Hello,
Our family (2 adults and 2 children) is planning a 4 week trip to Spain in June. We're considering our home base to be in Barcelona. We are familiar with booking through airbnb but are there other rental agencies or booking sites specific to Barcelona or Spain that we should consider?
Thank you in advance for your help!
Tanya
Airbnb is fine if the apartment shows the HUTB number, which means it is a legal apartment. Otherwise, once in Barcelona you could find the apartment doesn't exist or it has been closed by a judge order.
I love Barcelona and could happily spend four weeks there seeing a lot of sights in the city and taking day-trips elsewhere in Catalunya. But Barcelona is way up in NE Spain and is not a suitable base for trips to the Basque Country, Toledo, Segovia, Cordoba, Seville, Granada or many other places of interest. I wouldn't try a day-trip to Madrid (at least 5 hours round trip just on the train, and possibly over 100 euros per adult even if you buy the tickets way in advance). The country is far too large to spend all your nights in Barcelona unless the trip is to Catalunya, rather than Spain in the broader sense.
If you do intend to try this and expect to take a lot of side-trips, give some thought to where your lodgings are located with respect to the train/bus station(s) you anticipate needing to use. It's easy to focus on the fact that the train will take about an hour, forgetting that first you have to get to the train station.
Also, be aware that if a destination depends on use of a fast train to be viable as a day-trip (as Madrid would), you'll probably feel you need to pin down the details of that trip way in advance (not knowing what the weather will be like, etc.), else you'll pay excessively high prices for the train tickets. Late purchase of a ticket to Madrid could cost you up to 254 euros per adult round trip.
Always check prices for round-trip tickets in Spain. The are sometimes about the same price as one-way tickets, occasionally even cheaper.
