This trip to Barcelona fortunately coincided with Barcelona's Gracia Festival which takes place during mid August of each year. We were lucky (ish...more on that later) to get a pad in the city this time of year as the majority of hotels were totally booked out (we found a 2 star type affair but this was situated nearly 20 miles from the city...hardly on the doorstep of Barcelona is it?). There were, however, one or two apartments being let and a few at reasonable prices. We captured one situated just above the Gracia area and virtually next door to an underground (Metro) stop.
The apartment itself was a fairly modern affair, although it wouldn't look out of place in the 80's bar the LCD screens in every available portion of the rooms. With a fancy walk in 'hydro-massage' shower and two bathrooms we thought we'd struck gold given the price we paid. It soon became apparent however that the place was on the rather small end of the space spectrum. The upper floors were in fact mezzanines; the two floors connected via doll house stairs (one such set of stairs were almost vertical...a practical death trap if you asked me). I felt like I was in some kind of space capsule and in fact had walked onto the set of a modern space film (I'd watched Steven Soderbergh's remake of Solaris recently...cross that with an Athena poster and you'll get the picture).
The, ahem, Kitchen comprised of a small sink and a 12” workspace (could just about peel a small tangerine on there) although to it's credit there was a 'real' espresso machine...I got to be a coffee barista for a week...and it amplified my desire to procure, one day, a genuine coffee machine).
Apparantly the apartment came complete with wi-fi access, but we couldn't for the life of us work out where and how we could potentially connect to the internet from this space capsule (although to be fair we neither had the time nor inclination to do so).
Another plus was the air conditioning in all rooms...it really is hot this time of year in Barcelona and I know we would've struggled (with children) without it.
The 'patio' consisted of a 2 foot by 6 foot 'well' in the middle of all these apartments. If you craned your neck somewhat you might just about catch a glimpse of the sky above. Suffice to say we never felt it necessary to open the door to the 'well' after the first view.
Thankfully we spent most of our time out of the apartment and really used it as a base at the end of the day. Dodgy DIY 'exhibits' a few exposed wires; dangerous stairs; huge gaps on the upper levels meaning that kids could potentially fall and seriously hurt themselves, made this place slightly less enticing than the original site photo's showed.
POST NOTE: As of writing we have yet to receive our deposits back from the landlord despite being promised this would be returned as we checked out (he didn't turn up). So that's another fight on our hands.
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