Royal Suite Santander

The suite was clean, cozy and very nice, with a balcony looking out to the sea. It’s close to downtown and not far from the beach. I did feel a bit discriminated against over parking. I was firmly told I couldn’t leave my car at the hotel because the four spaces there were only for loading and unloading bags, and was sent to another place to park. Meanwhile, other cars with UK and ES plates were allowed to stay overnight in the on-site parking.

The location is great, and the rooms are large and nicely decorated, but the quality didn’t quite live up to that. The twin beds pushed together to make a king, the shower pressure was low, and the soaps were awful. The place had an odd feel, somewhere between a bed and breakfast and an Airbnb. Reception closes after 8pm, and there’s no food or even a vending machine. It was okay, but there’s plenty of room to improve.

We had a lovely two-night stay, and the suite was even better than we expected. Room 201 was roomy and cozy, with an amazing view, and we loved spending time on the terrace. The staff were friendly, the neighborhood was peaceful, and parking worked well both in the building and in the garage about a five-minute walk away. We'd definitely come back.

The WiFi was pretty rubbish, and we could hear our very loud neighbors from our top-floor room beside the lift. The rooms up there are closer together than on the lower floors. The apartment hotel is in a refurbished old building a few blocks from the town center, and it's elegant and reasonably priced. Our room was fussy in its furnishings but had plenty of useful equipment: a fridge-freezer, washing machine that also dried clothes, dishwasher, microwave and kettle. No coffee machine, though. Getting in takes a couple of flights of stairs. If you park at the hotel's spot, which is a short way up the road under an apartment block, you'll also have to carry your bags a couple of hundred meters along the road. The parking is fine unless you're driving a tank. Going into the lift forwards means reversing out onto the parking level, but there's enough room to maneuver. Our allocated space was narrow, though the rest of the garage was almost empty, so opening the doors to get our luggage out was no problem.