Tenerife, Spain

Hotel Boutique San Diego

Price per night from$102.12

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR94.39), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Super-tweet Canaries crashpad

Setting

Livin’ la vida Laguna

There’s something timeless about Hotel Boutique San Diego, with its terracotta-tiled roof, racing-green window shutters and modern interior makeover, a 21st-century take on colonial style. You’d never guess this former family home, now a five-bedroom adults-only boutique bolthole, was actually built in the 1980s. Read Cervantes while sipping cervezas from the honesty bar beneath swaying palms in perfectly preened gardens, or go straight to holiday mode with a Thai massage from the on-call therapist. The many charms of San Cristóbal de La Laguna – mediaeval churches, traditional tavernas and colourful colonial houses in turmeric yellows, coral pinks and baby blues – are just a short stroll away through quiet residential streets.

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A bottle of either red, white or sparkling wine

Facilities

Photos Hotel Boutique San Diego facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Five, of which four are suites.

Check–Out

11am. Check-in, 3pm. Both are flexible where availability allows and guests are welcome to use common areas if rooms are not ready. There’s a fee for late check-out beyond noon.

Prices

Double rooms from £86.54 (€101), including tax at 7 per cent.

More details

Rates include a buffet breakfast of breads, pastries, fruit, cheese, eggs and more, served 8am to 10am in the conservatory overlooking the garden.

At the hotel

Living room with small honesty bar, free WiFi, massage treatments on request. In rooms: air-conditioning, minibar, TV and bathrobes.

Our favourite rooms

Rooms marry modern accents – tactile fabric wallpapers, light woods, plush cushioned headboards – with colonial-style flourishes. Think bold floral prints, period furniture and floaty drapes. We love the ground-floor Laguna suite for its sunny solarium. Fix yourself a rum punch and recline on cane furniture with views of the manicured garden, the scent of fresh lavender blowing in on a balmy Mediterranean breeze.

Spa

No spa, but Thai massages are available on request.

Packing tips

Take some decent hiking boots if you plan (as you should) to hike Mount Teide. It can get chilly up top – yep, even in the height of a Tenerife summer – so carry a light jacket in your backpack along with the usual essentials: hat, sunglasses, water, and that all-important sunscreen.

Also

The front desk is not 24 hours, but staff can be reached by phone or messaging around the clock.

Children

Hotel Boutique San Diego is an adults-only property for ages 16 and over.

Food and Drink

Photos Hotel Boutique San Diego food and drink

Top Table

You’ll have to wake up early if you want to grab the corner window table with the best garden views in the house. You snooze, you lose.

Dress Code

Broad-brimmed hats and lashings of sunscreen for sociable afternoon drinks in the garden.

Hotel restaurant

There’s no restaurant, but the sunlit breakfast room with its wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows more than makes up for that. The buffet fairly heaves with fresh pastries, cheeses, cereals and a rainbow of fruits. Staff can advise on options for dining out in the evenings.

Hotel bar

There’s an honesty bar in the living room and plenty of options for sundowners in La Laguna. Hit up staff for tips on the latest cocktail hotspots.

Last orders

Breakfast runs from 8am to 10am.

Location

Photos Hotel Boutique San Diego location
Address
Hotel Boutique San Diego
Avenida de San Diego, 40 Santa Cruz de Tenerife
La Laguna
38208
Spain

Hotel Boutique San Diego sits on a peaceful tree-lined residential avenue in north-east Tenerife, 10 minutes’ stroll from the cobbled lanes and colourful colonial architecture of San Cristóbal de La Laguna’s old town.

Planes

International flights are mostly served by Tenerife South–Reina Sofía Airport, around 45 minutes from the hotel. Tenerife North, 15 minutes away, deals primarily in domestic flights. Transfers can be arranged and cost €70 and €18 respectively, one-way.

Automobiles

It’s worth renting a car at the airport for the coastal drive to Hotel Boutique San Diego alone, all sweeping sea views and sleepy coastal fishing villages. You can also arrange a vehicle on arrival in La Laguna, where a car is all but essential for exploring the picturesque mediaeval towns, volcanic beaches and wild terrain of the mountainous north. Parking is available at the hotel, but is limited and subject to availability.

Other

Ferry services operate from the Spanish mainland and other Canary Islands to ports at Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the north-east coast and Los Cristianos in the south-west.

Worth getting out of bed for

Don your floppiest, most fetching sun hat and get ready to strike a few poses against the many achingly photogenic backdrops of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, whose old town dates back to mediaeval times. It’s not easy to get lost in the pedestrianised streets here, thanks to their radical (by 15th-century standards) grid-like layout. Yet get lost you must. Achieve this by taking a mapless wander through atmospheric cobbled lanes, pausing to admire the merry jumble of architectural styles – colonial, modernist, Mudéjar, neoclassical – the latter of which is perhaps best exemplified by the grand façade of La Laguna Cathedral. Step inside to check out the elaborate baroque-style altarpiece and monolithic marble pulpit. 

More eye-catching still are the intricately carved wooden ceilings inside the Iglesia de la Concepción, and its Gothic tower, which contains the largest bell in the Canary Islands. You can climb to the top to gaze across the old town’s rust-red rooftops but, unless you fancy some souvenir tinnitus, perhaps avoid getting caught up there when the clock strikes noon.

There’s plenty of natural eye candy in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife province, too. Take the slow, scenic route north through the verdant valleys and precipitous peaks of the Anaga Rural Park where, close to the island’s northernmost tip, intrepid explorers willing to make the final steep descent (on foot) are rewarded by the wild volcanic sands and imposing craggy bluffs of Benijo Beach. Stick around for evening when the reddish glow of the setting sun hits the black sands and twin sea stacks of Benijo and La Rapadura, turning the landscape almost martian.

Slightly more down-to-earth, but no less dramatic in its own way, the more easily accessible Punta del Hidalgo offers the twin joys of a natural swimming pool in the bay and a cool, angular, late 20th-century lighthouse that looks more like a space shuttle preparing for lift-off than any lighthouse you’ve ever seen.

Tenerife’s mountainous terrain is manna for hikers and hill walkers, and Mount Teide is the big kahuna that many come here to conquer. This monster volcano is hard to miss and even more challenging to ascend. You’ll need to obtain a permit to go it alone or you can book a guided climb that takes you all 12,198 feet up to the edge of the crater – that’s the highest point in Spain, fact fans. Those who fancy the views without the exertion can take the electrifying cable-car ride from base station to the sky-high terminal just a shade short of the summit.

Local restaurants

El Jinete sin Cabeza – the headless horseman – is way less frightening than its unusual moniker would suggest. Instead, homey interiors with wood panelling, framed paintings and chalkboard menus promise comforting platefuls of pork knuckle, Argentine steak and freshly caught seafood. Indeed, the grilled octopus here may actually be worth losing your head over. It’s only a 10-minute stumble from the hotel too, meaning you can confidently order that third bottle of wine, safe in the knowledge that bed is never far away.

Rakaposhi is a simple but effective concept, splicing Pakistani flavours of the Himalayas with Spanish tapas in La Laguna’s old town. It’s the mash-up you never knew you needed, but one taste of the walnut and apricot croquettes, lamb pie or spiced chicken karahi will make you an instant convert.

Local bars

So cunningly concealed is El Rincon de Tintin that you might require the help of the titular Belgian adventurer to locate it. This cool little bar – all flagstone floors and Belgian beers – stands in the shadow of the Iglesia de la Concepción’s Gothic belltower, near a fountain in La Laguna’s old town. It sounds like a riddle but it isn’t. Come for the joy of finding it, stay for the fine selection of craft ales and cocktails.

Have a blast in the cool, neon-lit surroundings of Atomic! where old vinyl records find a new lease of life as ceiling decorations and the cocktails are as colourful as the decor. Follow the hip crowd until you spot the theatre-style backlit sign promising ‘drinks, food and fun’ inside.

Reviews

Photos Hotel Boutique San Diego reviews

Anonymous review

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this five-bedroom residence in northern Tenerife and emptied the black sand from their shoes, a full account of their island break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Hotel Boutique San Diego in San Cristóbal de La Laguna…

Tenerife hideaway, Hotel Boutique San Diego’s butterfly-esque metamorphosis from 1980s family home to cool colonial-style casa is impressive enough to make a native Canary red admiral blush. The colonial past of La Laguna is referenced (yet never overstated) in the lavish decor: a bold zebra-stripe front desk, potted palms with lush, swaying fronds in the hallway, and smart cane furniture in the garden. Elsewhere, the opulent tiered chandelier in the stairwell might have been plucked straight from a royal palace, and eye-catching wallpapers depicting birds of paradise and forest fruits are so vivid you’ll have to fight the urge to take a bite. From the fruits that is, not the birds. Cocooned in your spacious room or suite, tantalising glimpses of the gardens, church tower and even (in the case of the deluxe Catalina suite) the peaks of Mount Teide, will set your heart aflutter.

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Price per night from $102.12