A much-needed break
Both my boyfriend and I needed a break. A lot has happened in the last months and with the summer being fully present (and pressing on our brains inside the home, lol) we really needed to get out for a bit. For my boyfriend, it was probably even needed more because he worked so many hours and sat inside our walk-in closet/office from 8 in the morning until about 6.30 every day, with the exception of the weekly operational meetings day because then it would be until 10/11 pm that day.
When we moved in, he claimed the walk-in closet to turn into his office, lucky I had the bedroom office (much bigger, airco, and very important a window). We now swapped workplaces for the (hopefully) few more months that we will stay in this apartment and I'm typing my first blog from the "walk-in-office".
Hotel
I proposed to book a night in a hotel so that we could have a good day of swimming and have a holiday feeling during that day. The price I found was quite good, so my boyfriend said let's do two nights as one is always such a hassle, which is true. You arrive in the afternoon and have to check out at 10 AM quite often. Luckily this hotel has a 12 PM check out making it a bit more pleasant. I found a package deal on their website adding half-board as well as a gift in the room and a romantic dinner to the package plus a wellness ticket for both. The Wellness and gym is adults only, but there was a toy library (daycare type) downstairs with supervision from 6 to 9 PM. to keep the kids busy while parents were enjoying the Spa or Gym, Perfect!
Kittens
As we have three kittens at home, the hotel needed to be within reasonable distance for us to drive home every day to check on them. I think we could have skipped the first evening but I didn't feel comfortable as it was the first time they were home alone for more than 2/3 hours so we drove home then as well. All was fine, it was a useless drive but we cleaned the litterboxes and filled up the water bottles.
Check-in
We were a bit late checking in because I had issues getting out of bed that morning but thankfully, we were there around 3 PM giving us some time to check the room, have lunch, and then, of course, swim! We were amazed by the surroundings of Hotel Envia Spa and Wellness Resort Almeria.
We were greeted and had an easy check-in where we were told that the next evening they had a special dinner prepared for us. We were quite in awe of the hotel in the first place. A five-star hotel, with very big and wide hallways, and big rooms so it seemed.
The hallway seemed endless, every few meters there was a bench on one side and a table on the other side, and in the middle fake plants and tables. Pretty useless decoration if you ask me as who will ever use these side tables and big tables in the middle?
We entered the room and found a huge bathtub with a separate shower and a big room with two double beds as well as a dining table, a sitting corner, and a desk. There was also a huge balcony with a pool view.
A little gift:
And a bigger gift was included in the package I booked:
The rest of the room:
Too bad the light wasn't great so the pictures are a bit bad, sorry about that. I would have taken more later if nothing happened in the evening. But first, check out the pool view:
We were so ready to take a plunge, but the boyfriend was hungry so we left for a tapa first to the cafeteria. It was bloody hot in there and not a great place to sit, to be honest. I only took these two pictures:
Tapa marisco/shellfish
A very chocolate muffin, which was clear without me mentioning it, lol
Hot in the room
We weren't in the room too long at once time the first day to be sure that the air conditioning wasn't working. I read some reviews mentioning this issue making me want to check it as I know my boyfriend will not sleep (seriously, not even a bit) if he can't turn on the airco or has some fresh air blowing through the house (read: I will get bitten by mosquitos at night). There was a fan blowing above the beds so I was hoping this would make up for it. I felt it was ok during the afternoon, but the worst heat had yet to come at that time.
We went for a swim, came back to change, and tried again, without luck. We felt it could be us missing a button somewhere on the device to change settings but we tried them all, so I was already feeling a bit nervous by the time we dropped off our daughter at the kid's entertainment area when we drove back home for the kittens to check on them. We came back and picked her up to get ready for dinner.
Buffet
I didn't expect much from the buffet even though the hotel is a 5-star restaurant, but I have to say that it was a bit disappointing. Our daughter is a difficult eater and we were lucky that they had a very simple chicken soup that she liked. She ate two bowls of them with some bread and dessert. The desserts looked nice but I couldn't even be bothered taking pictures, to be honest.
One thing I really enjoyed was a couscous salad with some veggies, this was really good and well balanced. Simple stuff like cooked potatoes was not done yet, but this was not an incident, the second evening, all the potato dishes were not cooked long enough and were very hard to eat. Anyway, we had dinner and we wanted to head back to the room.
Airco was definitely not working
This is the point where we decided to call the reception, as the room stayed at 29 degrees, and with the 15 minutes we sat inside, we were already starting to get boiled while we didn't even touch the (usually synthetic) sheets and pillows on the bed, making it even hotter. The first thing they said was: "The airco doesn't work when the door is open", I said, of course, the door is closed, and wondered what this stupid response was about. He should have asked me if I had the door open instead. He said he'd send someone. This is the point where it got ridiculous and comical at the same time.
Earlier that day, a young guy, let's say he was about 18 years old started to paint a small stroke of the ceiling in the beginning of the hallway. He was doing this for about 8 hours in total, maybe more, but that's how far we counted by witnessing this. Every time we passed him, we wondered if he'd be paid by the hour. He didn't look like he knew what he was doing and we admit to laughing a bit later on because we felt a bit sorry for him.
Too bad for us, this same guy was the airco guy, or this is what we were made to believe, lol. He stood there pressing all the buttons (as we had too, and my guy is quite technical so I didn't really doubt his judgment when he said it's not working) but ok, fair enough, one has to double-check. Then he took his stairs and a temperature meter to put this in the airo to measure. Also fair enough, but he did it 5 times, lol. It was literally the only thing he did and he really looked like he was clueless. He tried to tell us that it's a low-capacity airco and it will drop. More than 30 minutes later, it dropped almost to 28.5 degrees, if you do a bit of math, we'd be sleeping by the time the sun would arise as it was not going to drop faster than a degree by the hour or so.
Boyfriend had enough of it
We were tired and wanted to chill instead of waiting for this guy who clearly wasn't going to fix this issue. I felt immediately this was just a way to keep us quiet and think it will drop in a few hours, but I read the reviews so I knew at least some rooms had this issue. The airo was centralized though, but funnily enough, the restaurant had a very cool and powerful airco, in fact, we sat there feeling cold during dinner. I guess all capacity was in the restaurants, not the rooms.
He went downstairs to the reception, while I was stuck with the "maintenance guy" and his temperature meter. My boyfriend returned with the news we could get a room on the 6th floor and we could pack, they'd bring our luggage. I felt unsure if this was the solution so I asked the guy to please first check the room's airco before we left the room for a worse one. He stayed away for 20 minutes or so, which was confirmation enough to me that this was not it either.
I was right, he returned saying it was not great either. Ok so how do we solve this? I booked a room with airco, he can't sleep without it we might as well return home. They offered another option, an apartment. They said it has softer beds as well. I forgot to tell you how shitty the beds were in this 5-star hotel, it was definitely going to cause my back and hip to hurt for days. Softer bed, let's go and check it first (I really wanted to make sure it was better).
We were guided to the apartment and the guys even told us this is not ok in a 5-star hotel. This airco issue was nothing unknown to them, let alone the reception or management. They are just too greedy to fix it properly. I'm so happy that we weren't there later in July or worse, August. I'd probably pack my stuff and return home to sleep instead.
This was part one of our blog about the hotel, I will share our (better) experiences in the apartment tomorrow. So yes, a little spoiler, the apartment's airco worked!