Beautiful oasis, good location, lavish spa, pleasant staff, poor bathroom, not GL

Overall, but with some qualifications, we enjoyed another return visit to the Botánico, this time for seven nights. The hotel is a calm and elegant oasis in the La Paz district of Puerto de la Cruz, close to its famous Botanical Garden, and a good base for touring the interesting historic towns of northern Tenerife. The city centre is c. 2 km downhill, the northern airport is a c. 30 minutes by taxi and the southern one c. one hour. The hotel continues the botanical theme with its own beautiful garden and offers an outstanding collection of local and Asian art in the public areas. The spacious spa offers a wide range of services and there are also well-designed outdoor pools. There are several city and regional bus services close by and taxis are inexpensive. The hotel also offers a - somewhat limited - shuttle service to the city centre. Breakfast is a sumptuous self-service buffet. There are three elegant restaurants - we found all of them good but not exceptional and quite expensive by local standards. And three of our four dinner bills had a mistake (once in our favour). The bar's club sandwich was the best we can remember. All the staff we met were exceptionally friendly and helpful. WiFi was easy to use but rather slow. Our ‘de luxe’ bedroom, while adequate and with good lighting, was more four star than five star in ambience and furnishing. And the bathroom was three star - small and badly designed, offering a tiny shower with poor controls, and too small a bath. We thought our room rate of over $500 a night (b and b) for a ‘de luxe’ SE facing room rather high in context. And some extras were seriously overpriced, e.g. the laundry charges, and $17 for a glass of ordinary wine from the minibar. The Botánico is generally a relaxing and pleasant experience, and it offers friendly staff and an elegant ambience in its public areas. It’s five star by most criteria but our room, and especially its bathroom, were far from GL status.