Barcelona hotels and location.

We spent 5 nights in Barcelona and loved the location of our hotel, Catalonia Portal Del Angel. We were able to do a lot of walking to most sites, and the major bus lines were right up the street. It's a block off the Las Ramblas. Highly recommend it.

I enjoyed staying very near Placa Catalunya. In one direction was the Eixample with many of the modernista sights. In the other direction was the Barri Gotic. And the bus from the airport goes right to that square. Barcelona has really good public transportation, so you have a lot of choices, but your trip is very short, so I'd want to be either right at a rather close-in Metro station or within walking distance of some sights.

If you've decided on some of the things you want to see, that will help other folks make more targeted suggestions.

Which hotel was that?

I stayed at the Hotel Catalunya on Carrer Santa Anna, a pedestrian street one block south of Placa Catalunya. I had a small single room. I would happily stay there again, but the room was minute, as is fairly common in Europe. Barcelona has rather high hotel rates, so a room an American would consider normal in size could be painfully expensive.

It's basically a matter of how small you're willing to go. It the six of you are going to share three rooms (or even more, if you're hoping to share two triples), you need a bit of elbow room. I've been in rooms that had beds obviously intended to be shared, but I swear I don't know where you'd be able to put a second suitcase so you didn't have to walk on top of it (or jump over it) as you moved around the room. That sort of situation could really test a friendship.

For this or any other hotel in a city like Barcelona, you should go to a hotel website that provides a lot of photos (I use booking.com) and has lots or reviews (here I definitely prefer booking.com). Look at all the pictures. Read all the English-language reviews, paying attention to structural things that would bother you (like a room that's too small for more than one person, showers that only accommodate anorexics, windows looking out on air shafts, etc.). One thing about those air-shaft views: Rooms like that usually have no street noise to contend with.

The typical European hotel has rooms of different sizes. Sometimes the larger ones are called "superior" or something similar. You may find a broader range of availability on the hotel's own website, but booking.com and sites of that ilk are handy for identifying places that have rooms available for your time period so you don't waste a lot of time.

There are many hotels near Placa Catalunya, including some rather large ones that may be more likely to have rooms sized for three people, if that's what you're hoping for.

This past October we really enjoyed our stay at the U232 Hotel on Comte Urgell - in the Eixample area - but not in the thick of things, making it a good value for money. We walked everywhere, except to Park Guell.

http://www.u232hotel.com/en/