PROS: Great location for the cost/night. Ricardo, the owner of the hostal, was very responsive and booking by e-mail went without a hitch. I also e-mailed him a couple logistic questions after making the booking and he responded to each inquiry within 24 hrs. Like most of the reviews have mentioned, the location is perfect, you are pretty much steps away from Plaza Mayor (literally, you go up these steps and you're there), Puerta del Sol, and Cava Baja and Cava Alta, which are pretty much where all the restaurants and tapas bars are. My brother and I also found this great market called Mercado de San Miguel, which was great for tapas or dinner near the hostal.
CONS: There was no A/C in our room, only a dinky ceiling fan which only spread the hot air. As we went around the end of June, it was extremely hot and I couldn't sleep. It was the worst part of our trip but it was probably my fault for not making sure that the room was airconditioned. It was also advertised that there would be wifi but the first night we were there, the wifi was out. After I told Ricardo, he fixed it the next day. Also, I am not an awesome Spanish speaker but I'm not horrible either and we were able to pretty much communicate well enough with Ricardo and the other hostal staff but some nights, my Spanish would be worse off and it was a struggle to let them know what we wanted.
- Hostal La Macarena Hotel Madrid
