Casona del Duende — Hotel in Alájar

We stayed just one night on our touring holiday, and would love to return. Our welcome to Andalucía was in pouring rain, but Casona del Duende was warm, comfortable and hospitable despite limited shared language. The ground floor reception/dining areas are spacious and nicely decorated (a bit fancy for my taste, but it's their home not mine). Our cosy room had a little window looking over neighbouring roofs and a corner of the street - quiet, everything dripping in the rain. Nice, functional bathroom. ||(We ate dinner at El Padrino, just a few steps up the road and had an excellent meal, but note that it is open weekends only.)||Breakfast was excellent. A huge variety of cakes and savouries, some home-made, fruit, breads.... fresh orange juice, tea, coffee etc etc. Need to go back to try more! Due to the weather we didn't go into the garden, but it looked very pretty. ||The hosts helped us to the car with our bags, holding umbrellas for us. I took a walk around the streets and actually really enjoyed seeing the water dripping off all the old roofs and cascading down pipes and gutters. But we will return in...

Because we wanted to do the hiking round trip to Linares and the "forgotten hamlet" Los Madroñeros we decided to stay here for two nights in early June and are very glad we did. Since we were the only guests we could park right in front of the house and the owners, Ana and Vladimir, were the most gracious and helpful hosts one can imagine. When discussing our hiking plans with Vladimir during breakfast he suggested to do the round trip clock wise (contrary to Guy Hunter Watt's hiking book) because Spring rains had washed out the track and it would be easier going down hill to Linares than reverse. How right he was! Unfortunately, we had picked one of the hottest days (33 ºC), thus when we came back Ana greeted us with two ice-cold bottles of water. A gesture we highly appreciated. ||She also helped us with an evening reservation at the Michelin-featured restaurant "Arrieros" in Linares although they are open only for lunch.||All in all a...

This is really a beautiful and relaxing place. Or better, it would be if the rooster of the neighbours would not act like the Pavarotti of the poultry, starting to sing at around 4.00 am in the morning, to continue till 8.00 am. If you want to sleep, you need to bring steel ear plugs. Apart from that, room was nice (even if there are some with the terrace that I presume are better), but I would have appreciated to find a hair dryer in the room (that you need to ask) and also have the possibility to have an iron (or to iron, even as a paid service, but we were told that there wasn't any iron in the place). Breakfast is good, with mostly homemade products. Bread was fantastic. All drinks, like coffee or milk, or tea or juice must be requested to the owner. Parking is not available, you need to park around, but that was not a big problem. The village is super nice, a favourite of people who like...