Well I was in The Buik's good books. He wanted us to go away for our 1st year wedding anniversary. We always take a 3 week holiday in our place in Marbella, and he thought it would be a great idea to fly to Barcelona for a 4 day trip. Barcelona is somewhere that everyone loves apparantly. Every bugger and his wife has been apart frm us it would seem and internal flights within Spain with Clickair are dirt cheap, we took advantage of this and booked ourselves a 4 day trip.
The hard work was to come. We very rarely stay in hotels. Well I don't anyway. The Buik, on the other hand, more or less lives in hotels. He has travelled with his job for the best part of 20 years (god that makes him sound ancient hahaha). His work are quite generous and allow him a moderate level of luxury, more so as his work takes him away from home so much. So when we decide to stay in a hotel in our leisure time, the expectations and standard of hotel he likes to stay in, are, well, how can I put this, bank account destroying. I can't tempt The Buik into a Premier Lodge hotel for any amount of Cristal. He doesn't do budget with work so he refuses to do budget when we are on holiday. You should see me trying to get him onto an Easyjet flight. It's a nightmare.

Anyway, I initially made a reservation at the Ritz Carlton hotel, Hotel Arts located near the beach in Barcelona. I managed to get us a fabulous deal on a Club level room (with all sorts of cocktails/champagne/food etc thrown in, that's right up my street) and that was that sorted out. Until I read reviews of it on Tripadvisor and people (note Americans) were complaining about the location of it and it not being 'near anything'. I stupidly decided to cancel the reservation and look at staying somewhere more 'central', whatever that was.



Hotel 1898 at that time (April 2007) occupied the top spot on Tripadvisor as the Number 1 hotel in Barcelona. After reading countless fantastic reviews about the place, I booked our 3 night trip and chose a Deluxe room with a private terrace outside. Room rates at that time were 370 Euros a night - and for that we were expecting really something quite special. Gold plated taps, foot massages on demand and a never ending supply of service and smiles, that sort of thing.

God - how wrong we were.

We arrived at the hotel, which is located on the tourist hellhole which is aka La Ramblas. Horrid place. I'll got into that later. Beautiful looking hotel inside though. They've not scrimped on the decor and it is fabulously furnished. We were greeted by an army of staff, who told us that our room wasnt ready (11am, which is fine) and we could go take breakfast on the roof terrace. I was gagging for a cup of tea, so we went to check this out. What a fabulous roof terrace Hotel 1898. That is the best bit about it.



We arrived at the end of 'breakfast' apparantly and was told by a rather helpful young man, that 'You cannot drink tea because breakfast finished 1 minute ago'. My mouth kind of opened and I stared at him in surprise. If I'm paying 370 Euros a night for this room, I jolly well want a cup of tea and I want one now. He came back with a drinks menu, which - at 11am, was rather bizarre. I love cocktails as much as the next person, but a mojito - at 11am?!!!! On an empty stomach???!!!! Well, we are on holiday, so a mojito it is :) It took another 30 minutes for the mojito to arrive, whilst the staff, did, well I'm not sure what the staff were doing, but they weren't serving us. The remanants of breakfast lay festering in the blazing sun across from us. Serving staff just walked past the mess without a care in the world.
The mojito eventually arrived and it was fabulous. One of the best ones I've tasted outside of Nikki Beach. But we kept it to just the one or things would have turned nasty. We finished up and went to check into our room (which would be ready at midday we were told).
Good lord. Situated right next door to the elevators (I'm not sure if the reception staff had honoured my request for a 'nice room as it is our 1st year wedding anniversary, maybe they're plain sadistic), we were pretty pissed off by that stage. Being situated next to elevators annoys the Buik senselessly. He's such a fussy bugger.
We opened the door and the tiniest room awaited us. I'm sure my downstairs toilet is bigger. Very clean I hasten to add, the bathroom was really nice and spotless, awash with lush toiletries I would be nicking later. The terrace was fabulous and that more than made up for the pokey room.
We started to unpack and I phoned Housekeeping for an iron/ironing board. They informed me due to 'safety issues' no iron/ironing board was available to guests and we would have to pay for any items that would need cleaned/ironed. I put the phone down in amazement - and The Buik phoned back because he thought I'd lost the plot. Nope. It is not possible to iron your clothes in Hotel 1898 because we are all iron wielding arsonists and may set fire to the place. Despite that if you were really dead set on setting fire to the place, an iron is the last thing you'd choose.
You never guess what we did next. We traipsed to Carrefour Express next door, and bought a travel iron and ironed our clothes on the ottoman. Ridiculous. This was supposed to be a treat for us and we were lugging around travel irons and ironing clothes on ottomans. The Buik wanted to check out there and then. He refused to pay 150 Euros to have our clothes ironed out of principal and he said that Hotel 1898 would get no more of our money other than the room rate.
In short, the service sucked big time. We had a dinner reservation with some friends on the 2nd night of our trip - and had to wait 30 minutes for a cab, whilst the reception desk personnel looked on. Customers of the hotel over the road had designated concierge and were getting taxis quicker than anything.
2 days later, we checked out and the bill came to over 1400 Euros. God I felt sick. Really really sick. We hadnt even eaten in the hotel out of principal. A few cocktails of an evening and the room rate with IVA added on. I gulped and signed the invoice. It would be beans on toast for Blondie and the Buik, for the coming few days.
I made the decision to write a review on Tripadvisor, as I feel people should know what to expect when they come to this hotel. A guy had made the same mistake we did, of booking the Hotel Arts, reading all the negative reviews by whinging Americans that are too lazy and fat to walk anywhere - cancelled that reservation and booked the Hotel 1898 instead. He had read my review and found it bizarre that I was the only person in the sea of low level expecatation guests, that had found it crap. He emailed me privately to tell me that my review was spot on - and him and his wife were so annoyed and disappointed, it ruined their trip.
I'm glad to see that Hotel 1898 no longer occupies the top spot in Barcelona on Tripadvisor. It has dropped down to Number 3. Not low enough if you ask me. If you are charging this sort of money for a room, you should provide your guests with exemplary service. And an ironing board. And a cup of tea whenever they bloody well feel like it.

Never will we darken Hotel 1898's doors again.