Hotel La Casona — Hotel in Cabecera Municipal

We were booked at the Hotel La Casona for two nights. The hotel is an old colonial house, 120 years old, converted into 20 rooms, each with a private bath, and as they say, hot water, cable TV and WiFi.  Most of the rooms have multiple beds, sleeping up to 5 people. It advertises itself and quiet and peaceful.  Not so much our experience. First, all the rooms are interior so although there is a window, it looks out at the hall, making the room quite dark, and making it impossible to know what the weather is like. We had one king bed and one single bed and one hardback desk chair, and some shelves for our belongings.  There was barely room to walk around. The WiFi was so weak as to essentially be non-existent. The water in the shower was cold, not hot. There was one bar of soap and no shampoo (so bring your own). When I tried to ask them about it at the front desk, I found that everyone had the same problem.  It had something to do with a weird way to turn on the water.  But that was never explained at check in. The bed was so hard that it felt like we were sleeping on a rock. And quiet? We could hear every person in everyone of the 20 rooms. Yelling in their rooms.  Running up and down the stairs.  Just plain noisy.||||Breakfast, which did not start until 8:00am, is included and served in a dining area with communal seating. It is a traditional Colombian breakfast with a choice of arepas or bread, cheesy scrambled eggs and coffee or hot chocolate. The coffee was terrible (quite a surprise!) so we drank the hot chocolate. There was also a coffee station in the lobby area with equally bad coffee. The lobby, by the way, is not really a lobby but more of a hallway, open to the outside.||||The décor was quite nice, all red and white. There were chairs all around, but I must say, as pretty as they were, they were not very...

It seems like an old, colonial style building -as most do in that little, charming town in the middle of nowhere-... Very well kept and even when the street front is small, is quite a surprise once inside, with a beautiful -open sky- patio, hiding a cute-small garden. The colonial white with red details, serves pretty well to the relax, yet somehow "happy" atmosphere. The rooms are quite comfortable and even when the furniture is aimed to the rustic side, beds are good enough for a nice night of sleep. As the classic colonial style in the area, no glass windows, but you can open the wooden doors to ventilate (it can get pretty worm at mid day). It can become pretty noisy in the mornings, during breakfast time, but at night, you can only hear the tv from the night guard and not too bad. We didn't have breakfast, as one morning left before sunrise (to photograph the Cock-of-the-Rock) and the second morning preferred sleeping late, before the 4 hours driving back to Medellín's Airport, but the café area seems nice and smelled pretty nice in the morning. It has no parking -as it is the case of most hotels in the area- nor you can park near the hotel... You got to park 3 blocks away and walk. All you get to load and unload your car in front of the hotel is 5 minutes and the police is serious about it. It's a basic stay, but...

We spent two nights at La Casona while on a birding tour in Colombia and thought it was very good. It is not fancy by any means but perfectly adequate -- our room actually had three beds (a double and two single beds), and the bathroom was functional if not luxurious. Our guide suggested taking rooms at the back of the hotel to reduce the likelihood of noise from the street, and this worked out well (we had room 11 at the very back), though the hotel is close enough to the main square with its big church for us to have heard the bells very clearly. One potential drawback, depending on how considerate other clients are, is that each room has both a window opening on the hallway (which can be closed) and an air vent (which can't): if people are noisy coming in and going out, it can be bothersome. As in all Colombian hotels, there is 24-hour coffee in the hallway by the reception desk, which is nice if you have an early departure as we did. The hotel is a 15-second walk from the very attractive main square with its many bars and benches, and a number of restaurants including the very good Las Margaritas, where we ate (reviewed separately). The room prices seemed very reasonable to judge by the list posted at the reception. All in all, a good...