Hostal Felipe V - Madrid, Spain 

right in town
Posted: Wed, Feb 06 2008
Hostal Felipe V Very central and close to city center. Hop skip and jump away from Granvia metro. Friendly staff. Very basic but clean room. Relatively quiet. Not easy to find from the street (look for No 15). Other hostels in same building. Is located on 4th floor. Offers continental breakfast (very basic). BYO kettle, hairdryer. Recommended.

Nice hotel in convenient central location
Posted: Tue, Jan 01 2008
This hostal is certainly well worth the price and a nice place to stay in Madrid. Its very basic, much like other hostals, but clean and run quite efficiently. The location on the Gran Via in Madrid is very central, right next to the metro and other transportation. There are many many food options in each direction and you are walking distance to most of what is interesting in Madrid. The hostal is in a building with about ten other hostals, and there is a night security desk for the whole building. Half the time this guy is asleep in the back, however, so if you arrive back late at night and need to get in, you may have buzz the bell for quite a time. This was not a rare event and kept happening to us. Two elevators allow easy transport to the higher floors in the building. The hostal also has a twenty four hour desk run by one of the two sisters, neice or other family member owning the property. Everything is kept very clean and the staff are helpful and friendly. The only problem I had was a sewer smell on and off in the bathrooms especially after running any sort of water in drains (and we stayed in two different rooms). This would go away, and return sporadically. The beds are actually more firm than the typical hostal bed, which was a nice change. Be aware this Gran Via area is also the hot pickpocketing capital of Europe (yes, EUROPE, not Spain) ...so you do have to be very very careful. The rate of pickpocketing in Madrid now far exceeds most any European city and gangs of two to four operate with the most unique set of tricks right around this area. Many will have U.S. university sweaters or T-shirts, or are dressed up as tourists carrying the typical tourist accessories. Others are constantly on cell phones, communicating with comrades on the other side of the streeet so you can be targeted from two directions as you cross. A disturbing and always packed red light district of underage prostitutes is just one street over, at the Calle de la Montera but this is not really a reflection on the hotel or this location, since every hotel in this central area is exposed to this same region and the police are parked in numbers on either side of the very same street, watching the action and not doing much about it. The volume of blatant underage prostitution in Madrid is actually quite astonishing until you get used to it. For the most part you need to worry far more about the pickpockets and con artists on Gran Via than you do about the prostitutes and considering the huge number of hostals and hotels here, the Felipe V is just as good as the next, if not far better.