The Parador de Guadalupe is lovely - an ancient and magnificant building successfully transformed into one of Spain's national hotels. Built around a lovely orange filled courtyard with tumbling water it's location certainly compliments the amazing Royal Monastery of Santa Maria opposite. Drinks in the courtyard in the evening bring out the romantic! The rooms, furnished with antiques are large and comfortable - in fact almost everything is perfect except the restaurant. The room itself pleasant enough but the beautiful Moorish lamps too bright, service was not particularly friendly and the food was unimaginative and tasteless. Our starter of the local speciality, Morcilla sausage ... consisted of an enormous quantity of large hunks of boiled blood sausage in an earthenware bowl - boiled to an anemic pale purple it was tasteless and extremely off-putting. The two mains which followed were not much better : I had asked for the milk lamb - a small leg, roasted dry and unadorned sat on the plate begging me to put it further out of its misery - I was not that brave. My husband decided to tackle another speciality of the house Migas - a mound of fried bread crumbs surrounded with unattractive pieces of pork, chorizo and more of the boiled blood sausage : what on earth was this? The price of this heavy fare doesn't come lightly : as in most towns where there is a captive audience of worshippers and the choice of alternatives is limited the Parador's restaurant has decided to make as much profit as possible - my recommendation would be to head for one of the many nondescript cafes in town where the food will doubtless be similar but hopefully served with a little more flair for half the price.
- Parador De Hotel Guadalupe
