El Palace Hotel Barcelona — Hotel in Barcelona

It was the last hotel in Barcelona. We checked in and rested at the 'el palace' hotel. Around 8 pm my wife went to the glass shower booth for a shower. I accepted my wife's clothes and gently closed the glass doors of the shower booth. At that time, the glass door shattered with a popping sound just before it closed. Shattered glass fell on our bodies. Blood flowed all over my body. I checked my wife's condition and was bleeding from the ankle. My fingers were deeply smashed by torn glass and bleeding. There was a long scar on the thigh. The blood continued to bleed from various parts of our body. We decided not to panic. I put all towels on the floor and washed the glass fragments that had fallen on our body. The blood did not stop. Fortunately, no serious wounds required surgery. so I called the hotel concierge and asked for an ambulance that there was a serious accident. The staff did not understand English well. First of all, he sent housekeeping, and a female employee who did not speak English came. There is blood in our bodies. Nevertheless, the staff stared intently at the shower booth without thinking about an ambulance. I got angry and called the front desk again. Another employee came up. I asked him for an ambulance. We prepared to go to the hospital and came down to the hotel front. But the ambulance did not come after 15 minutes. We were waiting for an ambulance. Hotel staff murmured among themselves. My wife said that they were excited. No one asked us about our physical condition. Nobody tried to help us. Nobody told us sorry. No staff spoke English well. Nobody paid attention to us. This is the worst hotel, my wife and I said. We felt like strangers. It was racist. I called the Korean Embassy. We informed the hospital near the embassy, ​​and we took a taxi ourselves and headed to the hospital. YES! The staffs did nothing. No ambulances came, no taxis. We took a taxi ourselves and went to the hospital. We stayed at the hospital for 7 to 8 hours. Ruined our honeymoon. After treatment we returned to the hotel and the staff had changed and seemed to have no idea of ​​the accident. We said the room number and then they led us to a new room. We did not hear a word of sorry at this time. We felt so bad. So we carried the luggage ourselves. It was a very sad trip. Four days were missing during the 13-day honeymoon. On our honeymoon we had the worst experience. We have never had this experience anywhere. We ruined the rest of the stay because of the trauma. We couldn't go outside and suffer severe colds and pneumonia. My wife said she wanted to go back to Korea quickly. I was so sad that there was nothing I could do. Nobody came to our room. No one apologized. And it was a checkout day. We went to the hotel front and asked the female staff to check out. She did not seem to be aware of the accident. I asked her. Do not know about the accident that was in our room? She said. do not know. And spoke Spanish. I was really upset. At that time, There was a male staff who helped us check in. His name was Pablo Aldemira. He was the first and last person in the hotel who said sorry for the accident that had happened to us. He sincerely apologized to us. He gave me a business card to contact him about compensation issues. And we were compensated for the accident. In fact, compensation are not important. I think their actions are important. All but one employee disappointed us. It was a very sad trip. Four days were missing during the 13-day honeymoon. On our honeymoon we had the worst experience. We have never had this experience anywhere. We thank to Pablo Aldemira for helping solve the problem. And we demand reflection from all the employees who disappointed us that day. We will not visit this hotel again for life. The glass door of the shower booth can be broken by various phenomena. But trust between people should not be...

I have stayed in many hotels around North America and Europe and this is one of the all-around best hotels I have stayed in.

Location - it’s excellent. We didn’t rent a car and we were able to walk to the beach (1.5 km) and many great restaurants and bars to count along with most of the attractions that the city has to offer.

Hotel - beautiful. With an amazing grand hall, cool rooftop restaurant and pool and an impressively retro nightclub we were very happy to spend time in the hotel even when not in our room.

Room - lovely place to be. We had a lower class room and I can’t imagine you would need anything else. Generously sized with an excellent mattress, large bathroom and one of the best showers I have ever been in, powerful but relaxing. Very quiet, I slept well all 7 nights of my stay.

Service/Staff - amazing and friendly. I was a bit worried about not speaking Catalan or Spanish. Everyone from the front desk to concierge team to the restaurant staff are all very accustomed to interacting with English speakers and accepting my very remedial attempts at Catalan with a smile.

Concierge Team - we worked with three different members and they were all super gracious and helpful. We booked a “hop on, hop off” bus tour, visit to La Sagrada Familia and a tour of Camp Nou were the FC Barcelona football team plays. The staff made this all super easy for us making sure we understood everything we would need to know to make the visits go smoothly.

Food - we had three meals - a snack in the nightclub, dinner in the grand hall and room service. All were good but the dinner in the grand hall was one of the best meals I have had. This is saying a lot as we had 10+ meals during our stay in Barcelona and 8 of them were excellent. It felt like it would be hard to get a bad meal in this city!

Barcelona - it was my first visit to Spain and I fell in love with this city. It’s clean, friendly, sunny and accommodates English speakers very well. The architecture is stunning and the beach is beautiful. It has everything you can possibly want in terms of shopping, restaurants and bars. Do watch out for pickpockets but we were mindful of this and didn’t have or see any problems. Do be prepared for a slower and laid-back pace compared to the...

If you get the chance to visit Barcelona, and you enjoy cocktails, I hope you have the time to visit the hotel bar in El Palace Hotel Barcelona.

Once you get there, go straight past the front desk, right through the well chosen and tasteful decorations. Ignore the fact that famous people come in all the time, and that you feel a bit out of place. Don't worry that you might run into Ronnie Woods of the Rolling Stones, who is a regular there. Ignore the fact that Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen, and Steven Spielberg closed down the Amar restaurant inside the hotel (Tom Hanks was late, I heard it was a delayed flight). Walk straight up to the bar, and hope that Fabio is the person you see on duty that night.

Why? What's he doing? Why is this guy so special? He's experimenting and constantly looking for better, at the highest level. If you've had a cocktail or two in your time, you might believe that you've seen it all, and it's best to stick to what you know. To stay conventional and just get what you've maybe had before. I can't tell you enough that this would be a mistake.

At a 5 star hotel in Barcelona, his (and his coworker's) original recipes make the menu and the cut. In a city where 3 of the top 10 cocktail bars in the world are present, he's trying things differently, and he's making his mark.

More than just some extra description for about Fabio's professional prowess and recipe expertise (I had his original recipe, 'Tierra de Jerez' at least 4+ times, thanks for asking), this is writing is about what I think makes up humanity itself.

It's the dissatisfaction with the status quo, the vision of what could be, the never-settle mentality that sets us apart from all other known species in the known universe. The will to continue trying and learning, despite all of our shortcomings, pitfalls, and setbacks in order to push a little farther, to learn something new.

Take a look around you, and see if there is more than 1 item or object nearby that hasn't been made or improved by this spirit of continuous improvement in some way.

Thanks for reading this long post; you probably need a cocktail. I know where you might want to...