Residencia Deportistas La Cartuja

The water facilities are great, but the neighbouring rowing clubs were aggressive and abusive. Our athletes faced shouting, swearing, and gestures at least once every day. The food is shocking too, with little or no vegan choice, and sometimes it’s hard to tell whether the meat is chicken or pork. Rooms are falling apart, and often the air conditioning doesn’t work.

Food was the biggest problem here. Seven of the 16 people in our squad got food poisoning, so we became genuinely anxious about eating at the restaurant. Even when it wasn’t making people projectile vomit, the quality was awful. I was served pork that was completely raw, the worst food I’ve ever had. For a sports camp where you need enough to eat, that made the stay a very poor experience.

The rooms were fine, nothing fancy, and the beds were comfortable. There’s a bad smell throughout the building too, a bit like a public toilet, though I couldn’t tell where it came from. The rowing facilities are great, but the food was the lowest-effort stuff imaginable and never enjoyable. Seven of our 16-person squad, me included, got food poisoning, with projectile vomiting and other symptoms that seriously disrupted our training.

The cleaners threw away a bag of groceries, and for several days in a row I had to ask reception for toilet paper because housekeeping didn’t replace it during daily cleaning. The food was disgusting too. Lunch was spam once, the meat is always cheap, and pasta with tomato sauce shows up every day for lunch and dinner. The sauce smells strange and tastes like fake tomatoes.