A quiet and comfortable hotel with fabulous staff

Our room (Double Deluxe Ocean View 437) was very comfortable – excellent bed – the spacious bathroom had two basins, a bath and a separate shower cubicle – the balcony was pleasantly cool and shady up until about 5pm after which it got the evening sun. On request, we had a kettle with teas, instant coffees, cups etc. We were also kindly given a Nespresso machine and coffee pods – I think these are normally for more expensive rooms but as the hotel was nowhere near full, they offered us the opportunity to have one. Breakfast was a fairly wide buffet plus an egg station, making, amongst other things, excellent omelettes and crepes. There was certainly enough variety to ring the changes in a 10 night stay. The hotel restaurants have expensive evening menus but there are several nice places within 5 minutes walk plus plenty of choice in the town centre – a 20 minutes downhill walk or there is a regular hotel shuttle bus with the last one down at 18.40. The main swimming pool is long enough to swim lengths and is well heated. There were always towels, sunbeds and parasols available and a cheerful member of staff on hand to assist since the parasols were quite unwieldy to put up or to move. There are two tennis courts, of which one has a decent surface (some sort of all weather carpet). And two ping pong tables although one of them is warped with a broken net. In practice, there was little demand and we found that we and the friends with whom we had travelled were able to use the good tennis court and the good ping pong table whenever we chose. As we were just playing socially for a bit of fun, we borrowed the hotel’s tennis racquets and ping pong bats. If you are a serious competitor, you would want to bring your own racquet and bat. There is also a putting green with 18 holes which is lovingly maintained. Using it costs 15 Euros per person so we did so only once. The Spa has a small indoor pool and a small outdoor pool plus a few different saunas and steam rooms. There is also a gym with the usual equipment – on the three occasions on which I used the gym, I was the only person there. The staff were, without exception, charming and friendly and they all seemed genuinely keen to help. My wife was unlucky enough to spend three days in hospital in Puerto de la Cruz – special mention has to go to Santiago, the restaurants manager, and his catering team for their exceptional support, going to the trouble of making specific items to enable my wife to follow the restricted diet given to her by the hospital on discharge. And many thanks to Susana in Guest Relations for her concern and for the fabulous roses. If you are looking for a quiet and comfortable hotel in or around Puerto de la Cruz, I would imagine that the Botanico is hard to beat.