Many people hate them. Find them too anonymous, too cold, too much transit. I love them; hotel bars. I can sit there for hours, observing people, who are meeting, coming, kissing, and leaving.

I always imagine who they are, the other guests. The one over there, for instance. The guy with the blue suit and the girlfriend, is he happy? Or the woman in the corner, who obviously hides something. But what?

In Madrid I have found the perfect hotel bar. At Hotel de Las Letras, they have a sensationally good rooftop terrace with teak all over, plants, flowers and deep white sofas. Like a deck of a luxury yacht on the 7th floor.

In the summertime the bar opens in the early evening and is full within an hour. Which it deserves, of course, but what is not at all obvious, as it doesn’t make much noise of itself.

You have to know it’s there. I had read about it in a small newspaper article praising the Madrilène summer night, and when I arrived for the first time, I had to find the way on my own as nobody seemed to bother about the barguests.

I passed the empty reception, which was remarkable small and unimpressive for a four-star design hotel, found an elevator somewhere inside and ascended while passing several poems and fragments of literature, printed all over the walls.

Finally I found a small door and dived into the sky, where a handsome young waiter nursed the guests and served well shaken cocktails on the roof.

I once saw an art installation at the Cartier foundation for modern art in Paris. An artist had installed a video camera in an airport and then filmed passengers saying goodbye, coming back, people crying, embracing, laughing. By joy or despair. The video was part of an exhibition on love and it made a big impact on me. Because it was a concentrate of so many human feelings in one little spot.

Hotel bars have the same atmosphere. As most guests are far away from home, somehow detached from their daily life and identity. They are in transit, act differently and I like watching them. The writer’s privilege, you could say.

In general, Hotel de las Letras is a good place for a writer. Or for any poem-lover og literature-snob. Not only because the rooms are decorated with quotes from the book and arts world, but mostly because the hotel has a library with a good selection of modern authors and a soft corner sofa to enjoy it in.

The only thing I like less, is the one everybody else praises, namely the fact that Hotel de las Letras is situated on Calle Gran Via, one of the biggest and – in my eyes – more boring streets in Madrid. But okay, that’s a minor fault to a good hotel. And counterbalanced by the fact that the wild and avant-garde Chueca-district is just in the backyard.

HOTEL DE LAS LETRAS; Calle Grand Via 11; Madrid

Go further: Find more hotels in Madrid here.