PR Linares

The best about this historic hotel is the receptionist Silvia who always smiles and has a good sense of humour. It's location is excellent too as there's a short cut to Cervantes Square and the Cathedral. The restaurant meal nearby was good. The breakfast nearby very basic not so good. On the face of it this establishment has a lot of character being a sensitive conversion. The bedroom has modern fixtures and fittings and the bathroom has a nice shower. I was able to sleep ok. But what let's the place down is the standard of cleaning and overall maintenance. Above the bathroom door in the ceiling there was a dark patch of fungal growth which is also present around the shower cubicle edges. That's not acceptable in a hotel of this price or in any standard of accommodation.

The receptionist gave me an apartment (in Rúa de Entremuros) as I was staying for 3 nights. She was very helpful. I knocked out 1 star as I don’t think the place is thoroughly cleaned. It needs to be. There is also a pub nearby so it can get noisy a bit - I don’t mind this, I can sleep anywhere but thought I’d mention. Overall, the place is very close to the Cathedral and is pretty centre so you won’t have issues looking for restaurants, places to see, etc.

The experience here was the worst. We discovered a bed bug right after we checked in in the albergue. They offered to change our bunk beds to another ones. We compromised and only regretted when two o’clock in the morning our roommate found a bed bug. We were exhausted but couldn’t sleep because we only found more on the wall, the mattress, the mattress under her bunk bed. It was the night we arrived in Santiago, and the next morning we already booked a tour that required us to leave early in the morning. The disastrous situation kept people in the room afraid, helpless and disappointed. The next morning, we only found the people in the other room across were all awake because there were bed bugs in their room as well. They left the room distressed. I remembered we said “ Good luck” to each other. What I wanted to share here is, there were no refunds, we were also only offered with the private room. However, I couldn’t stay there any longer and escaped as soon as I got back from the day tour. If you were a pilgrim like we all were and finished the Camino with fatigue and only wanted some peace and quiet, this is NOT the place for you.

I could not be more disappointed. We were in the dormitory and at night we realized there were bed bugs everywhere in the room and we find some dead ones under my bed, so they were there before our arrival, there’s definitely a lack of cleanliness. I told the receptionist the next morning (because the reception is open only from 9 am to 3pm) she didn’t look surprised and I had to insist to get a solution. She said she could give us a private room for our second night because she couldn’t refund us …then I told her that we were scared to have bed bugs in our clothes and that we needed to wash them and she had the audacity to answer « I am not going to wash them myself by hand» in an ironic tone. I answered that it was obvious but that we needed a solution and she didn’t proposed to offer the washing as a compensation and that we had to pay 10 more euros. In the private room there was no bed bugs but still a lack of cleanliness because there was a lot of dust and it was very humid with moist all over the ceiling. Furthermore, we went out for the day and when we got back we were blocked outside the building because a code is needed to get in but the receptionist didn’t give us the code. In addition to that we told the reception we had some pasta leftovers in a box in the fridge of the common area and she said it was fine to let it there even if we were now in the private room. When we went back at 7pm our food was gone/stolen… I wouldn’t recommend !

Highly recommend! We booked the bunk bed for 1 night and it’s perfect. We got free bath towel and enough space for our bags. The location is really good and convenient for the people who want to take a good break after finishing Camino hiking. Also, the mattress is the best among all the hostel we’ve been on Camino. We had really good sleep here:) it’s also possible to save our luggage in the lobby. We will definitely come here again.