Hi All!
This will be my first time travelling in Europe, I'm a recent college graduate and I'll be travelling with 3 others. The first leg of our trip begins in Paris and our next stop would be Barcelona for 4 days.
Can anyone recommend first, the best way to travel between Paris and Barcelona? Train? Cheap flight website?
Second, can anyone recommend hostels/ cheap but safe hotels in Barcelona?
Looking for all the help I can get :) Thank you!
I would probably opt for a flight on that route- probably cheaper, and an hour or two less in overall travel time. My favorite place to check for budget flights has always been skyscanner.com
Train not a bad option at 6.5hrs transit time. Google "Paris Barcelona TGV" to read the Man in Seat 61 description of the route and booking options.
To find a good hostel I always went to the big booking/review sites such as hostelz.com and hostelbookers.com. You can sort by highest rating, and then look at a map to make sure a place is centrally located.
If you opt to fly to Barcelona, be certain the flight is actually going into the main Barcelona airport - El Prat. Some of the budget airlines list flights as to Barcelona, but actually fly into the airport at Girona - almost 100 kilometers away from the city. I would choose to travel this route by train - city center to city center.
Good point about far-away airports. Ryainair's 'Paris' hub is Beauvais airport, an hour or more north of Paris. On Skyscanner.com you can stick to the BCN airport code, which is the main Barcelona-El Prat airport. You can select 'Paris Any' as the departure to show all airports including Beauvais. Orly Airport (ORY) would be your best bet to use, and it looks like there are good fares with Vueling between ORY and BCN. Vueling is a big Spanish budget airline with a good reputation.
I stayed last week for 6 night in this hostel :http://360hostelarts.com/
I can really recommend it.
It´s central, safe, clean, nice staff and very nice people.
They have free dinner every night and organizing nights out every day. Good place to meet some cool people!
have fun on your trip!
To learn more about the train between Paris and Barcelona, here's the link for The Man In Seat 61's page on it: http://seat61.com/Paris-to-Barcelona-by-TGV-train.htm#.VyTMnnonKT8
To look for flights, use Skyscanner to see all your options: http://www.skyscanner.com/
When comparing train and plane, remember to figure in the time, cost, and hassle of getting to and from the airports on each end. The train stations are right in the cities; the airports aren't.
A good source of information about inexpensive lodgings (and other city tips) is EuroCheapo: http://www.eurocheapo.com/barcelona/
You can also look at Hostelworld http://www.hostelworld.com/ and Hostelbookers http://www.hostelbookers.com/ for more information (reviews, etc).
1.) Just in case you are not familiar with this: aside hostels, in Spain there's something called "hostales" (in Spanish, or "hostals" in Catalan -the local language in Catalonia) which are sort of hotels with basic amenities -hence cheaper than hotels. Most hostales have toilet/bathroom in each room albeit in some this is shared (one by floor), much like in hostels.
2.) Over time I've compiled a short list of B&Bs and hostAles which have been praised by some of the posters at the Barcelona forum in TripAdvisor. Check them out, perhaps you find one you also like: http://bit.ly/hostals_and_BBs_in_BCN
3.) Focusing on hostels, two of the most popular ones are: Generator and Urbany Also, this is a good list: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/jun/08/barcelona-10-best-hostels
From Enrics list I might point you (location wise) to Casa de Marcelo and El Balcon del Born. These are handy to sights, but also to the beaches and bars of Barceloneta.
Oh, and the train is great now from Paris to Barcelona, but I would lean towards flying, which is probably cheaper (easyjet or Vueling).
