"We came to celebrate Christmas, New year and stayed also for the first week of January. This was the second visit to this hotel, the first was in February 2025. The hotel is very calm (even the busiest days) and the views are great from the floors 6 & 7. We had all inclusive privilege, (on both of our visits), so we visited the buffet-restaurant, almost all of the a la carte -restaurants, bars and lounges. One main reason for choosing this hotel was the location. Easy parking for our rental car on the street and back-up plan the garage for free, if the streets are all full of cars. We used the underground-parking once.
The quality of food varied a lot. Even at a la carte restaurants. The meats were mostly good, sometimes over cooked and dry. Grilled fish, chicken and meat are always good, but something was missing in the sauces, garnishings, side-dishes, etc. No salt in the fries. The shrimps had veins. At breakfast the orange juice was pale in color and the taste was watery. Tomato-slices at breakfast were raw (green-orange, not red, and tasted it too), tomato pieces at lunch salad bar were much better. Every day, not just once. The smoothies were made from unpeeled fruits: the texture and flavour was foamy and not that good.
A la carte dinners: We had dinners in Gaudi, La Brasserie and Il Trastevere. Gaudi was a big disappointment. We went there around 8pm (we had a reservation, normal evening, between Christmas and New year’s eve), got a table from the balcony, made our orders and waited. 45 minutes of waiting and we got our starters. No apologies, nor warnings that they are crowded (the restaurant was half-empty). Our dinner took over 2 hours and the quality of food was not that much different from the buffet food. La Brasserie was ok at first, but on the second visit the starter-foods were lacking taste. The best restaurant for us was Il Trastevere. Food was excellent every dinner we had there, service very good and friendly. Even when all the tables were full, we never had to wait for a long time.
Gala-dinners Christmas & New year: Gaudi or the buffet, not a difficult choice after spending over 2 hours at Gaudi on a normal evening. Buffet was crowded, but ok. Some queues at places you could order meats or fish cooked for you, but that’s normal. Wide selection of seafood and iberico were extras, also the desserts were a lot different from normal buffet dinner. Unfortunately the desserts looked good but most of them did not taste that special. Food was good as one would expect. But not extra delicious.
Breakfast at Gaudi a la carte was ok, but we enjoyed our breakfasts more at the buffet. On our previous visit in February we did like Gaudi breakfasts more, so something had changed. Or maybe it was the slow experience at dinner.
Naturalia lunch: it was good basic food. Naturalia Bar’s snack/burgers/sandwiches from the bar: food was ok, but the fries were not that good. Few minutes more in the fryer would have made it not-raw in the middle. Ordering at snack time was odd, because you had to wait at the table. No ordering from the counter. We had to wait for a long time to make the order, several occasions.
New year’s eve Gala-show: table reservations can be made only if you buy a bottle, for all-incl-privilege no tables if you don’t but extra bottle. Why would I buy? All-incl-privilege gives me as much cold drinks I need. Many tables were empty, so we went to see some of the Gala-show. As a non-spanish it was nothing I understood, no performers, no live music, just a tv-broadcast on the screen. The grapes, partyhats, etc were given those who had reserved the tables, but we managed without them. Fireworks outside were absolutely amazing! 15 minutes of great show was stunning, thank you for that!
The waitering staff in buffet and Il Trastevere is very friendly and professional.
Sadly I had one experience with staff (not waitering, but cooking-staff) that made me feel very bad. It was at the buffet breakfast. We had been at the hotel already for ten days. A nice chef was frying eggs and I asked if he could make me sandwiches he had there ready to be warmed. He said of course and started making them. I wasn’t the only one there, several other people were also taking food from the buffet at that time. When my sandwich were almost ready, a woman came from the back kitchen. The woman had been making omelets that morning and made one for me too earlier that morning. She started saying no more food, we are closed and something in spanish. Not in a friendly way, but very rude. Then she left. I said sorry to the chef who was doing the cooking (who said don’t worry) and I went to my table. The time was then 10.32. So it wasn’t even 10.30 (closing-time) when I asked for my sandwich. My husband went and took a picture of her, but her name tag wasn’t visible. The next days that worker was cutting vegetables and making smoothies. She didn’t wear her name tag any more, so I couldn’t check her name. The day that I got the bad experience, happened to be my birthday. That was the only time I heard anyone saying we are closed, no food anymore. Never the breakfast was empty and closed before 10.50 am. This is not a way that a good hotel should treat their customers. I felt very bad and still I am wondering why she decided to be so rude to me. I felt like being bullyed.
Broken lifts/elevators: not just one but several lifts and days without a properly working lift is not ok in a good hotel. In some cases we had to walk because both lifts were broken at the same time to go to our 7th floor. And by the pools the one lift to go to the spa, restaurants and floors 1&2 was broken for 3 days.
Room cleaning: several crumbs from previous guests on the carpet, stayed there the whole 2 weeks, no vacuum-cleaning. Swiping the floors with wet does not take the dust, crumbs and dirt from the carpets, so not that effective. It’s not the cleaning staff’s fault, they do as they are told. Towels and linen are clean and good quality.
Overall a bit mixed feelings. Nice, calm and stunning views. We had high expectations. The hotel is expensive (600€/night) and the gala-nights on Christmas and New Years eve raise the price even more (nearly 1000€/night) when having all-inclusive-privilege. For that price, one would expect high quality that is now lacking in several areas. For a 3-star hotel everything would have been outstanding but for a 4 (or even 5) star hotel the issues we had are not ok."
