transportation from downtown to Barcelona International at 3:30am.

With El Prat de Llobregat Airport being about 8 miles from downtown Barcelona, and with the taxi price estimate in Rick's book saying about 36 euros one way, I find it hard to believe that the price would be more than double for early morning. That has not been my experience in other cities. If you are staying at a hotel, they should be used to booking taxis in advance for early-morning pick-up, or else they have staff working all night who will make the call at 3:00 a.m.

Also, you do not have to be at the airport two and a half hours early. That flight is entirely within Schengen and the EU, so there are no routine passport or customs checks. Ninety minutes to two hours should be more than enough time - particularly if you can do online check in the day before.

As stated above, you are allowing waaaay too much time. It is perfectly fine to arrive at the airport 60-90 minutes before a flight within Europe, especially if you do online check in.

€75 is far too much, I'd say more around €50 tops. While the night fare is indeed more expensive than the day fare, at those hours traffic is very light and traffic lights are more synced so one thing compensates the other: yes, the fare is more expensive but the ride is far shorter. I'd say you wouldn't pay more than 38-40€ from say Plaça Catalunya to the airport, but I'm giving an extra 10€ cushion just in case.

Note that to the final fare you'll have 4.20€ added -both day or night- which is the supplement to go to/from the airport and/or port.

As per Emily's comment, she'd be right if it weren't because at 6am is 'start of the day' for many flights so the airport tends to get quite busy at around that time. I wouldn't "risk" getting there too late and then missing my plane because security lines are very busy that particular day.

PS. Also, for info, there's no such thing as Barcelona International... Barcelona's airport has two terminals (Terminal 1 and Terminal 2) and both serve international and domestic flights... and the full name of the airport is Aeroport del Prat de Llobregat -because it's the name of the town where the airport is actually located, 8 miles from Barcelona.

Thanks for the help. I'm staying at an Airbnb not too far from downtown. They phoned the taxi for me to check on the prices and were told it could be as much as €75.00. I guess the bottom line is I did not read that anyone has any other solution except a taxi and not to go ridiculously early.

I'll plan for the worst and hope for the best. Thanks.

Carol

We had our hotel call us a taxi last November (just about exactly 1 year ago to the day) for an early morning (but not quite as early as you're planning) trip to the airport. After waiting in the hotel lobby for 10 minutes past the time we'd been told the taxi would arrive, just walked the 2 blocks to Plaça de Catalunya and got in the first cab in the taxi queue. I don't recall the exact price, and the sun hadn't come up yet so it was nighttime rates, but the fare was quite reasonable and I know it was waaaaaay less than €75.