I made my last and fourth internship from school in a beautiful old hotel Reina                 Cristina in the city of Algeciras, located in south Spain. I was working in the reception from February 11th until the middle of May.
In hotel Reina Cristina they have about 180 rooms, in three floors with different views. There is also inside and outside pools, lobby -and pool bar and also two conference rooms. The whole hotel area is one big garden and its a great area to organize for example weddings. We had many weddings and other celebrations.

When I got this place for my internship, I thought long time that I was going to leave to city called Cadiz, cause Algeciras is a part of province of Cadiz and in the address of hotel I saw just Cadiz. Just some weeks before I left to Spain I was looking the map more specifically and noticed that I am leaving to city called Algeciras. Started to find information from internet about the city but I didnt find much.
When I got there, the city didnt seem too much living but with more time I started to like it. Is very different city that I have never been with harbor and not a lot of tourism. The tourism in Algeciras is based on people who stay there for maybe one night before they take a ferry to Morocco.
From Algeciras you cant move easily to other places, Gibraltar is very close its opposite of a port of Algeciras and you can see the rock all the time. Also in Algeciras there is good bus and train connections for example Cadiz, Sevilla, Ronda, Tarifa, Marbella, Malaga..
Algeciras is very near to Africa and its very easy to get there, you just go the port of Tarifa and take a ferry from there and it arrives to Morocco in one hour.
I liked the nature of Algeciras and the big moutains that surrounded the area.

When I arrived to Malaga in February, Julie from the hotel was there and picked me up and we left driving to Algeciras, by car it took about 1,5 hour.
Arrived to the hotel, and next day we left to get NIE number for me so I can start working. We went to couple offices and bank to register my informations and I got the number. Same day I started working. My working clothes was a skirt, shirt, jacket and a tie with the logo of the company Hoteles Globales.
I was working always in the morning or in the afternoon, I didnt have night shifts. Morning shift was from 8-16 and afternoon from 14-22.
The first month I lived in very small room at the hotel, but after one month I just didnt fit in anymore with all of my property so I changed to one bigger room at the hotel.

At work everything went well, I didnt have any big issues. Couple of times in the start was hard situations with the local clients if I didnt understand their Spanish good and they didnt speak English. But later I started understood what they wanted and was able to serve with them too. Some of the local clients was reacted friendly and sympathetically when I told I speak little bit Spanish, but some of them was surprised and wondered how is possible that I work in the reception and not speaking perfectly Spanish, which I totally understood.

Most of the clients at the hotel were from UK or from Spain. After them there were clients from Germany, Portugal, Italy, USA and Scandinavians. Clients from Finland I met maybe 5-6 times.
Most of the clients were people that have already retired and was looking for a beautiful nice and quiet place for relax at their holidays.
In the end of April the hotel was totally full, we had a teams playing handball at the hotel. Kids were ages 8-16. At that time we get many appeals cause the kids were very noisy in the rooms and all the areas of the hotel. Those times we called the mechanic working in the hotel to go and tell them to be more quiet..
In the hotel we had also many loyalty customers that keeps coming to the hotel couple of times in a year, year after year. They love the style of Reina Cristina and like to visit Gibraltar often cause its near.

From this internship I learned of course the Spanish culture and to understand how are Spanish people. Also some Spanish language which will be helpful in the future travelling there. Of course was developing my English too and I got a lot of compliments of it which was very nice.
After all I had a great and instructive time at Spain and I am very happy for this experience! 🙂

Here is a link to one video that is telling about the city of Algeciras, and in time 3 minutes there is filmed the hotel I was. There is Sara, the event producer and Francisco, the Manager of the hotel and they are telling that the hotel is oldest in Costa Del Sol and that in Algeciras there is very old and relevant railway station.
Also in the video you can see the nature that I was talking about before. Just before 3 minutes in the video, there is a part where the girl is telling that from there you can see Morocco, Ceuta and Gibraltar!
From the video (time before 1 minute) you can also see some parts about Paco de Lucia. He was one of the most significant flamenco guitarist of all time, he is from Algeciras and people are very proud of him. He died of February 2014 and in the city you can see memorial things for him. When was gone one year of his death, there was a huge memorial event in the centre. The sister of Paco de Lucia was staying in Reina Cristina with her family at that time.
They are filming also the port of Algeciras, which is getting bigger and bigger.
And much more!

Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZlozLhyL20

-Sirke