Las Palmas GC and the Hotel Madrid

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We spent Saturday night in the Hotel Madrid. It's mainly famous for being the place where Franco spent the night before leaving the Canaries for Mainland Spain. I don't think it can have changed a lot since then. It may have been swept, but not much redecoration has been undertaken. It has photographs of history all over the walls. Engels, Garbo, Loren... Even the music was.... They were playing Sargeant Pepper in the bar.

The hallway leading to our room was full of immense and very healthy plants. Open to the outside via a balcony it had a fountain which even ran some of the time. Our room had a tiled floor and a rug with robots on it. I am not sure that the robot rug was strictly congruous, but there was no effort to be congruous or historical. It just happened.

Our room had a balcony overlooking one of the main squares so it was not very quiet. Shouting in the streets till very late. Then, before the early Sunday morning traffic, a host of songbirds in the dawn chorus. Really a whole load of them. They must live in these incredible trees that I don't know what they are.

We just drifted around most of the afternoon and we went to Santa Catalina which is the area they are having most of the Carnaval in. Carnaval started on 3rd Feb and goes on till 25th Feb. The theme of Carnaval 2009 is Pirates. The square in Santa Catalina has this huge film set pirate ship in it. We didn't see any pirates though. Nor did we see any Carnaval.

We had a very good Italian meal. The restaurant didn't even start to fill up till 10:30 by which time we were more or less just drinking the coffee and paying the bill.

Our trip home was marginally disrupted. The flight to Madrid was delayed (probably weather - we had a couple of interesting landings) so we couldn't catch our connection and there was some problem booking us onto a later flight. Not sure what the problem was (suspect it was a ticketing software thing) as there was plenty of room on the plane and most of the people on the plane were only there because they had also missed their originally booked connections.

Finally got home around 11:00.

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Comments

[Guy who lives in Las Palmas]

HOtel Madrid
Nice text! The hotel Madrid is really one of the nicest and most special Hotels in Las Palmas! If you are interested in more information about Las Palmas you can find it on www.las-palmas-24.com

[Christa Eibeck]

Hotel Madrid Gran Canaria
There are not much informations about the Hotel Madrid in the web. Are the rooms in the hotel o.k. - it is a very old building - are the rooms so oldfashioned too? Is there a bathroom in the room or outside on the floor? Is the service o.k. and the room in an aceptable form clean? I would be happy if you give me more informations?

[Omentide]

Hotel Madrid
It's a historic hotel. Luxurious in the 30's. We found in comfortable enough (yes, we had a private bathroom which worked) but it is not a fully modernised chain-type hotel. Personally I prefer the atmosphere and the history.