The Camino Gypsy Chronicles: Ducha

There are many characteristics one considers when selecting a hotel. Does it include a free breakfast? Is there a pool? Is the bed firm and the towels soft? Does it have a view? Is the staff friendly and helpful? How close is it to points of interest? Is there HBO?... Yet there is one key criterion I hold above all others.

What is the quality of the shower?

Firstly, is there plenty of water pressure? Not so much, of course, that you feel as if you've been pelted with a BB gun. But nothing is sadder than coming in after a day of touring in the hot sun and milking out only a mere trickle from the shower head. I had a particularly heinous experience one New Years in San Francisco. I woke up New Years Day with a raging hangover knowing that I had to be out of the hotel in an hour. I thought a shower would do the trick, but to my horror when I turned it on water dribbled out of exactly two of about fifty holes in the shower head. And it was cold! I got cleaner from the steady stream of tears running down my face than from the shower, itself.

Which leads me to my second prerequisite: there has to be plenty of hot water. None of this lukewarm business. Or the possessed showers that fluctuate between freezing and scalding at any given moment like bathing Russian roulette.

So if you're ever in Barcelona and fancy a stay at the Hotel Aneto, let me assure you, the coffee may be as thick as mud, the single rooms might be claustrophobic, your feet might hang off the end of the bed, there may be a strange pounding noise that occurs everyday between the hours of 4 and 6pm, and an unknown stranger may shake your doorknob in the middle of the night as if trying desperately to get in, but man oh man are the showers par excellence.

Final Barcelona pics...