Posada Casona de la Ventilla — Hotel in Laredo

This is a beautiful guest house in a lovely location. It has very easy access to the autoroute and yet one cannot see or hear it. Set on a hill above the seaside resort of Lerado between Santander and Bilbao it offered a very pleasant overnight stop on a long journey between Vigo in Spain and the Dordogne in France. The property was very pretty, well appointed and well maintained with excellent private parking. We had a little difficulty in locating it initially due to a lack of signage on the local road. We arrived later than expected due to driving conditions en route but we were able to phone to alert the owners to this fact. We were given a pleasant welcome despite the hour on our arrival. ||We were given a helpful information sheet in English concerning our stay and a map of Lerado. We were able to buy drinks at the property but there was no meal available. We decided not to drive the short distance to the town for a meal as we were very tired but we could see that have we wanted to do so we would have found lots of choice of restaurants. ||The room we had was very spacious and attractive with a four poster bed and a well appointed bathroom with a jacuzzi bath tub. It had lovely views from windows on two sides, including a view over the property's large swimming pool and courtyard with tables and chairs. The bed was very comfortable.||Breakfast was buffet style with self serve hot drinks machine and toaster. There was plenty of choice of food and drinks in the spacious dining room. Breakfast offered very good value as an extra to the room price.||We didn't have time to make use of the pool, which opened at 11am, as we needed to get on with our journey but it is a great addition to this lovely...

Our initial experience of this Posada is a bad story turned good (excellent, in fact). We discovered, rather belatedly, that our GPS did not recognise the hotel's address and we ended up in the centre of Laredo. The good news is that we called up and Carlos drove down to town and showed us the way - that's what I call amazing service. Our message to prospective guests is to ensure you know how to get there before setting off! We had done a challenging walk en route to the hotel so the very clean, large pool was just what we needed. We had the pool to ourselves and it was wonderful to float around, looking out on the countryside, listening to cowbells tinkling. Carlos also assisted us with a good local restaurant tip - El Roble in nearby Liendo. Our room was on the top floor - it was clean and spacious for an attic room. The wifi didn't work well in our bedroom but was great in the communal lounge. Drinks were available from the bar on an honour system. The breakfast was...

Actually a nice, quiet place and a nice hotel with a great view and a nice pool. The rooms are also nice. As often reported, it is noisy when many guests are in the house. Quite bad is the service though. If you don't have a car, this place is totally unsuitable, because to get to town it's at least 4-5 kilometers on foot and steep inclines. In the hotel itself you get nothing, except a poor breakfast, with almost only pre-packaged ready-made products. There are no vegetables and no eggs, and you can't order anything. After breakfast there is nothing, not even drinks, except water. You don't have the feeling of being really welcome. There is no service that takes you to the town or at least bicycles to rent because you can't buy anything in the surrounding area, only in Laredo. With a little luck you can order a cab, but this can be difficult on weekends. Maybe you can't expect more...