MartinPElia Lexington, South Carolina Review of Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona Reviewed 3 days ago via mobile Upon arriving we saw that this hotel was in a very good, safe part of the city with great restaurants and sightseeing close by. The inside of the hotel, as were the rooms (our bathroom was partially enclosed in smoked glass walls), was modern and looked like new - very stunning. Our bathroom's amenities were very unique, with the toothbrushes, manual shaver, etc., all having attractive wood handles, or even being made entirely of solid wood such as the comb and the wastebasket. There was a very large shower as well as the commode area, which was able to be closed off from the rest of the bathroom with a sliding glass door. Our spacious room was on the 3rd floor facing the street with a nice view and was very quiet; very well sound-insulated from the noises from the street, even from the adjoining rooms and hallway, with even the HVAC being whisper-quiet. There were two chairs, one for the desk and one upholstered wingback, with a flat screen TV which received a plethora of stations - but the majority weren't English. A nice touch was a small, very heavy high-quality cordless powered Bose Bluetooth stereo speaker to which you can quickly and easily link your phone without any problems. The included breakfast buffet was the most extensive we've ever seen, including a staff member shaving off slivers of top-of-the-line Iberico ham from a large leg, a great selection of cheeses, and cold cuts (but don't fill up on those - you can get them at home in your grocery store). There was a waitress coming to our table with a tray of wonderful, tasty pastries, and at the buffet table there was a simply delicious rustic multigrain bread that was out of this world. They even let us bring some of the food from the buffet to our room. The service and staff, from the front desk, dining room, concierge, and others, was nothing short of impeccable. I have two injured knees and have to wear medical grade supports on both my legs and the hotel supplied me with a wheelchair for my entire stay. One day we wanted to dine at a restaurant, about 1 1/2 blocks from the hotel, and a staff member volunteered to push my wheelchair all the way there, giving my wife a much-needed break. In fact, we asked Kevin, one of the concierge staff, to hire us a van for a 4-hour tour of Barcelona and he gave us a map where he traced our route for the places we were interested in seeing. The hotel staff had our driver take the wheelchair with us on our tour. The spa below the first floor was a bit small, with a small indoor pool but no whirlpool, and they did offer massages, but we didn't use any of their facilities because it was too warm and humid in that area. There is a beautiful outside multi-level garden on one of the lower floors which has plenty of different seats, some in the open sun and others under shady arbors, but what was most notable were the life-size metal animal sculptures dispersed throughout the area. My one disappointment was that I couldn't access the different levels in my wheelchair. One day we went to the small outdoor rooftop garden which had breathtaking views of the city, a shallow, long, negative-edge pool for wading (I don't know whether it was deep enough to be a lap pool), both lounge chairs and cushioned chairs at tables with staff serving drinks and a limited food menu. This was a very pleasant place to relax and enjoy the great food and drinks. I recommend sampling the Iberico ham croquettes - we ordered them at least 4 times during our 3-night stay. On the day before we left, we had gone out for our tour of the city and came back at around 3:30pm - 4:00pm and found that our room hadn't been made up. We had to leave early the next morning for our flight back home, so we had to pack. I called for more ice, and they asked me if there was anything else I wanted so, since they asked, I told them I was disappointed that our room hadn't been made up. They were very concerned and wanted to make up the room, but I told them at that point it would be too much of an inconvenience because we had already began packing up and our belongings were strewn all over the room, so please just give us more ice. A few minutes later there was a knock at our door and a supervisor was there, profusely apologizing for the lapse in housekeeping. Not only did he bring our ice but he had a lot of chocolates for us, even one very large bar of white chocolate with the city's skyline embossed on it (which I would have brought home but it didn't come in a box or wrapper) and a bottle of champagne, which he insisted we take but since we had to pack and get up early we didn't feel like consuming any more alcohol at the time and politely declined. He then asked us what time we were leaving the next morning and told us the hotel would pack a picnic basket for us. The next morning, we went down to the front desk to review and pay our bill and, upon close inspection, saw that we were charged 90 Euros for parking. The thing was is that we didn't have a car and pointed it out to them, and they immediately deleted the charge. We also observed that they didn't charge us for the snacks which were in our room that we consumed. The most probable reason for this is because housekeeping didn't make up our room the day before, so they weren't able to tally the final amount. We told them to charge us, but they insisted it would be on the house. They then gave us the breakfast which they packed for us, and it was in a very large soft-sided insulated cooler with their logo on it which, when empty, was able to be folded flat and taken with us on our plane (it will now be our go-to cooler when we have picnics at home), Stacked inside the cooler were three perfectly-fitting magnetically closed boxes. The first box had a few sandwiches, the next had a good selection of pastries and the last had 2 bowls of fruit salad and a third bowl filled with small deserts. All in all, we had an absolutely wonderful stay and wouldn't hesitate to come back to this hotel again.…
This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.