My wife is presenting at a conference in Barcelona this August (paid for by work), so I’ll be taking the opportunity to join her for a short stay. August would not normally be my choice of times to visit Barcelona, but c’est la vie, to mix languages.
I’m looking for advice on where in the city to base ourselves. We’ll be staying within the city (no day trips) and using public transportation/walking, so I want to stay someplace near the center of things without being directly in a tourist hell zone. My initial (brief) reading suggests La Ribera might be a good place, but I’d love to get some opinions about that. We prefer to stay in small boutique hotels in areas that are not loud/clubby/full of drunk people at night.
I’m sure we’ll visit some of the big tourist sights like Sagrada Familia and the Picasso Museum, but I’d love to hear other advice about cool things to do/see, particularly if they are less touristy. Or about things NOT to do. We’re experienced European travelers (so you can skip the general tourist advice), but this will be our first time to Spain.
When we arrived we did a guided tapas tour; 4 stops with a few plates and a drink at each. It was a great way to start the trip, as we felt that we understood tapas better for all our other meals. The Magic Fountain of Montjuïc was lovely at sunset, big crowds but mellow and a nice point in the evening. We also took a guided Gaudi tour, which helped us understand Casa Batilo, Casa Mila, and Sagrada Familia, and then we toured Parc Guell on our own.
The Picasso museum was nice, but we weren’t overwhelmed. The beach is nice, and a trip up to Montjuic via the aerial tram gives a great view of the city. I highly recommend a flaminco show, but find one away from Las Ramblas, ours was clearly a bit touristy. La Boqueria market is fun and busy, but there are also other markets to be seen outside of the tourist areas. We also took a cooking class that involved shopping for the ingredients at the market beforehand, which is always fun.
If you’re into soccer (football) a trip to Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona can be worth it although it’s a little expensive for the full tour. For non-touristy parks, we enjoyed Parc de la Ciutadella and the area around the Arc de Triomf but I’m sure there are others.
We did a day trip to Montserrat, easy train journey to the funnicular. The Bascilica is lovely, and then we did a nice hike to Sant Jeroni. Be warned, the weather may be really hot for this.
Telemark covered most of the stuff we did (and some we didn’t). We also did a day trip to Girona which had some interesting old-timey architecture (as seen on Game of Thrones, if you’re into that).
I love this idea, and I often look at food tours when we travel, but sadly for us they can be challenging because my wife has multiple serious food allergies. The ones we have been on the food cannot be customized, so she can’t eat half of it and we are worried about being “difficult” customers constantly asking about ingredients. Add in translating to/from another language, and it can be more stress than it’s worth.
That said, she’s going to have to be at the conference on multiple days, so maybe I’ll do one without her
We stayed in a hotel called Retrome (also called Numa Barcelona Roca, it seems) in the upscale Eixample district right next to Girona metro station. The hotel was a converted apartment building with a beautiful big room and a nice common area with a shared kitchen. Lots of restaurants around (although we tend to buy groceries and make our own simple meals like sandwiches) and an easy walk to the Sagrada Familia.
Absolutely, some places we visited were a bit further away (e.g. Park Guell, Parc del Forum, the Monjuic fountain). And we usually spent all day walking and then took the subway back to the hotel after we got tired. We had transit passes, so we tried to get our money’s worth out of them.
Fun fact - I discovered the Dope about twenty years ago when someone on Fodor’s asked ‘can anyone recommend a forum like this one, which isn’t just travel’.
I visited last December, and I stayed at Hotel Midmost which is a couple of blocks from Plaza de Catalunya and La Rambla. It was affordable in December, but no promises about August. There are other smaller hotels within a block of that, which all seem pretty good. It is easy access to the metro lines, and the airport bus stops at the Plaza.
I got a metro pass, but never figured out how to use it. If you want to visit places like Sagrada Familia, you should get a ticket in advance as entry can be limited.
