Initial Thoughts on Barcelona Trip - Part 2: The Hotel

The Hotel Majestic has two important things going for it: its location and its rooftop pool and deck. And the beds were comfortable. Perhaps these even outweigh the negatives we encountered during our 9 night stay.

The Majestic is a 300 room hotel located at the corner of Passeig de Gracias and Valencia. Passeig de Gracias is the major artery leading through L'Eixample, the late 19th century upscale residential/commercial/tourist area that includes the majority of the Gaudi-designed buildings. It connects the medieval city and the port (to the east) with the trendy, more residential Gracias area to the west. Valencia is one of the major north-south streets running through L'Exaimple.

From the Majestic, you can walk (or take the Metro) to almost anywhere.

It is an old hotel, containing 300 rooms and apparently comprising three separate buildings, although they have been seamlessly connected (you can see the separation best when noticing that hotel hallways are sometimes surprisingly interrupted by short flights of steps, as the floor levels in the properties are not exactly at the same level).

It has been a hotel since the 1920s, and was refurbished in the 1990s.

We stayed at the Majestic because E. wanted a roof top pool. And, as I said, this is quite an asset. The tenth floor roof contains a small pool, both lounge and sitting chairs, umbrellas, and (at night) a bar. It offers very nice views of the city in three directions (every way but south). During the day, you can get cold drinks and sandwiches, and the fitness room is located off the deck. It is altogether pleasant, even if a Coke cost you 5 euros ($6.75), and a chicken sandwich (admittedly pretty good) cost 14 ($19.00). One evening, we each had a pre-dinner glass of Cava (this one, a dry sparkling wine, with a beautiful ruby red color). I shudder to think what that cost us.

Many of the rooms are small, as you would expect in an old hotel. Particularly those which face away from the street, on to a not-very attractive courtyard faced by all of the buildings on the block. And, because we were not paying top dollar for our rooms (2 rooms x 9 days x top dollar = unaffordable), this is where we were. That, however, was not a problem, because what we lost in views, we probably gained in quiet.

But there were several problems. For one, there was reconstruction underway on the lobby floor. We were told that it was not planned reconstruction but was the result of the massive power outage that had hit the city three weeks before our trip, causing damage to the electrical system in the hotel. Perhaps this was the case, but if so, the Majestic seemed to have been the only building so affected.

At any rate, the main lobby, directly on the corner, next to the ground floor Armani store, was blocked off and closed, and a side entrance on Valencia led to a small, makeshift lobby that clearly was overtaxed. The reception desk was to your left as you entered; it was big enough for perhaps three clerks, but there were usually about 6 there (I assume the main lobby is much larger), and they tended to fall over each other. At almost any hour, of the six clerks, five were male, all were perfectly dressed and coiffed, and their average age was about 60. They were rather formal, and lacked warmth. Their ability to speak English varied.

The hotel has two sets of elevators. The Valencia elevators, nearest the makeshift lobby, were very small, but convenient. But four days after our arrival, they were shut down to the lobby floor, and only the Passeig de Gracias elevators (around two corners, bordered by temporary walls cutting off the real lobby) were usable. This meant, for example, that we needed to climb two different flights of stairs on the fourth floor to get to our room. Not sure what the handicapped do.

The Majestic is clearly a very busy hotel. There are guests like us, who stay for a week or so. But the hotel also caters to cruise ships (Barcelona being a popular port for the start or end of Mediterranean cruises), and there were large parties of cruise ship customers (I am not sure what else to call them), who stay for a night or two, and who totally and completely overwhelm the temporary lobby, as they and their baggage are picked up by their buses in the morning. And there are other groups, such as the Vanderbilt University women's (girl's ?) basketball team, which arrived looking like they needed nothing more than fashion advice.

But this was not the biggest problem. We stayed in Barcelona for 9 days in part because we did not want to have to pack our bags and move around, as we usually do. But, it turned out that our plans did not work out. E. and I were put into a smoking room. We had requested a non-smoking room. They may have tried to cover up the fact that this was a smoking room; you could not smell the smoking because it was masked by a extraordinarily strong perfume smell from some sort of sickening air freshener. You could get rid of the smell by turning on the air conditioning fan at full blast, but because this was a small room, you were soon living in a meat freezer and, as soon as the fan was turned off, and because the perfume had been blown away, you felt like you were in an R. J. Reynolds factory. This was obviously not satisfactory, so on day #2, we had to pack our bags, and they moved us to a new, slightly better room, on a non-smoking floor.

M. and H. had it even tougher. Their room seemed fine, and so it was for the first few days, but then they got a message that they had to move because their room (on the first floor, right above the lobby floor) was being taken off-line because of the reconstruction work being done. Now, wouldn't you think that they would have known this before they put someone in it for 9 days? At any rate, they had to completely repack, and then they were moved to a room, which had only one bed. And they were told that, yes this was a mistake, but it could not be corrected until the next day.

I went down to the lobby and complained that the move itself was not justified, and that forcing them to stay in a one bed room, with a promise of a further change the next day (which may or may not be fulfilled) was not right, either. After much conversation among the six clerks, they found a room that was available with two beds, and agreed that they could be moved there immediately. And so they were, and it was an upgraded room, much bigger than the one that we had.

But the desk was rather ungraceful, and completely unapologetic, about the entire chain of events. The best that they could come up with was what they told me: "OK, we have taken care of your daughters. Of course someone is coming in this evening thinking that they will have that room. But you know how it is, whenever you solve one problem, you create another."

The Dolma restaurant (ten tables, world class chef, very, VERY expensive, is located on the ground floor of the Majestic). It was temporarily moved to somewhere on the first floor. The restaurant usually found on the first floor (elegant, and only VERY expensive, was moved to the basement level). We ate an neither. And don't know if anyone else did while we were there. Luckily, the Cafe de Francesca, just across the street, served good coffee and pastries, and we breakfasted there every morning. I bet they miss us now.