WHEN is a hotel not a hotel? When it's a bubble, a cave or a castle, naturally.
Or perhaps a prison.
Even though our priorities when picking a place to stay are usually along the themes of free wi-fi, central location, decent room service, and so on, a hotel doesn't have to be just a bed for the night, however luxurious.
If you want to add a touch of quirkiness to your holiday that the usual chains can't offer, Spain has a whole catalogue of options ranging from 'just wow' to just plain weird.
Capture the castle
If it's historic splendour you're after, look no further than Spain's nationwide network of Paradores – a State-owned chain of 97 unique, very individual hotels set in stunning, stately buildings. Hand-picked for their heritage value, historical significance and amazing architecture, very few make the grade but those which do are highly sought-after. The first Parador out of the 97 was the Gredos hotel in the centre-northern province of Ávila, in an ancient palace, and which triggered the whole thing 90 years ago. Many are set in castles – like the Parador de Cardona, built into the 9th-century fortress of the same name; the eponymous Parador in Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca province, in the 14th-century Enrique II Castle; the Carlos V Castle in Fuenterrabía in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa; the 9th-century Lorca Castle in the Region of Murcia; the Parador de Alarcón in an eight-century castle on top of a mountain in the province of Cuenca...and that's just a few picked at random.
Other Paradores are based in old convents, including the 17th-century Rosario Convent in Lleida, Catalunya and the huge San Marcos Convent in the city of León, which is a tourist attraction in itself. Two are built in monasteries - the San Pedro de Villanueva Monastery in Cangas de Onís and the San Juan Bautista Monastery in Corias, Asturias – plus a handful in palaces, and even one in a church. The Jesús Nazareno Order building in Mérida, Extremadura, started life as a convent in the early 18th century, but later became a parish church – until the State was forced to sell off huge swathes of its Holy assets to pay its debts in the grim 19th-century economic crisis known as the Desamortización.
And if you stay there, your check-out receipt upon leaving will literally be your get-out-of-jail card: after the church was sold off, it served as the local prison until 1933 when it took in its first paying 'inmates'.
Living in a bubble
Slap-bang in the centre of a field of wheat in the Bardenas nature reserve near Tudela in the northern region of Navarra, the Hotel Aire de Bardenas lets you spend your holiday on the moon. Literally. The lunar landscape of the reserve provides the perfect backdrop, the patio adds authenticity, and you can choose between a box or a bubble as your 'space station'.
Here, you can actually stay in a self-contained, ball-shaped room with a glass roof that gives you the illusion of sleeping under the stars and which, by night from the outside, could easily be a spaceship on the moon. They're pretty large, too – you'd be amazed at how much 'space' a bubble's interior can provide you with...
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com