For being Cuba, this hotel is excellent. I did stay in one of the junior suites for 70 US$ pr. night. My very helpful local travel agent Lazaro at the Cuban connection (---) was great at finding good rates in Havana and Isle of Youth for me, last minute. I highly reccommend them. Please understand that Cuba is developing and that you can't expect the same comforts there as you can in your own country.

Anyway, the hotel is good, it's relatively quiet, the location is great in the district of Old Havana even if you have to walk a few minutes. (It'll be well worth it since you won't be bothered with traffic noise.) You are safe on the streets there and in the hotel. The room was large with a comfortable bed and bathroom. There was a fridge and cable tv with some odd channels. I even had a small balcony in my room overlooking the streets. At night I could hear the Buena Vista Social club playing from a nearby restaurant!

The bellboy wanted to help me with my luggage, but I declined. There was no problem with the minibar tab and the staff was helpful in general. I know they have a good relationship with my travel agent, so that might have helped.

I didn't try the breakfast as I arrived late, but I can say that you don't come to Cuba for the food, generally speaking!

When we arrived in the morning we had to wait until 4PM before the rooms were finally ready. This long wait was however somewhat compensated by getting a free upgrade to a mini-suite. The bedroom and bathroom are fantastic, definately the best place I have seen in Cuba. Truly 5 start (western stars, not cuban stars!) The hotel has no elavator and the reception guy didn't even offer to help us with our luggage to the topfloor. No tip of course, that's easy. It is quite noisy and also mosqitos are not pleasant. I nevertheless may go back as the rooms are top class with central location. Taxis can not come to hotel so you will need to walk a bit with your luggage. We had to leave early (check-in at Havana airpot in our case Click Mexicana 1.5 hours in advance not 3 hours as the reception misinformed us!) so I have not experienced the breakfast which was somewhere around the corner.

Since variety is the spice of life, I decided that, after returning to Habana after a week-and-a-half in the provinces, that I would stay at Los Frailes rather than my usual hotel (Ambos Mundos). The hotel's theme, that of a monistary, staff dressed as munks, rooms decorated with munkish themes, appealed to me. Arriving after midnight off the ViAzul bus from Santiago de Cuba, my first surprise was that my reservation was for the next three nights, but not the night of my arrival. The carpeta did call around, however, and got me a room at the nearby Hostal Beltran de Santa Cruz. (A hotel where I would have liked to have remained, save for the fact that I had already paid of three nights at Los Frailes.)

The first problem encountered was with the air conditioning of my (windowless) room on the second floor rear. Try as I might, both through my own efforts, and that of the staff, I could never get it to work on any consistent basis. The room was often semi-sweltering, offering no haven upon returning from the hot streets. I was grateful when the air conditioning periodically and only occasionally kicked in, on a capricious basis. Perhaps this was all in keeping with the munkish theme of the hotel (i.e. the guests must pay a certain amount of penance for the sins of the body!)

Unlike other hotels, there seemed to be an excessive charge for everything (e.g. security box $6, mineral water from mini-bar $1.50 CUC's, etc.) Also, the light on my writing desk was out, and a request to change the bulb resulted in a promise that it would be done the following day. (My solution: change it myself, exchanging one bulb for another in my room.)

As previous reviewers have stated, the corner restaurant where guests can breakfast is quite mediocre, both in service and in content of the buffet.

Oh, and the extra staff hanging around the carpeta and the bar? They are there to offer you deals on "real Cohibas" from "my friend at the factory!"

There is e-mail access from a computer in the lobby. Unfortunately, to use this, you cannot buy a half-hour or hour access card from the carpeta, but have to go to another hotel to purchase this card.

Not all is dark, however. The two women behind the counter at the carpeta were very helpful, and the housekeeping staff were very friendly and did a good job.

In the end, though, there are better choices in Habana Vieja, and Habaguanex needs to address some fairly serious issues to bring Los Frailes closer to its potential.

Michael
Guilford, Vermont

Thanks for all the previous reviews. They are representative of our experience there. It is a very pretty hotel. We loved the location sandwiched between the two plazas and convenient to restaurants, fun stuff to do, banks, the casa de cambio, the post office, and the taxi stand on the Plaza San Francisco (with a manager who speaks English and will help negotiate fares).
The women who cleaned our room were both very nice and helpful. We did not tip until the last day so the good service does not seem to be dependent on that.
We stayed on the top floor. Los Frailes does not have much action in the courtyard so it is probably quieter than many but some noise does echo up. The band that plays at the bar the lobby is very pleasant.
The elevator was not working and it is a bit of a climb so some people may want to request a room on a lower floor.
We gave up on the Taberna even though they serve lots of fresh fruit. We usually had breakfast at Mercurio's on the Plaza San Francisco where the staff was nicer and the coffee was hot and delicious.
The door is locked at 11 p.m. and you have to knock and rouse a sleepy staff person if you come in later. It is a bit of a drag but they answer the door promptly and the street where you wait seems pretty safe.
The person who showed us to our room offered to take us on a walking tour. We decided to go. It was interesting and gave us a good sense of the layout of the city, how to navigate our way to all the places we had read about and introduced us to a couple of things we had not heard of. He took us to a paladeres for lunch and we treated him to what turned out to be the most expensive meal we had in Havana - unnecessarily huge portions of relatively uninteresting food. He would not give us a price for the tour and we had no idea how much to pay. We guessed but are still not sure if we got it right. He offered more tours but we decided that we were okay on our own after that. He was a little persistent and we had to say no more than once.
We lost our hotel key and the key to the room safe when a bag was snatched from my shoulder in a moment of inattention. The hotel receptionist was very concerned about the problems we were causing the hotel. I am not sure she believed our story even though I produced the broken strap as evidence. She told us that there were no duplicate keys and that we would have to wait 2 days until they could change the locks. She charged us 20 pesos to replace the keys.
Other staff were more sympathetic about our experience but all told us that we had been in a bad area (behind the house where Jose Marti was born, near the train station) which confused us because it was on the tourist map they gave us. The maid found us a key for our room and another staff person found the key for the safe and then replaced the safe lock in case we lost the remaining key.
Things ended up being fine and we enjoyed the rest of our stay.