Hotel Montemar Maritim in Santa Susanna

They usually reserve sunbeds by the pool. Even though I arrived early in the morning, I barely found a free spot and within 5 minutes the staff had taken my things before I got out of the pool and given them to someone else. This is terrible behavior and a sign of character.

Here are some observations. The parking is free, the welcome was friendly and one gets room access from noon but must be out by 10am last morning. Hotel welcomes in most places now feature being asked almost immediately for passports and to pay nightly local tax having already booked and paid for room and board. We travelled by car from Barcelona and found it difficult to find the hotel even with sat nav. The in - room shower was terrific, the bed cozy. It was real quiet after 11pm but I was serenaded to sleep one night by Elvis. The room was cleaned daily. A real plus was the in - room fridge. The room was comfortable and the air con thankfully worked well. We had a small balcony with a sea view on 5th floor. The sea, like the single track train station, was just across the street (we got one late morning train to Girona, which arrived 45 minutes late in 32c). We did three nights in the hotel and I guess some guests experienced real difficulty getting beds by the outdoor pool as it was packed from early morning; mostly polite people from Germany and the Netherlands with some French. Breakfast was in the deal but I dislike mass catering based on cheap meats so full of chemicals they look wet, as much as I dislike vegetable oil croissants and vegetable oil pain au chocolat. Most shocking was the machine dispensed absolutely awful - tasting orange and apple juices. I didn’t think it was possible to ruin a natural product to make it this bad - it can’t be made this terrible accidentally - and in Spain where it should be superb. The apple juice wasn’t just as bad but not by much. Tea was a cheap inferior product too. The mushrooms were either from a tin or so badly prepared they looked like they came from a tin. There was help yourself sparkling wine but no sparkling water. Over four mornings I saw only one guest take a glass perhaps to rid the taste of the awful orange juice. The two Nestle made coffee machines about a metre apart dispensed real good coffees (from a company headed by some unsavoury folks). Each machine dispensed two separate drinks simultaneously with three different foil capsules to choose from, including a decaf, but the machines seized up far too often, either water-logged trays or dispensers filled with used capsules - every 10 minutes over our stay - and at least one morning during rush period I queued 20 minutes for coffee and gave up. All queues were coffee machines related. Once I figured how to fix the problem I did it myself quite a few times. It’s timely here to say the breakfast floor staff, likely low paid, all worked real hard. They were often so busy they hadn’t always time to attend repeated coffee seizures so they aren’t responsible it’s poor management who clearly know they created an avoidable ongoing problem; maybe a manager can take on the role of maintaining them on busy mornings? They can also buy better quality ham, sausages, croissants, orange and apple juices, cut down on factory frozen