We spent a pre-cruise week in Spain, staying in six different paradors, three of which I have not reviewed here.
Parador La Granja de San Ildefonso. The newest of the chain, this parador, an hour's drive from Madrid airport, is located in two adjacent eighteenth century palaces, once the summer residence of Spain's Bourbon kings. The public rooms are extremely spacious and luxuriously furnished, the bedrooms and bathrooms are very large. The overall impression is one of tasteful opulence. There are outdoor and indoor pools and a well equipped spa. The buffet breakfast is lavish even by parador standards. Segovia with its unrivaled Roman aquaduct is a fifteen minutes drive away.
Parador Santo Domingo Bernardo de Fresneda. This is the second parador in the small Rioja town of Santo Domingo de la Calzada. The older one is across the street from the cathedral, this one is barely a ten minutes walk away. It's located in a sixteenth century convent which has been very successfully modernized. The rooms are standard parador size, extremely quiet at night and very comfortably furnished. For whatever reason this costs roughly two thirds of what the older one goes for although, to my eye, the differences between them are imperceptible. There is a large bird sanctuary just outside of the town.
Parador Arties. The Arties Parador was formerly a stepchild of the chain, with small, rather dark rooms not up to parador standards. A few years ago the then Director recognized this fact and acted accordingly. The old building was gutted and transformed into duplexes and an entirely new stucture was built next to it to house the public rooms and the standard bedrooms, which are now large and airy, with splendid views of the nearby Pyrennees. There are indoor and outdoor pools and several ski areas are in the immediate vicinity. Arties is in the heart of the highly picturesque Val d'Aran in Northern Catalonia, actually on the northern slope of the Pyrennees (one traverses the Vielha tunnel to drive there from Spain) and the Val de Boi, with its delightful eleventh century Romanesque churches built in the Lombard style is half an hour's drive to the south.
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