Casa Spa del Renacimiento

Right in the center of Alcaraz’s historic city, this is a charming, unusual house with a real stately feel. I stayed there for a few days last summer with my children, and we had a perfect stay. It has a spa, a billiards room, and games too. Highly recommended.

For the price, these little apartments are very good. They’re in a lovely old house in Alcaraz. The parking is a bit far away, with a steep slope to deal with, and I found the bathtub a little awkward to climb out of. Those were my only drawbacks.

This hostel is right in the town center, with restaurants and a bakery close by, and the village has everything you need despite being very small. I stayed with my boyfriend and our Labrador in a lovely room with a fully equipped kitchen, a comfy bed, a terrace, and a bathroom with a jacuzzi tub. Downstairs there was a little spa that was really cute, but it wasn’t open during our visit. If you have a car, there’s a waterfall nearby, though getting to a place where you can swim takes quite a trek.

We rented the place for a weekend because the price was very good, but it didn’t live up to what we expected. The complex feels neglected. In the games room, the pool table cues were broken, and the switched-on dart machine didn’t work. There wasn’t any notice about it, so we put money in and got nothing. Someone should at least let guests know. You have to walk through the spa area to get to the rooms. It smelled musty and of chlorine, and the spa was filthy and poorly maintained, with cobwebs on the ceiling and dirt everywhere. The room we booked had a kitchen and whirlpool tub, but it hadn’t been cleaned well. Neither the room heating nor the bathroom heating worked. I had to leave the air conditioning on all night and couldn’t sleep because of the draft. The sheets were for a 1.35 m bed, though ours was 150 cm, and there were no blankets because apparently the heating was supposed to work. When we tried the whirlpool, its jets sprayed out hair and smelled awful. The water was stagnant enough to put us off, and we ended up cleaning it ourselves. It’s a real shame, because the place is wonderful but they don’t look after it, which hurts the business. If they were more on top of things, it could be great. I’d return if everything were fixed.