When it comes to choosing hotel rooms, I’m a pretty simple person and extremely budget conscious. I can’t say I’m much of a backpacker because 1. I always pack WAY more than a backpack would allow for, and 2. I generally don’t like the idea of sharing a room with stranger when I’m constantly travelling with a lot of my expensive electronics (cameras, lenses, MacBook, portable hard drives, etc.).

In this case, my main criteria for choosing a hotel was that it had to be near the Primera Plus bus location in the Romantic Zone of Puerto Vallarta, because I wanted to be able to walk to the bus stop and not pay for a taxi. I also wanted to pay as little as possible for the hotel room because all I really needed was a place to sleep for the one night.

For those who don’t want to read the entire article and just want to get down to the nitty-gritty pros/cons of the Hotel Belmar Galeria, feel free to skip to the recap here.

My Reservation Process

I have been a loyal Expedia user for many, many years and, recently, I’ve been using the Expedia app for my hotel and flight reservations to earn more Expedia+ points. (If you don’t have the app, you can download it here.)

Reserving the hotel room was just a matter of opening the app on my iPhone, entering the dates of my stay, selecting the hotel and room style, and then swiping to prepay for the room charge.

As I quickly mentioned before, I only booked a room for one night because my flight arrival time wasn’t going to get me into town in time to catch one of the Primera Plus buses to Manzanillo. I also didn’t want to spend a lot of money on my hotel room

My Arrival

I knew that finding the hotel wasn’t going to be a problem for me or my taxi driver. I used to walk by the entrance of the hotel all the time when I lived in the downtown area and needed to go to the Primera Plus bus stop to go to Manzanillo or catch one of the orange busses to head to Boca de Tomatlan or eat at one of the taco stands in front of the Farmacia Guadalajara.

I can’t say that I knew about that fact that there was NO ELEVATOR before reserving my hotel room but since I used to have to haul my luggage up a few blocks of stairs to get to the apartment I used to live in, I knew that going up a couple flights of stairs was nothing compared to what I had to climb when I lived on the hill before.

Thankfully my room was on the first floor so I had to climb the least amount of stairs compared to those who had rooms higher up in the building.

My Room

Walking into my room was a bit of a surprise because it didn’t seem to be the room type that I had requested. Not that it was a bad thing, it was just a surprise. The room that I reserved was one of their “Studio(Exterior)” room types with a double bed but the room that they actually gave me ended up being what seems to be one of their “Gallery” rooms with two double beds and a kitchenette.

In the room there was:

• 1 queen-sized bed and 1 double-sized bed
• a small table with 2 chairs (that worked great as my little desk area for my laptop)
• a kitchenette with a mini fridge, microwave, kitchen sink and some dishes
• a balcony looking over one of the side streets with a small table and 2 chairs
• a private bathroom with a shower

Even though it wasn’t something that really needed for my one-night stay, having that kitchenette in my room was a nice addition because I was able to go out to buy snacks and drinks in advance for my bus trip and keep things cool in fridge overnight.

In the morning I had to wake up early to catch the morning bus that departed from Puerto Vallarta to Manzanillo. I was able to pour myself a free cup of coffee and bring it to my room to drink while I finished getting my stuff ready for the bus. I didn’t eat any of the cookies in the morning but I did grab a couple before I checked out to munch on during my bus ride.