What could be a top-notch hotel in Girona, is instead a self-consciously "cool" failure at merging antiquity with modernity. Where do I start? the rooms, while attractive on the surface, are over-designed by someone who must have had a vision but no concept of how to merge aesthetics and functionality. Everything in the rooms is operated by a serious of push-button keypads which I think even the pilot of a space ship would have difficulty figuring out. When entering the room, in order to simply turn on a light, you need to insert your key card into a slot which not only turns on a light, but turns on all of the lights and sets the TV blasting. Good luck if you like to read in bed: the bedside lamps are narrow black cylinders suspended from the ceiling casting a small spotlight about a foot away from the bedside, so you'd have to scrunch down on your side and hold your book away from you to shed any light on your reading material. When we first arrived we tried to open the shade in the bathroom, which apparently was intended to only operate with a remote control, and the manual chain which would ordinarily raise and lower the shade immediately got stuck leaving the shade open and exposing whoever was using the bathroom to the neighbors across the way.
We had to change rooms because no one was around to fix it on a Sunday. The second night we were able to return to the original room whose bathroom sported a spa-like tub loaded with jets that promised to ease tense foot and leg muscles acquired after days of walking on medieval cobbled streets. Trying to figure out how to use the elaborate and indecipherable bathside remote control turned into a slapstick comedy scene: first, the jets all came on with a vengeance that made me feel like I was bubbling in a soup pot on high boil. All attempts to moderate the volcanic force of the bubbles by pushing any of the 8 buttons did nothing at all. The array of handles and levers on the wall that control both the hand-held and overhead showers were somewhat puzzling, but mainly I wanted to slow down or stop the water jets. Finally, I opened the bathtub drain which left the empty jets loudly hissing and blowing air until they finally exhausted themselves and stopped.
Lighting in this room was either a glaring, operation-theatre "ambient" light which could not be moderated, or a series of moody spot lights in locations that had nothing to do with seeing anything you needed to use or do in the room. The beds were fine, but there wasn't a comfortable chair to sit in.
In the two days we stayed there, the hotel was staffed by a few young women who, with the exception of one very friendly and helpful individual, displayed the personality of efficient but irritated bank tellers at the end of a long work week.
We didn't get the breakfasts but at least enjoyed the use of a complementary espresso machine in the breakfast room, and the hotel is very clean and in a good location.