who don't know Cambrils is situated on the Costa Dorada about 20mins away from Salou. We only visited Salou once on our holiday & we couldn't remember it but my mum said it was nice & I had heard that it had good nightlife, a theme park & 2 water parks. Perfect the destination was chosen. Then out of curiosity I logged on to Ryanair's website & couldn't believe what I was seeing Stansted to Reus 99p obviously I knew that wouldn't be the price but I knew it would be cheap. With all the taxes & baggage fees it came to £32 return. Bargain! Now I had to find a hotel I searched all the usual hotel search engines & I came across a few which seemed the cheapest by about £10 on a website called Go Spain which I wasn't familiar with so I wasn't confident booking with them. So for my peace of mind I opted for Alpharooms.co.uk, which I knew, were respectable & were only around £10 more expensive, but that is a small price to pay for peace of mind that your holiday is going to run smoothly. At first I looked through a lot of self catering complexes that would have totalled about £80 each but the reviews I read were not encouraging to say the least & none had air conditioning so I looked for hotels instead & came across the San Diego. After reading the reviews & from the pictures I saw the San Diego seemed a very tempting hotel & once I saw the price I as sold. We paid £599.13 for 7 nights half board for four people. Which works out at roughly £150 for the week & about £21 per night. How cheap is that? So altogether out holiday cost £180 each.
HOTEL SAN DIEGO The hotel San Diego was built in 1973 & renovated in 2003 which to be honest sounds like an old hotel but you would never tell it wasn't in anyway different from a hotel built 3 years ago. There are 262 double rooms that are spread over 5 floors but these are turned into triples, quads or singles without any trouble. The hotel San Diego is part of the Best Hotels chain in the Costa Dorada. Best Hotels is quite a popular chain in the Costa Dorada & you will probably see it a lot when you see a hotel with an American style name you can bet it is part of the Best Hotels chain. The hotels are what I would call a Travelodge standard. Comfortable & have all the facilities but don't expect the frills.
LOCATION Salou isn't a huge place but if your hotel is on the outskirts the walk I am sure is very daunting at night when you have has a few to drink luckily the hotel San Diego is in the perfect position. You couldn't ask for it to be situated anywhere else. It was a five minute walk from the beach, the supermarkets, market & small bars. Then just a 10 minute walk to the main pub & shop strip which was excellent as it was close enough for a quick walk but far enough away for a bit of quiet if you are staying in. Which is probably unlikely if you are in your teens but good for families that obviously won't be out partying to the small hours. I think to have a hotel in the main hustle & bustle would be a nice idea but a bit of a mistake because most bars close at around 3 & the clubs close at around 5:30am so I am glad we were up the road & round the corner. The hotel is quite high up so there is a bit of a steep walk which can be quite tiring when it really hot & you have just eaten but in Salou if you want to reach the pool you have to walk up a very steep road anyway. So if you have walking difficulties maybe Salou just isn't for you. The paths up to the hotel were a good size but had a few cracked tiles, which can be a bit of a pain when you're in heels but nothing that you don't not expect in Spain. The only thing I didn't like was having to walk passed the communal bins & recycle bins that are at the end of most roads which smell horrible especially in the heat but I think that is me being girlie as it is only a 2 second smell but I am very fussy with my smells.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS When we arrived at the hotel it was about 10:00am. We walked into the large airy reception bright eyed & bushy tailed. I showed our accommodation voucher to the receptionist who I am guessing didn't speak much English as she called another receptionist over to help. I started to worry & think yep this is too good to be true. Then the 2nd receptionist said I am really sorry but your room is being cleaned & you wont be able to go up until 12noon. Phew is that I started to panic then. We were then shown to the baggage cupboard, which already had a couple of cases in. I decided to wedge my suitcase under one of the shelves & get it so stuck that it wont come out well not unless you bring the whole top shelf with it & yes that is what happened. I thought I was going to get evils from the receptionist but he couldn't stop apologising & helping me with my bag it seemed like nothing was too much trouble. After that little fiasco we set about finding our bikinis to go for a swim. Once 12 o clock came we collected our cases to find one of the lifts was actually broken. The lifts took 6 people but with cases we were too heavy so we had to wait for the 1 lift. After a couple of days we realised this was something that happened a lot once the first lift was fixed the other one broke down. Then there were the days where it just didn't feel like operating & took about 20 minutes to actually move.
FACILITIES The hotel has some good facilities for a 3* hotel which include
*24-Hour Reception This was a nice facility as the receptionist also watched 4 CCTV cameras, which was very comforting to know that they knew what was going on everywhere. At reception you could ask any questions & the receptionists would help. You could also book excursions at the desk & exchange foreign currency.
*Large outdoor swimming pool with a small children's pool next to it & a medium sized Jacuzzi, which fit about 8 people in comfortably, & 10 at a squeeze. The Jacuzzi always seemed to be quite cold but the pool was always nice & war. The only thing I didn't like about the pool was that it was surrounded by wooden decking which I thought was a little unhygienic & mot of all dangerous because as I got out the pool a couple of times I would catch my toe on it & go flying. No one else seemed to do this & I don't know why it kept happening to me but all I know is that it really hurt & I looked very silly. There are lots of plastic sunbeds dotted around the pool, which are quite uncomfortable but are free so you can't really complain. There didn't seem to be many sunbeds but there always seemed to be enough to go around & there wasn't the big German tradition of I will wake up at 5am & put my towel over about 4 sunbeds just to get everyone's backs up. There were no unpleasant feelings around everyone just got along minding their own business.
*Indoor & outdoor bar / restaurant This consisted of a large outdoor bar which carried on inside. There is a large seating area inside & a large seating area outdoors. This area is quite busy in the day & even busier at night as this is where the main entertainment took place. The bar sells all drinks, crisps, lollipops & ice creams & a small selection of food, which you just have to laugh about. They sell mainly chip butties, bacon sandwiches, cheese sandwiches & Hotdogs, but they advertise those & then they also advertise bacon in bread & meat in cob which is also the same thing so there is a list of about 10 meals but really only a selection of about 3. The only thing I would really have tried would have been was the chip buttie but because we were eating chips every night for tea I didn't really fancy them for my dinner as well. One day when I was really hungry I dared to have some cheese n toast, which I thought would be ok. Wrong it was disgusting I don't know what I was expecting but I was presented with two pieces of slightly toasted pieces of bread with a square of what I call plastic cheese (you all know the sort I am sure) in between. Not nice but what do you expect for 3€. The drinks at the bar were nice there is nothing nice than an ice cold 7up or Pepsi when you are lazing by the pool.
*Shop We didn't buy anything from here but it stocked things like suitcases, suntan lotions, snacks & small souvenirs. We did have a look one day & found the prices matched the prices of the shops nearby so it was nice to see they weren't trying to rip everyone off just because it was a hotel shop.
*Internet Access This was a nice feature (but no I didn't have a go pc's aren't my life despite what people must be thinking) it is not a service all hotels offer so I was quite surprised when I noticed there was access here. There were two computers situated in the large reception area, which you could use 24 hours a day you just had to put your money in the slot & pay as you surf. I was a little wary as to what you could actually log on to, as I know in some places you cant get on to the worldwide web but I noticed people checking their emails & chatting on MSN.
*Children's play area & club This is obviously not a service I took advantage of but it looked very good for a 3* star hotel. There were people there to look over the children through the day & arrange competitions. They also had there own play room where they took part in lots of activities which spilled out on to the pool area where there was a dart board & a full sized table tennis table. It looked so much fun for the kids the adults were actually joining in too. You could also hire board games from reception, which made me think they do actually think of everything.
*Car parking This was an underground facility, which the lift could take you down to. I am not sure how many people actually used it but most hotels in Salou seem to offer this as a facility I am not sure whether it was because driving holidays were becoming more popular or whether it was used a lot by locals, whichever it was at least you have the opportunity if you are thinking of a driving holiday.
THE ROOMS Once we finally go to the 5th floor we found room 507. I was really worried because all brochure descriptions of this hotel said twin or 3-bedded rooms not 4 & we had booked a 4-bedded room with Alpha. I emailed them before we went saying the price was very good & it says we have booked a twin/double room so is your system letting me over occupy in error or will they really put 4 four beds in there & they assured me 4 beds would be in the room. I was really worried on the flight wondering if everything would be ok. As soon as we entered the room I knew I had been worrying over nothing there were 4 beds all squashed in the room. There wasn't much space only just to shimmy past the beds but we knew we wouldn't be spending much time in the room so it wasn't an issue. In the room there was a medium sized bathroom with toilet, b day, large hand basin & a bath with a shower over the top. Perfect everything we needed for a good holiday really. There were even complimentary toiletries, which I thought was a nice touch. We then had a balcony overlooking the pool with a table on & 2 chairs. The balcony was an adequate size but the rail was a little shaky & was quite scary 5 floors up. There was a TV in the room, which has satellite channels, but not one was English except for a music channel so we didn't bother with it. There was one large wardrobe between us all which wouldn't have been adequate if we'd have actually used it but seen, as we are women we mainly strew our clothes over everything & lived out of our cases. There was a safe in the wardrobe, which you could pay to use, but in our case it wasn't really worth it our room looked like it had been burgled most days so even if someone did come in they would be about 3 hours trying to actually find anything! The nice thing about the hotel San Diego & one of the reasons we chose to stay in a hotel instead of an apartment was because they had air conditioning. When we first arrived we thought it was broken even though it looked fairly new. We enquired at reception & he brought up a key which was needed to turn it on & that you could take out when you got too cold. The air conditioning operates from mid June to mid September & then the heating can be used. The only down side is that the receptionist is the only one who can adjust the temperatures which was a real shame. Each room also has a direct dial telephone to the reception which we didn't even know existed until someone rang it & we realised the room had that many beds in they only place to put the phone was under one of them. The beds were quite comfy & had nice new pillows on which looked clean & fresh which was like a breath of fresh air for me because whenever I stay abroad or even in England for that matter the pillows always seem to be so grotty that I don't even like using them.
THE MAIN RESTAURANT This is on the lower floor below the reception which you would think was fine when you were trotting down the stairs to get to it but when you are staying on the 5th floor & the lifts are playing up & coming every 15 minutes once your full of food the 6 floor trek seems endless. Once you enter the restaurant you are welcomed by one of the waiters & then you make your way round to find a table. The restaurant is well air-conditioned & quite a hectic place but once you find a vacant table you are set. A waiter comes over & takes your drink order & you are free to get your food. It is always best to put something on your table because when the restaurant is really busy the waiters find it very difficult to keep up with cleaning the tables & people will try & pinch your table. The one & only complaint people tended to have & what I have read in some reviews is that the plates you eat off always seem to be a little bit dirty or look like they have food still on them. In a way this was a bit annoying having to trawl through all the plates to get a clean one but it wasn't the end of the world & I would not make a big deal out of it I mean come on does no one remember their school dinners. These plates are probably cleaned 20 times a day in a poor quality dishwasher you can't get that upset by it surely.
WHAT ABOUT THE FOOD? The hotel operates 3 different room tariffs bed & breakfast, half board & full board. We opted for the half bard option because it seemed the easiest thing to do. It cuts out on having to find places to eat & when going with a group of people I always feel like I am going hungry because people never seem to be hungry when money is concerned. I don't usually like going on a half board basis & don't when I am going somewhere new but when you are on a budget & mainly going for the nightlife you may as well take the half board option. The restaurant opened from 7 till 10 for breakfast & you could get yourself some fresh pancakes or a fresh omelette from the chef or you can pick up a couple of rounds of toast, a bowl of cereal, some fruit or a cooked breakfast from the buffet. The cooked breakfast was surprisingly good the bacon was a little hard but the beans were quite nice & the eggs were well cooked. The sausages were not so nice they were in between a British & foreign sausage & if you can't imagine that think of a thin but long sausage that is trying to bulk out in the middle. As I said before chips were always on the menu in the evening they were also always on the menu in the morning as well which I thought was a little disgusting. If breakfast just isn't your thing there is a lovely selection of Danishes & biscuits, which were nice & even, better to sneak out & eat later on. You could have fruit juice, water, tea or coffee to drink. Personally if I were to visit the San Diego again I would take my own tea bags because the tea was not nice & quite bitter, the fruit juice tasted some what alcoholic & the water was tap water filtered & if you are anything like me & have a weak stomach you will avoid it like the plague. To say it makes you need the toilet is an understatement. I made the mistake of drinking it on the first day & I still feel like I am paying for it now. The evening meal was served from 19:15 till 21:15 which wasn't really long enough for us it would have been better if they had opened until 22:00 like a lot of restaurants do because most people sunbathe until about 19:30 so it doesn't leave much time to get ready & eat & once 21:15 hits the clock away goes the food not to be seen until the following day. The evening meal isn't what I would say amazing but it is definitely edible & it fills you up until the next day. The buffet is setup into three courses. The first area you can choose from a salad bar or 2 soups usually tomato & chicken. You then move on to your main which is chips & pasta everyday & they always managed to put the tomato sauce next to the pasta so people kept pouring soup over their pasta instead of Bolognese sauce which was quite funny. There was then usually meat, fish & then some sort of stew. You could also get some nice fresh food from the chef in the evening too. He cooked burgers, hotdogs, chicken & pork chops, which were lovely as they also, had fried onions, baked potatoes & new potatoes to go with your dinner. On the odd night they would bring out pizza & sometimes a table full of seafood, which all looked very nice but not something I dared eat. On one night they also brought out an actual pig & carved it in front of everyone while they ate the bacon. Some people might think this is great but I didn't like it & the worse thing about it was they were still serving the same bacon up the day after. For pudding you could have some fruit (usually watermelon or pineapple) or a piece of cake, which changed everyday, my favourite was the coconut cake, which was divine. There was also ice cream & jelly everyday which was yummy.
If you are ever hungry or thirsty any other time there are vending machined in the reception area selling cans of pop for 1.50€ & a sweet vending machine.
THE ENTERTAINMENT What can I say the entertainment at hotels is never very good & the San Diego is no different. From about 20:00 till 22:30 you are blessed with the children's entertainment, which is led by a very enthusiastic lady that repeats everything in about 7 different languages. Once the okay cokey & heads, shoulders, knees & toes had finished there was the adult entertainment to look forward to. Yeah right. Most nights there was some sort of dancing going on or on other nights guests were treated to a quiz or bingo which is fine but when they have to say everything in 4 languages it is a bit boring. A lot of people tend to sit n the bar area & switch off. Until midnight that is. Once midnight strikes that is it the place is in absolute darkness. The bar shut the stage lights go off & all the balcony lights go off. No this is not a power cut this is some sort of rule all hotels follow. Even if there are people sitting at the bar once twelve o clock comes that is it complete black out.
THE CLEANERS What can I say the job they do I do not admire. When we arrived in our room we found my friends bed sheet had a plaster stuck to it, which was pretty disgusting, but we soon got over it. (Well I did mainly because it wasn't on my bed!) Everywhere else was very clean. The second day the cleaners didn't come but the third day they came & stocked up or toilet rolls & towels but they didn't change our beds & this carried on for the entire holiday. The sheets weren't changed & the floor never got swept. This was a bit grotty but we did have a lot of things in the room & to be honest we never really noticed but I think a mop round the floor would have been appreciated. The last day made us realise why they probably don't have time to clean everyone's rooms top to bottom because our room was full of rubbish to say the least. We had accumulated 10 carrier bags of rubbish two empty Smirnoff ice boxes full of rubbish & a bathroom we were ashamed of. It must have taken them ages to clean because they allow people to check in at 12 noon & we didn't get out until 11am. They also tend to concentrate more on the public areas. The reception area was spotless & I am glad to say so was the pool area which was nice as that was where we spent most of our time. I sunbathed next to the bin one day & I never knew it was there until the maid came to empty it. I watched & they emptied it 3 times in 1 day. How efficient is that.
OVERALL THOUGHTS I bet everyone is thinking I am absolutely crackers. Here I am saying you should go to this hotel & it was probably one of the best holidays of my life but I have done nothing but say bad things. I am thinking it myself but any problems we had were very minimal & compared to a lot of other European hotels I have stayed in (& believe me there have been a fair few) San Diego could be mistaken as a palace. It is clean, the facilities are good, the staff are friendly & it is excellent value for money. I would definitely visit the San Diego again because it was in the perfect location, had a lovely pool & the food was good. Location 5/5 Food 4/5 Facilities 5/5 Staff 5/5 When it comes to staying in hotels I am a bit of a snob & I cant stand a bad quality hotel & for the money I think this hotel is excellent you cant fault it. My review I feel is quite harsh because I have gone through everything with a fine tooth comb but to be honest you will be struggling to find a hotel anywhere as good as this for the money. If I visit Salou again which I am positive I will the San Diego will certainly be a hotel to consider.
