Learn Spanish (Latin America): El hotel queda cerca de la playa.

El hotel queda cerca de la playa.

The hotel is close to the beach.

Breakdown of El hotel queda cerca de la playa.

to be located / to remain

Questions & Answers about El hotel queda cerca de la playa.

Why does this sentence use queda instead of está for location?

You can use both! While estar is the standard verb for location, quedar is also very frequently used to say where places or buildings are located. Both El hotel está cerca and El hotel queda cerca are perfectly natural and mean the exact same thing.

I learned that the verb quedar means "to stay". Why does it translate to "is" here?

Quedar is a very flexible verb in Spanish. When talking about a physical place like a building, store, or city, it means "to be located." If you want to say that a person is staying at a hotel, you would use its reflexive form, quedarse.

Why is there a de after cerca? Can I just say cerca la playa?

You need the de! By itself, cerca just means "nearby" or "close." When you want to specify exactly what the subject is close to, you must use the compound phrase cerca de. If the beach was already mentioned, you could drop it and just say El hotel queda cerca (The hotel is nearby).

Which question word from this lesson would I use to ask where the hotel is?