Having made reservations with Donato of Hostal Dulcinea , upon our arrival we were told they were full, and were transferred to the sister hostal accross the road The Corbero . This was a very clean hostal on the 1st floor and had a lift. We were given an interior room overlooking a small courtyard and consequently proved to be very quite and cool. There was a fan in the room which helped during the evening when the heat became humid. The beds were made up every day and fresh towels supplied along with the visitor size soap. The young couple who ran things were very friendly and took time to talk to us in broken English to our limited Spanish. They supplied bottles of ice cold water whenever you asked and nothing was too much trouble for them. They made our stay very pleasant and I would recommend this hostal to anyone wanting a cheap, clean place to stay. We ate our breakfast at the local VIPS cafeteria on the corner every morning and got to know the staff well, again a pleasant experience. Looking forward to a further visit in the near future.

[ 06-11-2001: Message edited by: MadridMan ]

SuePycroft, thanks for the great feedback!!! Many people being turned away by FULL hostels will be happy to know there are other good ones nearby which may not have websites. Thanks again!

Doing my USUAL research on the postings here on the message board, I was browsing the apartments for another thread on the Hostal Dulcinea website and found a LINK to the new-to-the-internet Hostal Corbero !!!! Welcome!!!

I'll be adding a link to this new hostel, owned by the fine folks of Hostal Dulcinea, to my MadridMan's Madrid Hostels page tonight after returning from work.

Saludos, MadridMan

Just back from our 1st-ever trip to Spain, very jetlagged but very enthusiastic & can't wait to go back! Anyway we also booked w/ Dulcinea for 2 nights at the beginning of our trip & 1 night at the end. For the 1st 2 nights they sent us across to Corbero, which was very nice just as reported. Good clean room, nice helpful people, smooth sailing.

*However* for our 1 night at the end, we arrived at Dulcinea & with almost no explanation we were led up the street & around the corner to Hostal Casanova which I would call merely adequate. I realize nobody stays at a hostal for the atmosphere but this room was really quite dull & ugly compared to Corbero (& Lisboa where we stayed in Granada), although it was clean & there wasn't really anything *wrong* with it per se. There was no elevator (this counts when you're tired w/ heavy backpacks & it's on the 3rd floor) & the people who run it just don't seem to have their hearts in it. Again, nothing terribly wrong but just the little touches were missing. For example, we went out & when we came back after dark we realized nobody had told us how to turn on the hall light in order to find our way up the stairs. Pushing random buttons we ended up waking someone up (who may or may not have had anything to do w/ the hostal) who turned on the light for us. Then when checking out at 8 am to go to the airport, the guy on duty didn't know how to deal w/ credit cards & at 1st it wasn't even clear whether they would accept credit cards at all. (Of course we had spent all our euros except for cabfare since we were leaving.) After going back & forth a little bit he made us wait while he ran up to the 4th floor to get someone who knew how to do the credit card machine. It worked out in the end but when I'm on schedule to catch a plane I don't like that kind of hassle. I don't think it was a language thing because my partner speaks Spanish & we barely had any language problems at all the whole rest of the trip.

The good news was it was only 33 euros instead of Corbero's 42. So I guess you get what you pay for.

The moral of the story is: if you book w/ Dulcinea, tell them you want to stay there or across the street, but not in Casanova unless all you need is a decent place to crash.