Hi

I kind of have 3 questions in 1....

Has anyone stayed in either of the following:
Hostal Dominguez
Hostal Chelo
Hostal Villar
Hostal Helena
Hostal Nuria
And if you have, can you please post your experiences of your stay (good/bad/noise levels, comfort, cleanliness - esp the bathrooms! etc)

Which neighbourhood is the best to stay in (close to all the action):
Puerta Del Sol
Gran Via
Chueca

And, if I do stay in Chueca (which I'm assuming is not as central as the first 2), is it still easily accessible to 'all the action' or is it still a part of downtown Madrid?

Thanks very much!!

We stayed in Hostal Nuria last year and it was clean and quite quiet. Very basic, but it was so cheap that it didn't really matter. Also, well placed for Gran Via.

You'll find dozens of reviews - including mine - of Hostal Chelo by conducting a SEARCH using keywords MADRID CHELO. You can also search the others as well. I gave Hostal Chelo a positive review.

By the way, your plural word "hostals" is actually spanglish. It does exist in the northeastern region of Catalonia (Barcelona, for example) in their language of Catalán but otherwise no. The plural, English equivalent of the Spanish word "hostales" is Hostels. But this should not be confused with youth hostels which is "albergues juveniles" in Spanish. Don't worry, though. MANY MANY (too many) English-speakers misuse this word everyday because we think that a "hostel" IS a youth-hostel but somewhere, somehow we abbreviated "youth hostels" to "hostels" and this is how things got confused when translating the term. The Spanish tourism bureau itself translates the Spanish word of "hostales" to the English word of "hostels".

Saludos, MadridMan