Havana – Hotel NH Parque Central

When staying in a poor country, it’s always nice to stay in a nice hotel. It insulates you from the poverty and gives you a sanctuary to retreat back to after a hard day out in the hustle and bustle. This was my theory when I booked a stay in this hotel. It mostly came up to standard, but there were a few annoying problems.

The hotel is in a great location. It’s in downtown Havana, right on Parque Central, just across the way from the Capitolio. My room overlooked the park, so I had a great view of trees and the Capitolio building. Good stuff. The other rooms have somewhat less exciting views. Half of them overlook the central atrium, whilst the others overlook a lot uglier parts of town.

The room itself was perfectly fine. It was clean, had a mini bar and a large bathroom. It was rather annoying, however, that a few times in the afternoon when I was in the room with the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, some of the staff came in! The whole point of the sign is to tell everyone to bugger off.

Actually, the staff was the main problem with this place. They just seemed so snobby and unwilling to help. The people at the business centre were just plain rude. I went there to check my email on their PCs. They stopped working and they accused me of breaking them! How rude. The front desk people were also really unhelpful. The whole point of staying in a posh hotel is to have the staff being nice to you. They all spoke English, so I’m guessing they were just rude!

The main reason I chose this hotel, is because it has a pool on the roof. Just the thing for relaxing after a hard day in the city. The pool is as described in the brochure. It’s of a reasonable size and the terrace has a great view over the city. The only problem is that everyone else in the hotel seemed to want to use the pool at the same time. Whenever I went up, there was a huge crowd of people – way more than the pool could really handle.

I also ran into the usual problem of the greedy German tourist. In Europe, the Germans have a reputation for hogging all the sun chairs. Their modus operandus is to get up early and put a towel or something on the chair to stop anyone else using it. They then wander off and come back a few hours later when they’re ready to use it. This is exactly what seemed to happen all the time. There were always a lot of empty sun chairs and not nearly enough people in the pool to account for them all!

One day, I lay down on a lounge that was empty. About an hour later, a German couple came up to me and accused me of stealing their chair. I politely told them that if they snooze, they lose! They were not impressed, but they did bugger off. Silly Europeans!

The other great feature of the hotel is the free buffet breakfast every morning. Well, it’s great in theory. There was a whole lot of weird stuff on the buffet that was all but indigestible. It filled me up each morning though, so it was well worth it.

I wouldn’t say that the hotel was the bets I’d ever stayed in, but given the option of staying here or in an authentic home stay, I’d pick this hotel every time!