Hotel El Sueño de Jemik

A great place to take a break from the highway. The service was friendly and excellent, and the food was good.

The coffee shop has a great range of pastries, and the shop beside the restaurant sells local things like Miguelitos (puff pastry with cream), cheese, and different types of chouriço. I stopped for lunch at this roadside hotel and restaurant. The menu was good for the price, around €16 per person, though the service moved so quickly it felt like we had to eat fast to make room for others. I'd stop again if I were passing by.

The shower was excellent, and having a petrol station right there was handy. It even has talking petrol pumps, which I'd never come across before. If only I understood what they were saying.... We'd had a long drive from the Santander Ferry and arrived at 1030pm needing a bed, so this seemed ideal. There's a busy cafe restaurant too, if we'd wanted food or a drink. Our booking got mixed up somehow, despite my confirmation email and booking ref. The staff first seemed to think they were full, but after 10 mins they found us a room and we were soon asleep. They were excellent and spoke very good English. My Spanish is just enough to order drinks in a bar, so I'm not sure how we'd have sorted the booking problem without them. Some building work beside the hotel woke us at 8am with loud banging. We needed to get going then anyway, so it wasn't a problem for us, and I assume it was temporary. I'm being a little generous with 4 stars.

The place was clean, but breakfast was disappointing. The tomato with olive oil and Serrano ham was supposed to be a typical Spanish breakfast, but the tomato was canned, not prepared there. The ham looked old and was too dry. The coffee tasted a bit strange and came cold.