Ad Hoc Hotel
Cosy is not a word that springs to mind with most hotels, but the AD Hoc, situated in Valencia’s medieval district just near the old river bed park, is not like most hotels.
This 19th century town house with 28 rooms on its four floors has been lovingly renovated in soothing tones of brown, but not spoilt by its artistically minded owner, Luis Garcia Alarcón, a surveyor and art gallery owner, who has furnished the whole hotel with paintings, traditional furniture and ornaments, and brought out the best of the beams and woodwork so that guests can feel truly at home, even though not in their own house.
The clientele are very international and very choosy, opting for authenticity over modernity and wishing to be in the heart of Valencia, in a lived-in neighbourhood, but one replete with bars, restaurants and nightlife.
The lift is a lifting experience in itself, being decorated from top to bottom with waves, as if you had just stepped into the Mediterranean Sea, but without the inconvenience of wet shoes and sand in your toe nails; an unnerving experience for some perhaps, but sensuality is what this hotel is all about.
The concern for detail led to the hotel’s collaboration with the restaurant manager Victor Garcia, who insists that all his fruits and vegetables are ecologically grown in an organic manner, and that his meats and fish are as autochthonous as possible, seasonal and free range. His vegetables all come from an organic farm in Casas de Bárcenas, and his bread from a baker in Valencia’s Calle Segorbe, who is a fanatic for traditional baking methods.
The menu in the restaurant, which is open to the public, has a limited choice of dishes, precisely to ensure that each one is carefully prepared with prime raw materials that correspond to the season and with flavours brought out of the food rather than artificially added to it.
Not only is the palate seduced here; the ears are stroked too as classical music soothes the spirit.
The rooms in Ad Hoc maintain a period style, although all mod cons are included, such as WiFi connection and satellite TV. The two top floor suites have their own terraces with views of the spires of the city, which are an aesthetic experience in themselves.
The Hotel AD Hoc is in Calle Boix 4. Telephone 963919140.
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