Maria Elena Palace - Madrid, Spain 

This hotel is in a road near Grand Via and Sol and is hence in a perfect location for the central sights of Madrid. As it is down a side street, there is no noise which means a peaceful sleep at night. The rooms are well appointed, clean and well maintained. The bed was large and comfortable. The only downside was that the room was a bit small and there was nowhere to sit down in the room to read a book / relax apart from on the bed. The staff were very efficient - we initially thought that there was a problem with the air conditioner, and after contacting reception someone came up straight away. In fact, we realised afterwards that the aircon cuts out if the window is open - clearly a sensible idea. Madrid has everything for a short city break - the Prado etc, good parks, restaurants (we ate in an interesting Peruvian restaurant in Cheuca, Theatriz in Salamanca and the cheap and interesting Bazaar in Cheuca), bars and excellent Tapas! We even took a day trip to Segovia on the high speed AVE train, arriving in under 40mins... The hotel provided a perfect location to return to after our various sightseeing trips around the City. It meant that we could drop in and rest before going off again for dinner / shopping etc. Highly recommended.

We stayed at the Maria Elena Palace for 3 nights in May. I was really pleased with our choice. A beautiful hotel in a quite place close to Puerto Del Sol (2 mins to walk). The hotel was realy clean, the rooms spacious and the hotel staff were very helpful when asked anything. We did have the breakfast every morning and although this was expensive it was good, they even made hot boiled eggs to order every morning for my husband! For a city hotel this is excellent, we couldnt believe how big the rooms were. When I booked online direct with the hotel we asked for a non smoking and quiet room. I dont know if it made a difference but it was nice a quite, we even had a balcony overlooking the front of the hotel. I would highly recomend this hotel, it has been one of our best choices over the years of city hotels. If travelling by metro, like we did, we found the easiest route was line 8 to Colombia, line 9 to Principle de Vergara and then line 2 to Sevilla. I would recomend coming off at Sevilla rather than Sol as this is a much quiter station and equal distance to the hotel. The metro was really easy to use and with good sign posting.