NH Palacio De Santa Marta - Trujillo, Spain     

What a nice surprise ! A beautiful hotel in a small beautiful city ! Centrally located but quiet, tastefully restored in every detail ! Friendly, excellent service, a spacious room with nice bathroom and wonderful views ! Perfect breakfast buffet in wonderful location free parking and a pool with direct views to the stork nests.... What could you ask more ?

We booked our two night stay well in advance using the NH Hotels central booking site, due to Trujillo's Easter celebrations. What the hotel did not tell us was, that from midnight Sunday morning until 6am a very loud rock concert was to be held in the Playa Mayor, just below the hotel. Since the main square was closed the hotel sent us directions. When we arrived a member of the hotel staff offered to show us places to park. But it soon became apparent that his main reason was to get us into the hotel's car park, which charges an extra EUR10 a day. Before that we were just a 5min walk from the hotel on the street. Getting in and out of the hotel's parking is not easy, given the small winding roads. It also did not help that they are packed with people. When we checked in, we were told that we had been upgraded to a 'Premium room'. We later found out that since it was on the front of the hotel and looked directly over the main square, it was one of the noisiest. We did not get a minute of sleep, thanks to the loud music. To make things more annoying, we were asked to move to a another 'non-premium' room for our second night, since we had only reserved a basic room. It turns out that the people, who had stayed in the back of the hotel, since it was quieter, now wanted the room. Not one of the staff offered to help us move our bags. The breakfast buffet was average. But we and other guests did have to ask several times for things to be re-filled. Both rooms were reasonable size, but both had mold around the windows. They need better ventalation. The worst and what I think the most unprofessional part of our stay, was when we checked out. The desk staff did not want to honour the rate we were quoted by the NH Hotel's reservation system, even though we had a firm confirmation number and they had given a credit card to gauranty our reservation. She told us that we would have to contact the NH reservation service directly. This cost us an extra EUR50. A much better option for anyone looking to stay in this lovely town is the Posada Dos Orillas, which is just up the same street.