Foreign Perspectives

Since we’d to go back to the Halifax in Spain, we thought that we’d stay in a hotel in Barcelona rather than doing a round trip of about six hours driving.

Good idea in principle as the hotel would have cost around the same as the petrol and tolls and we’d have had a full day in Barcelona too which would have been nice.

However, we didn’t allow for the combination of somewhat elevated prices (despite the hotel being almost empty) and the very poor signposting in the city. Anyway, we tried the Ibis which used to be around EUR 60 but is now EUR 90 so we thought we’d try the Campanile near Baricentro instead.

We’ve been planning on staying in that Campanile for ages as it’s just beside a shopping centre which needs a full day to do it properly plus the Campanile are brilliant for families. Not so this one. Despite their child policy allowing children under 12 to stay free, they said that they’d only rooms for two and we’d have to take an extra one for the kids. Actually, now that we’ve looked at their website in fact they DO have rooms for three. They were available too as the carpark was virtually empty but that in itself is no real surprise as it took us nearly an hour of driving past the place on the motorways which surround it before we happened across the single (unmarked) exit required to get into the hotel.

They must make a fortune on no-shows! If I could buy a small house in that estate I’d be tempted to list it as a 300 bedroom hotel on the basis that virtually nobody is able to get to it.