Barceló Conil Playa - Adults Recommended

We love taking short breaks during our 2 week stint in Malaga Provence by visiting the Costa De La Luz. This year we chose Conil de La Frontera as our destination and the Barcelo Playa as our hotel. The hotel is very spacious and well laid out with 2 very attractive pool areas to choose from. As with all ‘adults only’ hotels there is an atmosphere of calm and serenity and this particular hotel has an affluent feel about the clientele…….basically, gobby Chavs would definitely not feel at home. The staff are extremely polite, helpful and the hotel is well resourced compared to other establishments I’ve stayed in. The hotel itself is very clean and this is backed up by regular sightings of the cleaning staff continually wiping things down with enthusiastic vigour and vacuuming with bad intentions. I did notice though, and I won’t apologise for my keen eye, being in the Maintenance game myself, but there were certain parts of the complex’s building fabric that could definitely do with a bit of care and attention i.e. a lick of paint. The Hotel’s Jewel in the crown is most definitely the rooftop bar. What a lovely environment to have a couple of cold long ones, enjoying the magnificent elevated views over the Conil playa, which appears to go on for miles. There is also an added bonus of the bar being a great place to enjoy the grand finale of the day, the sunset. Now this is a bit of a double edged sword for me, yeah, I appreciate its aesthetic beauty but it does attract what I call the Instagrameratti. They turn up mostly in couples, usually all over each other, and have a crazy penchant for not sipping their drinks but incessantly taking hundreds of the same photos of each other. They then clap the dying embers of the sunset……which in my book is utter madness, something along the same lines as barking at the moon! On our final night we ventured into Conil, what a lovely typically Spanish seaside town, it has a great selection of bars and restaurants to enjoy, but because it’s so busy, grabbing a table can be similar to a game of musical chairs. Just a word of warning though, if you think that you’ll be able to fall into a taxi for a leisurely return journey back to the hotel….forget it. As a local publican informed us, when it was too late, “this town has too many people and not nearly enough taxis”. We had to walk it back to the hotel, which wasn’t really an issue until the final 300 yards where there’s a distinct lack of both a footpath and adequate street lighting. Maybe it is possible to prebook a return taxi ride to navigate around this, it’d definitely be worth asking at the hotel, as a venture into Conil isn’t to be missed. All in all a great holiday within a holiday.