The experience that shall not be missed when travelling in Spain is to spend a night in a parador. I am such a fan of paradores that the kids for a long time thought that it is a generic name for any hotel. My friends, when I said that I will be writing a blog, asked if it be only about paradores or also something else.
So what are those paradores and why we love them? They are state-run hotels usually located in adapted historic buildings such as castles, palaces or monasteries and usually having 4 starts. There are some luxury paradores with 5 stars and there are also some paradores which are located in modern buildings. They aim at promoting heritage tourism and thus are rarely located in bigger cities and their restaurants feature local cuisine. Paradores allow us to discover hidden gems of Spain and I often choose weekend destination by parador. For us sleeping in parador is experiencing history first hand and for a very reasonable price! The rooms in paradores are usually very spacious, kids until 12 years old stay for free and get an additional small bed (the only downside for our family is that the online reservation allows booking a room only for three persons in total, but so far we managed by booking a room for two adults and one kid and then writing in the comments that there will be another child who will share the parents’ bed).
Paradores also run ‘Amigos de paradores’ loyalty program which is actually one of the best loyalty programs that I have ever participated. First you get discounted rates for your stay, sometimes the room being only 60 euros/night! Then, once checking in you get a voucher for a welcome drink at the bar. Finally, every euro you spend in parador, whether for the room or for the dinner, is converted into points that you may use to pay your next stay. And the points given are rather generous allowing you to profit from a ‘free’ night rather quickly.
This gives me an idea – I go and plan right now our next parador weekend!
Photo: in front of an impressive entrance to the parador of Leon