Very spacious and quiet hotel, clean, well decorated, with friendly and attentive staff and a superb breakfast and more than adequate dinner. All you expect from a Parador. Our "superior" room was large with a superb bathroom and a comfortable four poster bed with 6 pillows and cushions. Despite no air conditioning, our room was cool and airy with opening the windows but closing the latticed shutters. Would recommend and will stay again. The town itself has limited attractions with a must see cathedral and ancient walls. Next to the cathedral is a small, unpretentious restaurant/cafe which serves an extremely good value menu of the day as an alternative to the formality of the Parador.

Arrived early in the morning after driving from the Bilboa ferry terminal. Were happy to leave bags at reception and go round the town but within 15mins they found us a room. Inside of the hotel was all you would expect from a Parador. Having read all the reviews we expected a good room and it certainly was. Lots of character features and a view over the courtyard. Did not eat in the restaurant.
Overall excellent value for money and good location close to the old town.

Having stayed at the Parador de Santo Domingo de la Calzada a number of years ago we decided to stay at Santo Domingo Bernardo de la Fresneda this time around, and glad we did.

The building is very impressive, with a peaceful courtyard in which one can enjoy quiet and/or a drink. The common areas are every bit as nice as any of the other historical paradors.

While a pleasant 10-minute walk to the centre of Santo Domingo a significant plus over Parador de la Calzada is access and the availability of parking.

We enjoyed a beautiful superior room with a separate sitting room and a nice comfortable bed. As others have mentioned there was no air conditioning and unfortunately no window in the bedroom (there was in the sitting room) to allow good airflow.

Dinner was disappointingly average. Our first courses - a warm goat cheese salad and potatoes with red peppers were both really not very good. Fortunately the main courses (rice with mushrooms, vegetable and Manchego cheese and fried trout with mushroom and ham sauce) were somewhat better. The service was not very attentive, actually quite poor. Perhaps it is unfair to judge by only one experience but that's all we have, and the quality and value of our dinner in combination with the service was on the whole poor to average. The breakfast buffet was however very enjoyable, similar to that at other paradors.

In spite of the disappointing dinner the Parador de Santo Domingo Bernardo de la Fresneda is an awesome building, worthy of the stature of an historical parador, an impressive place in which to stay, on the edge of a historical and interesting town literally on the Camino de Santiago.

Beautiful 4-poster bed superior room in a rambling, atmospheric monastery building: a classic Parador experience. The building is located immediately on the right as you drive into town from the west (the small car park lies alongside the eastern wall). It is a 10 minute walk into this small sleepy pilgrim town in La Rioja. There are plenty of restaurants - we ate in the cheap and cheerful La Piedra (close to the Cathedral). The TV channel selection was not working while we were there, but we were told this was a temporary problem. Rather amazingly, smoking was allowed in our room, for which they get only 4 instead of 5 stars. Because there are 2 paradors in this town good internet deals can commonly be found, and this makes a good stop on the way south from Santander or Bilbao towards Zaragoza and the Med coast.