Description: In a town famed for its unforgiving, whisk-you-away to Africa winds, you need a comfortable hole to hide away in it, and Hostal La Calzada (whilst anything but a hole) is the ideal place to retreat and comb the sand out of your hair. Located right in the middle of the old town, within yards of bars and cafes and the central church, the hotel is a cosy, homely place with half a dozen welcoming rooms.
Calle Justino Pertinez, on which the hotel is situated, is a bit of a pain to find at first, tucked away amongst a dense network of little narrow streets diving back and forth between the main street and the walls of the old town. Rather than plunging into this rabbit warren, it’s easier – assuming you’re coming from the bus station or have parked your car in the newer parts of town – to head straight down through the Puerta de Jerez (the impressive gate leading in the medina/old town) and continue down the slope until you reach the main street running through this part of Tarifa which throws a couple of S-bends in linking the seafront and San Mateo church. Turn left here and walk right up to the church’s façade before turning left again and following the narrow alleyway back up the hill. Hostal La Calzada sits on the corner.
First impressions are good – although the hotel reflects the tiny street it is built on by being anything but spacious inside, it’s cosy rather than claustrophobic and the welcome is a warm one. Tarifa’s a compact place that you’ll quickly orient yourself in, but the staff at the hotel are happy to load you up with information and leaflets. A flight of stairs lead up to the rooms, with only the front desk and a small lounge on the ground floor. Inside the rooms, space is again at something of a premium, and the double beds dominate the rooms, but it’s not cramped, and the en-suite bathroom is clean and well-equipped. It’s not the lightest of rooms, as the windows open up onto the alleyway, the sun hidden by the building across the way, but it is remarkably tranquil for its excellent location (not that Tarifa’s a particularly jumping place, but still …).
There are no breakfast facilities in the hotel – there simply isn’t the room – but a host of cafes are so nearby, you could just lie down on the slope and let gravity take you there. The one on the corner of Justino Pertinez and the main street is a good bet for cheap, tasty breakfasts, but there are numerous options.
Tarifa’s a beautiful town, and the attention to detail within the hotel makes La Calzada an extremely pleasant base from which to explore. Everything’s clean and well-maintained, the air-con and TV work just fine and wi-fi is free. Furnishings are of a consistently high quality throughout the hotel, but the style’s entirely unfussy and unpretentious – something that’s reflected, I suppose in the price - €50-70 for a double room, which to me represents good value for what you’re getting. This isn’t high-end luxury, but makes no pretensions to be so – and after all, lavish boutique hotels and copious amounts of sand probably don’t mix so well. We’d happily stay again.
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