Catalonia Gran Vía Bilbao

Outstanding and first to mention is the friendliness of the hotel team, at the reception as well as at the restaurant. The room was very clean, bath room with a spacious shower and a terrace with a nice view and sun in the evening. Breakfast buffet was also very good, including a cooking station for fresh eggs. At rush hour times the breakfast room can get a little bit noisy, but the outside area is calm and quite with only a few people, guess most folks are afraid of the additional steps to walk to the buffet. :) The rooftop pool is pretty small, only a handful of sun beds, The hotel is easy to reach by car, the Guggenheim Museum is just a few minutes tom walk, the old town about 30 minutes. The entrance to the garage is very tight, but manageable, even with a bigger car. Once you made it in, the parking spots are quite spacious.

Loved this hotel! 1 night stay elsewhere close by then 2 nights here. No comparison. Hotel Catalonia is excellent. Loved the room (it’s not vanilla like many other hotels), full of features and functionality, great amenities and comfort. The hotel itself was excellent too. A charming lounge/ lobby/bar on reception side and dining plus outdoor terrace on the other. Lower ground floor spa & wellness centre was a wonderful surprise. If you have time (and your bathers) an hour package to use the heated pool, the Vichy sower, steam room and sauna is just 19 Euro. Well worth it after long days of travel or walking. The location was good and Bilbao is very easy for walking around. There’s a Bilbao City View bus stop very close by. Here’s my tip. Flag them down. You can be standing at the red sign and still they will ignore you unless you wave them. Crazy but true!

The hotel is in a good location and pretty accessible to most of Bilbao although not super close to old town. The rooms, 8/10, lovely and spacious, the overall hotel, I’d say 8/10, amazingly clean and comfortable. Although, the pool is tiny, those photos make it look ALOT bigger than it is. The shower in the bathroom is one of the best I’ve used, even for much more expensive luxury resorts. The shortfall is the restaurant. The bar, fine, order there and you’ll be ok, but if you sit down outside don’t expect to be served. We ordered our food at the bar (and drinks) and waited 1 hr, no exaggeration for our food. We ordered 2 burgers and a pizza. They never at anytime came to ask if we wanted more drinks (they didn’t bring us all our drinks) they totally ignored us and forgot about our order even though they came out to drop some drinks to other guests. I really don’t think they were being purposely rude, I think it’s just incompetence. This was on a Tuesday and really stinks because the hotel was great but with so many other options, I don’t know why i would choose this place. It really kinda ruined our last night sadly because damn we (especially my daughter) were hungry.