Fawlty Towers

Following our fright flight, we arrived at the Hotel Costa Azul in Palma at 2am. Our smart room was a little on the bijou side but we were tired and thought little of it. The next morning we awoke to a rotating mechanical clunk and the sound of persistent banging. Liam leapt out of bed and swung open the balcony doors. Decibels came flooding in. He looked about. Our room was at the side of the hotel with a restricted view of the marina. He looked down over the balcony to the ground floor. A cement mixer was going ten to the dozen and a loud gang of labourers was racing about, fetching and carrying, shovelling and hammering. This isn’t what quite what Liam had in mind when he booked a few months back. Miserable tales of unfinished Spanish hotels are the stuff of legend but here we were staying in an unfinished Spanish hotel. My husband must have missed that little detail in the small print of the glossy brochure. Welcome to Palma. We made ourselves decent, marched to reception and politely asked for the room we’d actually paid for (rather than the room they couldn’t give away). After a bit of tutting, wringing of hands and head shaking by the pretty concierge and a lot of stubborn insistence from us, we were moved to a larger room with a view. And what a view it was with not a cement mixer or sweaty worker in sight.