Staying at the Rural Casa Grande

We are spending a night in the central part of Almagro – well Almagro is pretty small so if you are actually within the village you are pretty close to the center. The city is an old city with many charming old houses. And the Rural Casa Grande is one of these old houses.

The house is a small hotel which is centered around two inner courtyards – like is the tradition in the old houses in Spain and Morocco. The first courtyard is large and they have put a roof on top – this way the old courtyard has been transformed into an extra large room. They use the courtyard as a large breakfast room and it is nice to sit in the large space in the morning where you can eat and look at the old building.

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The second courtyard is a little smaller and it has been transformed into a recreational area with a swimming pool. The pool is covered – but I tested out the water and it was freezing so nobody would get in the water. I guess it would be nice during the hot summer to go and cool down in the pool in the afternoon.

The rooms are all located on the first floor. The location of the rooms is pretty far from what you would get in a modern and efficient hotel. Here you have to go up a couple of steps to some get to most of the rooms which are all at a slightly different level. I guess this makes the hotel inconvenient for people who have trouble handling stairs – but for most other peoples it is part of the charm of the old hotel.

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The old house has a bit of extra space here and there which it has been impossible for the owners to convert into hotel rooms. Instead they are made into a bit of common area for the guest of the hotel. Nobody really used these common area but they did give a bit of extra charm to the hotel with the small sitting areas and the wooden beams in the roof.

It is illegal to park right in front of the hotel – but fortunately there is a pretty large common parking area a couple of minutes’ walk away from the hotel. One thing to note is this is a local hotel – so nobody in reception speaks any English. And we speak extremely limited Spanish – but we did manage to communicate a bit with the friendly receptionists.