The Apartamentos Bella Vista in Puerto de la Cruz is multi-storey hotel curved in a bow shape. It sits atop the cliffs and its convex side looks north directly out over the Oceano Atlantico, which is a myriad of blues ranging from deep aquamarine through teal to light blue, according to the swells, the wind and the sunshine.

The hotel on the other hand is basically white with a bright green trim. The rendering is a stucco-style finish, both inside the rooms, reception, the bar, the restaurant and on the exterior. This vivid green trim has been applied lovingly everywhere, from door jambs, coffee tables and picture frames to handrails, curtain rails and even plant pots.

But when I say lovingly, I mean it. The precision and quality of the green paintwork is superb, and obviously the work of an artisan. I mean, as a DIY-er myself, I know how tricky it is to get a straight edge when painting on stucco, or any stippled surface. Your masking tape often doesn't stick very well, and even if it does, the stippled surface usually means some paint will dribble in underneath your carefully-applied tape, making your painted edges look like the work of a three-year old.

But not here at the Bella Vista. Here the borders where green meets white are razor sharp. And where there is the opportunity for highlighting in green, it is taken, and executed profrssionally. Take the curtain rails for example. Someone has gone to the trouble of taking them off the walls, undoing the finials at each end, then removed the mounting brackets. They have then painted the rail itself white, and the finials and brackets green, probably with two or even three coats each, and when everything has dried they've reassembled the lot.

They've done the same with drawer handles, table legs, hinges and edges, throughout the hotel. No opportunity, no matter how minor, has been missed.

And the quality of the paintwork is, as mentioned, absolutely fantastic... not a single drip or run. The gloss paint gleams. You can see your face in it. (Check out the photos for evidence)

What a pity then that the trim colour is such an awful, awful gut-wrenching shade of the ugliest green known to man. It is not a green you would even find in nature, unless a plant needed to scare away absolutely everything on the planet from pollinating insects to any other life form. It is such a truly revolting hue that any species bearing it would surely die off and extinguish itself from the evolutionary process, since nothing on earth would ever want to help it in its survival. Maybe it's even called Extinction Green.

To support this theory, we went to the Jardin Botanico in Puerto de la Cruz this morning, and despite the myriad array of some of the world's lushest foliage, this green wasn't present.

But someone somewhere in the Bella Vista's hierarchy likes green, and this particular shade over all others. Either that or some decades ago there was a paint sale gigantico in which 'El verde de la extinción' was being sold off very cheaply, if not being given away. Perhaps there's still ten thousand litres of it sitting in cans in the hotel basement.

On the other hand, we chose the Bella Vista for its location and its reasonable tariff. Sure there are hotels more central, more modern and better deciorated. But if the people staying there knew what we were paying they'd probably be, well, green with envy.