L'Hort de Sant Cebrià

Jordi and Juan Carlos took such good care of us. The interior design and breakfast were both immaculate, and this gorgeous B&B is a lovely place to spend a few days on the costa brava. I’d definitely recommend it.

The pool and garden were just right for unwinding after a morning out exploring the area. The owners are very friendly and available to help with special needs and keep things running smoothly. The rooms and facilities are lovely and high quality, with a lot of attention to detail throughout. You can tell they’ve put a lot of effort into making the visitor experience wonderful.

It’s presented as a guest house, though it clearly feels like a hotel, and there were lots of rules and expectations that made it hard to relax. The place itself is very nice, but it sits right by the road. The welcome also felt disconcerting. I’m not sure if something was wrong with my appearance or if I arrived at a bad time, but I felt like I wasn’t the kind of visitor they expected. I was just touring with my wife.

The way a place responds when something goes wrong tells you a lot. My partner and I have travelled for many years and stayed in all sorts of accommodation, but we’ve never met owners as rude, arrogant, and uncaring as these. We’ve never written a hotel review before, either. Even setting the owners’ response aside, we thought this hotel was extremely overpriced. Our two rooms were tiny, and while the amenities were OK, there was nothing special about them. The hotel is in one of the least attractive areas of Spain we’ve visited. Guests also get a long list of do’s and don’ts that felt petty, mean spirited, and patronizing. The fact that children aren’t welcome says a lot. You can easily find cheaper, better hotels. The poor rating also reflects the owners’ lack of professionalism and basic care, which became clear on the day we arrived. The directions they provided were confusing, so we phoned to check. The reply was accusatory and rude, as if we were idiots for getting it wrong. When I arrived, I fell up the steep hotel stairs while carrying heavy bags. One owner refused to help with them. The other was nearby, but the first owner didn’t ask him to step in, even though he could see me struggling. I broke my foot badly, my holiday was ruined, and my leg was in plaster for the next six weeks. We accept that accidents happen. What was so hard to accept was how little care followed. The owners gave me some ice, but didn’t apologize, offer to find a doctor, or do anything else to make things easier. The next day, the pain meant I couldn’t leave the hotel, so we sat by the tiny pool. There were no umbrellas, and we moved a sun lounger a few feet onto the grass beside a tree for shade. One owner came out and rudely told us that wasn’t acceptable and that we had to use different loungers on the grass. He watched while my partner and I struggled to move them. With my broken foot it was difficult and painful, and no one offered to help. When I came down to breakfast on crutches the following day, the owners seemed surprised and said we should see a doctor. Again, they didn’t offer to find one or help us with the language. We felt so unwelcome that we wanted to leave, but the cancellation terms meant we couldn’t. On our last day, the owners said they’d help with our bags, then didn’t, even as they watched my partner struggle alone with three bags. After we got home, we wrote to the hotel asking for compensation for our ruined summer. They replied by arguing that the accident wasn’t their fault, saying they had friends and relatives in the judiciary who would help prove it, and claiming that Spanish papers were full of stories about British people falsely seeking compensation. My partner is Belgian, and she was the one who wrote to them, a fact they seemed to have missed. Adding what felt like casual racism made the whole thing even worse. This was the most uncaring service we’ve ever experienced. Even without that, I couldn’t recommend staying here.