Hostal Cristina, Cadaqués

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When I am at the beach, things that would usually irritate me - communal showers, peeling paint, strange creatures found bedside- take on a certain charm. All I want after a day in the sun is be lulled to sleep by the surf and feel a slight sprinkling of sand between the sheets. And so I like the Hostal Cristina, a simple but adequate hotel by the water's edge in Cadaqués (a small town on Spain's Costa Brava).

Popular with backpackers and middle-aged couples alike, rooms are clean, bright, and breezy, the staff is pleasant and helpful, and prices are reasonable. Dogs are allowed, as is the odd bicycle. It seems as though the most popular rooms are the ones with balconies overlooking the town square with a view of the harbor to the right. The location is perfect, with beaches, restaurants, cafes, and transportation all a short walk away.

However, my only complaint about the Hostal Cristina is about its location. Or rather, the location of the town's recycling bins. Every night as the cafes cleaned up, we would hear a huge crashing sound of smashing glass under our balcony. How much wine can a small town drink in a day? A million bottles, it sounds like. Or else, even a reasonable excess sounds like a lot when you're asleep. "Couldn't this massive clean-up wait til morning?" we asked our sleepy selves. Well, it seems that it could. At 7 a.m. the truck came, to shake those very same bottles from a great height. (More crashing.) And while some cities recycle on say, Tuesdays and Thursdays, environmentally concious Cadaques takes the glass away every morning.

No matter how tired you are, this sound is impossible to ignore. If you're lucky you can get back to sleep quickly, and if not, you can always take a nap at the beach the next day.

Also, with the proximity of the beach you too could be subjected to Schwarzenegger-sound-alikes chanting "24 hour party people!" in the middle of the night (which elicted a collective "Shuuuut uuuuuup" in about 5 languages from our hallway).

Hostal Cristina
Riera de Sant Vicenç, s/n
Cadaqués, Spain

P.S. I enjoy sleeping. A great deal. And I find that hotel review in guidebooks are fairly useless for someone like me. I mean, how can the author possibly stay in all those places? They must base at least some of their critique on appearances alone, which is only half of what makes a hotel good. You can't see the decor when your eyes are shut, and after all most people do stay in hotels with the intention of sleeping. Double-glazed windows are great at blocking noise from the street, but they are superfluous if the walls serve as amplifiers and you are awaked by the sound of the TV (or worse) from the next room.