Review: the Iberia Dali VIP lounge in Madrid

Last weekend I (Anika) was down in Portugal visiting the new InterContinental hotel in Estoril, just down the coast from Lisbon.  My review will follow next week.

Our inbound flight from Lisbon was not as easy and straightforward as the outbound flight.  Let’s just say that my ‘not so great’ relationship with Iberia has not improved and I appreciate BA more than ever.

Outbound (BA): Fast track, lounge access, drinks and snacks in Economy, leg room and lovely flight attendants. London – Lisbon done.

Inbound (Iberia via Madrid): Fast track refused with my Silver card, Lisbon lounge like a sauna, flight delayed, changing in Madrid (I blame Rob for that though, he booked it!), ending up with just 30 minutes to check out the lounge and run to the other end of the terminal for the flight to London, literally no leg room (where BA puts 28 rows in an Airbus 320 Iberia squeezes in 30) and my gin and tonic (€7) came with blue tonic water:

Anyway, although I only had a few minutes in the Iberia Dali VIP lounge in Madrid, I still took some pictures for a quick review.  The bottom line is that it is well worth a visit.

When you sign in you can either go to the part on the left or to the right. The lady at the desk said it wouldn’t make a difference which one we chose as they were similar so we ended up turning left.  The lounge was huge with lots of sitting areas and enough room between them.

The coffee bar had coffee, snacks and juices.

The self serviced bar had all the standard alcoholic drinks, however I didn’t see any champagne or prosecco:

We were in the lounge between lunch and dinner which meant we found ourselves in front of a Pret A Manger-like fridge with sandwiches and salads. But, to be honest, we wouldn’t have had time for a proper meal anyway.

Here are more sitting areas:

And the TV room:

The lounge also has a relaxation room with beds where people were actually sleeping – hence no picture of the actual room.

Conclusion

As much as I don’t like Iberia, the Dali lounge was decent.

I can’t say much more about it as I didn’t have enough time to properly sit down.  It is definitely a good lounge for a quick drink and a snack and worth making time for if you are heading back to London or transferring to another Iberia flight.

If you want to find out more, there is a page on the Iberia website covering the Madrid lounges which can be found here.

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