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Hotel Class: 
3.5 Stars - 3 Reviews and 224 Opinions
Avenida 1ra entre 60 y 64, , Cuba, 40100, Caribbean
of people enjoy staying here
227 Opinions
lxine
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Cuatro Palmas was a good choice for me and my boyfriend, travelling to Varadero from Montreal in November 2004. It offers standard comforts and amenities that you'd expect from a 3 star all-inclusive. We were more thrilled with its fantastic beach and proximity to Varadero than anything.
We were happy with our room, overlooking the courtyard within view of the ocean. The furniture, decor, and sizable balcony were nice. Our room (and presumably the rest of the hotel), unfortunately, was plagued by annoying problems like flickering electricity, periodic A/C shutdowns, and extremely tempermental water pressure. I suspect these are supply problems that affect most of Cuba. That said, these problems were mere annoyances considering all we did was sleep in the room.
Buffet fare ranged from okay to quite good. Cuban food is rather bland and choices are limited (think rice, beans and pork as staples). To the hotel's credit, they did make spices and sauces available to liven up the cuisine to your taste. A couple of highlights were a seafood fest (clams, shrimps, crab, oh my!) and a barbeque with tables set up on the beach.
I can confirm complaints from other review sites about stray cats in the dining hall. They were mostly well behaved and wandered around quietly. Personally, a couple of cats don't bother me (there were not hordes), but it is definitely not something you'd see in Canada or Britain.
Drinks are strong, rummy, and largely pre-mixed at the lobby and pool bars - ask the staff to point you towards the international bar. Well hidden behind one of the restaurants, the international bar had some of the best drinks and expert service I've had anywhere, period. And it was practically deserted! You must try a Mojito with fresh mint or a Pina Colada with real coconut. Fantastic!
Unique Quality: Guests were a mix of families and couples, British and Canadian, with not too many small children or wild partiers. The hotel went quiet after the evening show, around 11pm. Any leftover action moved to the bar across the street. For this reason, beware of rooms facing the main street if late night noise bothers you!
Location, location, location. After strolling the surrounding strip, I can confidently say that Cuatro Palmas has the area's best plot of beach. The hotel is also located between the hotel area and the main town of Varadero. One of the most popular bars, Calle 62, is just across the street with amazing open-air shows. You will never get bored when you can leave the hotel anytime -- the beach and town of Varadero is right at your doorstep.
I liked how Cuatro Palmas was a bit more scaled down than some of the other resorts. The highest buildings were three storeys, so compared to the peninsula's highrises, this has a more cozy, exclusive feel.
MERCURE CUATRO PALMAS VARADERO Photo: Our balcony overlooking the courtyard and ocean
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Simon1944
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There is a superb "animation" team which stages aerobics, beach volley ball and football, spanish lessons, and twice a day salsa lessons. They are all superb dancers and the evening they stage marvellous shows with additional singers and dancers. The sound of dance music fills the pool area through most of the day - and if you have a poolside room you can't escape. The hotel is an excellent example of simple three story tropical beach design. Breakfast provision is rougly displayed but more than adequate. We chose this hotel because we read it was in the middle of the town - but there is no town! It is close to a variety of restaurants and a bog bonus is Calle 62 - a bar opposite the hotel with has cheap prices and excellent live music from 9.00 - 11.00 pm. NB pay for your accommodation before you arrive in Cuba. Payment by credit card carries surcharges of more than 11%.
DO NOT STAY AT THE CUATRO PALMAS IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A QUIET TIME
Unique Quality: Great pool, great day long entertainment, great beach.
MERCURE CUATRO PALMAS VARADERO Photo: Pool
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aramat
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A 4* hotel with good location, in the centre of Varadero (waking distance from everything) and on the beach. The rooms in the main building are a better choice than the bungalows as they are a bit far from the water. Some services are only available for the all inclusive guests.
Unique Quality: The best feature of the hotel is the architecture. The pool is nice, large enough and clean, and the beach is amazing. The buffet breakfast and dinner were good. The hotel offers different activities every day, but most of the animators were quite unmotivated. Internet and tour desks are in the lobby and there is also a small shop. Pedal boats, sailing boats etc. are available to rent on the beach (or included in the all inclusive program).
MERCURE CUATRO PALMAS VARADERO Photo: Cuatro Palmas
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CUATRO PALMAS RESORT, it was my hotel in VARADERO Animations the whole day, shows at night, excellent food and great restaurants, nice environment, private beach, bedrooms confortable, but the personnel don't speak very well english or other languages and it's noisy.
HOTELS AND CASA PARTICULAR are the best way to enjoy your stay in Cuba.
Pic = hotel Deauville, Havana
Hotel Deauville : 25 dollars for one night B & B.
Hotel Cuatro Palmas : around 45 dollars for one night in half pension.
Casa particular : 15 dollars for one night, breakfast 3 dollars, and dinner 7 dollars.
Here is shot of buffet (all inclusive) restaurant. There are a few bars, by the pool, by the beach, in the lobby of hotel. I caught the nightly entertainment by the pool, all in Spanish by the way, so I didn't get all the jokes, but slapstick humour is not hard to miss. Your typical all inclusive fare for food. I prefer to eat Cuban food rather than "Americanized" food, iei, hot dogs pizza, hamburgers and spaghetti.
I stick to salads, fruiit mostly, rice, beans, chicken, pork, and vegetables.
Of course the desserts are always amazing, flans, cakes and custards.
The windows open up and tiny birds fly around the restaurants (there are water feeders at various location on the walls). Be careful not to leave your table alone, or you will find a bird eating your meal (ahem, I did).
Nicely decorated and comfortable room. This one was in the apt. type villas, but I also stayed in a room facing the pool in the main hotel.
Okay, well, I would have to say that the location was the best of all of the hotels I had seen while I was there in Varadero. I took the bus tour that travelled by all of the hotels and this one by far had the BEST location. You can walk out one door and you are in the heart of Varadero and directly out the other door you are ON the beach. The beach was beautiful, except for the cigarette butts, which were simply from disrespectful travellers. There were alot of broken seashells that you had to watch when you stepped, but, that is expected. I did observe a few people limping...and I spoke to one who had said they cut their foot on a seashell. So...just watch your step, I did, and I was fine.
Our accomodations were good, the room was older, but, fine. We were located on the third floor in building five. There are 11 buildings with this resort. Our maid was great, she kept our room lovely and clean. We left her candies and hair clips daily, with a peso every other day, she was very grateful. She left us thank you notes. She also shaped our towels daily into hearts and swams, pretty. If we ran into her in the hallway she greeted us with a big smile and thank you again.
The food, well, it was good. I am talking about the buffet. I enjoyed the fresh fruit daily, fresh baked goods, plenty of salads, pickles etc. I did try the meats,but, not being much of a meat eater in general, I found it a bit different tasting. It was not tender at all. That would be expected though...as you ARE in Cuba. The deserts were out of this world....delicious! The waitresses were very friendly. It's all in what you make it though, if you are pleasant, they are pleasant. Only goes without saying.
The a la carte that was provided was very good. The waiter was very friendly. We were given a bottle of wine with our meal, when our glasses got down just a bit, the waiter would come over promptly and fill the glasses again. He was very attentive...asking how are food was..etc. My husband had the lobster (you pay for that extra) and I had filet minon. It was different tasting, but, still good. The lobster on the other hand, was excellent. They grill it there, versus boiling. I normally do not care for lobster, but, tried this and actually enjoyed it.
We ventured out to a restaurant on our last night there, I believe it was called la fondue (across from the resort, to the left)...or something like that...anyway, the lobster and filet minon was VERY good there....the filet tasted much like ours here. (very big portion only 10 pesos) The lobster again was phenomenal.
As far as the water goes, the resorts water is filtered, but, we still chose to purchase water at the resorts boutique. It was not cheap, but, we just felt better to drink it daily in our room.
I cannot comment on the tours...as we strickly went to relax. We only took the bus tour of the peninsula. The horse and buggy tour. We also tried out the little yellow taxi. It was fun. Oh, and we used the scooters on days we had had enough of walking...to the flea markets. By the way, there are several of these...most small, but, one bigger one down farther. You can find all kinds of hand crafted goods. Quite nice.
Most Cubans were pleasant. But, if you walked down to the flea markets you did encounter some beggars. You have to ignore them, or they will bug you each time they see you for more money. Sad.
I could write more, but, in the end, I have to say that Cuatro Palmas is a very pretty resort. It was kept clean and fairly maintained. We did watch workers paint the steps,only to see the paint chipping off the next few days. The paint obviously is not good quality. Had they used better paint, the place would look more presentable.
Anyone who goes there should enjoy the location at best. If you are not going to expect a 5 star...you should enjoy it totally!
The Hotel Cuatro Palmas was excellent. It was very clean, pleasantly decorated, the balconies were very roomy and had an excellent view of the ocean and the pool. They had a lot to offer with several snack bars, salsa lessons, live music, and amazing beaches. We were on our honeymoon and it couldn't have been better. We will definitely stay here again and would recommend it to friends.
Booked with Thomson for 7 nights from the 2nd Feb 2005. Mum took me as a birthday treat and it turned out to be the worst birthday I have ever had. It was our first time to Cuba and we booked the hotel as allocation on arrival. It was a choice of the Palma Real, Playa de Oro and Cuatro Palmas. Unfortunately we were allocated to the Cuatro Palmas.
If you ever decide to travel to Cuba I strongly recommend that you do NOT stay at this resort. The room was on the ground floor facing some maintenance huts and a path where people could see into our room, so we had to have the curtains closed at all times. This made the room even darker than it was with the curtain open, so the lights had to be on to see anything. The room stank of urine and the bed sheets were dirty which were reluctantly changed by the staff. The bathroom drains were also very overbearing. We had a room change to a pool side view and although the room was much lighter, the drain smell was even worse. We also found to cockroaches in our room on the last night.
The staff were very rude and unhelpful. The tableclothes in the restaurant looked like the hadn't been cleaned in years and the food was awful. It was very repetitive, very bland and cold by the time you sat down to eat it.
The only good things were the beach and the location of the hotel. DON'T STAY HERE IF YOU WANT TO ENJOY CUBA.
Cuatro Palmas Pool
hiya
just wondering if anyone had stayed at the cuatro palmas resort recently. been having a search on the web but only really managed to find some really bad reviews so just looking for someone that has actually been there recently.
also, we are flying from glasgow with zoom airlines with the tour operator go travel direct. has anyone had any experiences with them?
any help would be much appreciated
thanks
The best feature of the hotel is the architecture. The pool is nice, large enough and clean, and the beach is amazing. The buffet breakfast and dinner were good. The hotel offers different activities every day, but most of the animators were quite unmotivated. Internet and tour desks are in the lobby and there is also a small shop. Pedal boats, sailing boats etc. are available to rent on the beach (or included in the all inclusive program).
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Address: Avenida 1ra entre 60 y 64, , Cuba, 40100, Caribbean
