Poland Hotels Booking

Note: The restaurant at Hotel Sino will be closed for renovations until November 2008.

With so much action in the east of Spain, from Madrid to Barcelona and the Mediterranean coast, it’s easy to forget about the other half. Here, on the Atlantic side, just north of Portugal, you’ll find the perfect Galician getaway: Hotel Sino, a townhouse dating to 1735, in the heart of the old historic district of Santiago de Compostela.

From the outside it looks a bit forbidding, but the interiors are surprisingly bright and wide-open, and surprisingly contemporary, the simple modern furnishings and urban-loft décor contrasting with the old house’s rough stone walls. The rooms are all different; it would be difficult indeed to shoehorn a typical L-shaped hotel room into the floor plan of this old building, but the Sino wins points for not even trying.

Wireless internet access and a small meeting room cater to those few guests who are in Santiago de Compostela on business. More to the point, however, is the restaurant, serving classic Galician fare, and the location, on the winding streets of the old quarter, is better suited to sightseeing than conventioneering — the city’s museums are close by, and its most famous landmark, the Romanesque cathedral, is just five minutes’ walk from the hotel.