[Dec. 2022] The hotel we stayed in Salamanca in Spain was a four-star hotel named Catalonia Plaza Mayor Salamanca.
The location is excellent, right behind the Plaza Mayor, a beautiful square in the centre of town.
However, it was a hotel that I could not recommend.
We chose this as we checked it out on the internet and it had a good reputation, but sometimes online reputation does not match the reality.
First, when we arrived, our room was not ready.
As usual, check-in time was 2pm and we arrived around 1:30pm, so it was acceptable that the room was not ready, but the receptionist at that time was rude and unfriendly.
His attitude already cast a shadow over my impression of the hotel.
At that time, we left your luggage and went outside.
The room we got in later was a good size with an unnecessarily large bed taking up a lot of space.
After that, we walked around the city at night looking for a bar where we could have a light drink, but we couldn’t find anything we liked, so we decided to settle down at the hotel bar.
Because I had already found spritz on the menu in the hotel bar.
However, when we ordered it, the bar staff said, “I don’t know Spritz,” not very apologetically.
At this point, I had a clear negative image of this hotel.
The service was bad.
After all, we drank Cava at this time.
Furthermore, two days later, when we ordered Cava from room service, the receptionist first said, “The person in charge will come at 6pm.”
When we asked again after 6 o’clock, the same person said, “He hasn’t come yet,” in vague English.
On our third try, they finally brought a bottle of Cava.
It was the period of New Year’s Eve and New Year, so maybe there were second-rate staff?
But the year-end and New Year holidays when tourists visit is the time to fill in the hotel, so the best staff should be there to serve the customers, shouldn’t they.
We had an experience in the past that the hotel we had booked was so bad that we had to move to another hotel in Cyprus.
This one was not that bad, so we reluctantly stayed there for four nights as planned.
At least, as I said, the location was good.
Well, back to the first day, about our night walk.
Without even looking at a map, we enjoyed walking around the town.
In Salamanca, there are huge buildings that make you feel its history.
At first, I pointed my camera at each one, saying, “Oh!”
But gradually that feeling of surprise changed to sense of intimidation.
It is the kind of cityscape that is not interesting unless you know the meaning with explanations one by one.
Not cute.
That night, quite a few people were strolling around in the dark.
For people here, meeting friends and chatting seemed an important part of their lives, similar to Italy.
