Hotel Nou Estrelles

Hotel Nou Estrelles is a small, family-run hotel with a modern Mediterranean style, pale colours and a straightforward approach to comfort. It suits you if you want a clean base in Cadaqués rather than a resort built around staying indoors: sleep well, eat breakfast, head out, then return to the town on foot.

English is among the languages used on the hotel's website, alongside Catalan, Spanish, French and German, so English-speaking guests are clearly part of the clientele it is set up to welcome. The reception also offers tourist information about Cadaqués and the surrounding area, useful when the day's plan is still somewhere between a coastal walk and a slow afternoon by the water.

A small outdoor patio and a reading area provide somewhere to sit when you are not ready for bed but have run out of enthusiasm for another bar. It is a modest hotel, sensibly placed, with the town doing much of the entertaining.

You are in Cadaqués, on Spain's Costa Brava, with the town centre about 100 metres away. The old town and the nearest beaches are roughly a five-minute walk from the door, so you can reach Platja Gran or Platja Port d'Alguer without organising transport every time you fancy a swim. Platja Es Poal is around 0.4 miles away on foot.

Cadaqués Bus Station is a two-minute walk away, while the nearest railway station is in Llançà, about 12 miles away by road. Girona-Costa Brava Airport is around 50 miles away by road; Perpignan–Rivesaltes Airport is about 57 miles. Neither is a quick hop in a taxi, but the hotel is at least sensibly placed once you arrive.

Salvador Dalí's house in Portlligat is about 0.8 miles away on foot. The Cap de Creus Nature Reserve surrounds the area, and the landscape quickly becomes the sort of terrain that makes you stop checking your phone. Restaurants such as Sa Cadaquesenca, Es Grec and Ca Pepa are all within about 0.2 miles.

The rooms keep things simple: private bathroom, bath, hairdryer, toiletries, flat-screen television and telephone. Air conditioning and central heating cover the two seasons that matter most when you are tired, damp or both. Free WiFi reaches throughout the hotel, which is useful for checking the next day's plans without having to conduct the operation in the street.

For couples, the double room keeps the arrangement uncomplicated. If separate beds matter more than sharing a mattress, the twin rooms do the obvious job; the version with a terrace gives you a little outdoor space as well. The rooms are compact rather than designed for spreading out half your luggage across the floor, so pack with some discipline and the stay should feel more civilised.

A lift takes the effort out of reaching the room, while the non-smoking policy keeps the air indoors fairly straightforward. The practical rhythm is easy to picture: air conditioning for cooling down, a private bathroom for the post-sea reset, and a proper bed before the next early start.

Breakfast is served as a continental buffet in the ground-floor cafeteria. The hotel highlights products from nearby producers, giving the first meal of the day a local angle rather than treating it as an afterthought made entirely of packets. Coffee, bread and something substantial before heading out: not a bad arrangement for a day that may involve a fair amount of walking.

There is one downstairs bar area, where you can also get a snack or a drink during the day. It is the useful sort of provision for the moment when lunch has drifted away from the schedule but dinner is still too far off to be trusted.

The hotel does not operate around a full restaurant programme. For a proper evening meal, you are already close to Cadaqués restaurants, with several options within a short walk. That leaves you free to choose between staying in for a quiet drink or following the town's streets towards dinner.

The hotel's own leisure offer is deliberately light, which works well if your idea of recovery involves a chair rather than a timetable. The outdoor patio gives you a place to sit in the open air, while the reading area offers a quieter indoor pause when the wind is doing what it does on this coast.

Outside the hotel, the setting gives you plenty to do without turning the stay into an organised activities holiday. Hiking is available around Cadaqués and Cap de Creus, and the hotel offers information about the surrounding area. The listed excursions include Cala Jóncols, Far de Cala Nans, Cap de Creus, Port Lligat and Port de la Selva.

Kayak hire is available locally, and windsurfing and fishing are among the activities associated with the area. For a slower cultural day, Dalí's house in Portlligat is within walking distance, while the landscape around the nature reserve supplies the scenery without requiring a resort animation team to explain it.

Free private parking is available at a nearby location, and you do not need to reserve a space. That is useful in Cadaqués, where arriving by car and finding somewhere to leave it are not always the same task. The hotel also has free WiFi throughout and a tour desk for local information.

Check-in runs from 14:00 to 21:00, and the hotel needs your expected arrival time in advance. Check-in after 22:00 is not possible, while access to the property is closed between 21:00 and 08:00. Check-out is from 08:00 to 12:00, giving you a reasonable window for a slower departure.

Children are not allowed, cots and extra beds are not available, and the minimum age for check-in is 21. Pets are not allowed. Payment can be made in cash, Visa or Mastercard. The bus station is only a two-minute walk away, which is handy if you are arriving without a car or leaving one behind for the day.