Every capital city has one – an urban boutique hotel. Punting itself as the ultimate world-class boutique hotel Abalu has large boots to fill. On paper it all looks great – located in the very heart of Madrid, only 200 meters from Gran Via, in-room spa, in room wi-fi, funky looking cafe / breakfast area, high end design led bedrooms. So I hear you cry, what is wrong then?
Well when we walked in we loved it. It is design led but with a very modern Spanish/Italian feel – white walls, mirrored signs on the walls and a bevelled, mirrored reception desk with a turquoise light wrapped around the bottom, punctuated with fuschia pink, scandi-style chairs.
The receptionist was polite, attentive, handsome and gave me the wi-fi code with no hassle and then took us to our room. The room is very bijoux – not a moan just a fact and the design theme from recepetion is continued with a double bed complete with mental home style padded headboard and accents of silver and pink. The room was pretty smooth to be honest and we settled down to a upack etc. The first thing I had to do was get online as I had urgent work matters to sort so pulled out the Mac and got cracking. Sadly there was mjor wi-fi problems. I couldn’t pick up any signals despite being directly above the reception and having the business centre (well a pc on a table) directly outside our room door. The guy on reception helped us best he could but the issue couldn’t be resolved. I ended up having to spend 2 hours sat outide in the pretty nippy hallways to complete my work. As you can imagine this has clouded my view of the hotel somewhat – espcially when they say on their webiste they have a ‘business attitude’.
Not to worry we pressed on and checked out the local area. If you turn righ outside the hotel and walk up about 20 doors you will see a very cool bar on the right hand side – full of young Spainish creative types we dived straight in. We had a couple of Cruz Campo’s and surveyed our surroundings – picked up a few flyers for gigs etc and hit the tapas bar further up the road on the left. Calle del Pez 19 is a vibrant road and we could have wondered into any one of the Tapas bars. Ours was a bit spit and sawdust but we loved it and tucked into some delicious morsels including chorizo and lentil stew, tortilla and prawns – yum! If there is one thing you have to do in Spain is get tucked into tapas. Nowhere near as good as the culinary orgasm of St Sebastian but nevertheless damn tasty. Madrid – we salute you.
Back at the hotel we make for our room and get our fill of the mini bar before passing out. On waking we pack up ready for the next location and head down for breakfast. when we get downstairs the lady on reception apologises profusely for the wi-fi muck up. Apparently the whole area had problems last night – we accept the apologies with some scepticism…
Breakfast is abso-bloody-lutely yummy though so I now feel bad for the wi-fi moan. Served in the coffee shop loacted on-site which is decked out in a girly of heaven of cupcakes, parisian scenes, retro weighing scales and cake stands galore I was excited. The boy less so but hey he’d be happy with a builders cafe;) Breakfast is a traditional European affair with a twist – mini pain au chocolate’s, crossaints, cheese twists, danish pastries and for those being good muesli, yogurt and fruit. Coffee is served in one of those lovely tall metal coffee pots which keep the coffee piping hot right through breakfast. The only downside was the place was packed but hey – who can blame them!
Gypset Travellers 