How to choose your holiday apartment in Barcelona

Thursday, 16 April 2009 14:12

In and Around Barcelona

Here are 10 tips about how to choose your holiday accommodation in Barcelona, assuming that apartment accommodation is what will best suit your needs.

Many times friends are asking me to help them to choose their flat. The offer of short term rentals apartments in our web page is big and in some cases clients tend to get confused. On one hand the Raval neighbourhood sounds really cool and very interesting place to stay in but on the other hand it is quite busy and not so clean and neat as the Gothic quarter or the Borne. Or perhaps it will be better to rent an apartment in the Eixample where there is much less tourist movement and the area is more residential.

And even after you chose the area, you start asking yourself whether you should go for a small studio apartment, accommodating the child in the sofa-bed in the living room or perhaps it will be too small for the three of you? Is it really necessary to be so close to the Metro station? Is a third floor without an elevator will be to high to climb or maybe it is really not that important?

Rentals Barcelona | Apartments in Barcelona

All these doubts are real and I believe worth being addressed. So I will try to put things in some order and like this at least to give you some basic criteria for the apartment selection.

Let’s start with selecting an area for your accommodation in Barcelona. It is very important that the area you chose to stay in will fit more or less you requirements or your expectations, because apartment accommodation is different from the traditional hotel accommodation in the sense that you are now part of the local society, sharing with the locals their every day life. So if you are used to a very high standard accommodation and sensible to anything which is less then 4/5 starts hotels I wouldn’t recommend you the interior parts of the Raval neighbourhood, neither perhaps the Barceloneta (although personally I believe these are the most exiting areas of the city!). However if your budget is limited and you are comfortable with Barcelona and already learned that it is a safe city (even in the areas that doesn’t look like it) I would highly recommend the Raval and the Barceloneta areas. Apartments there are more economic although their quality is the same or even superior. The Barceloneta is especially fun in the hot season, that means as from June and up to October.

However if you want to be in the fancy part of the city and willing to pay a bit more I would recommend el Borne or one of the apartments of the Eixample, near the famous Paseo de Gracia street.

One thing however is very important to have in mind when choosing the area: Barcelona centre is relatively small, much smaller then it looks in the maps and any of the apartments that we offer are considered to be centrally located. So if you are worried about being near the centre this shouldn’t be problem. Basically the Raval, the gothic quarter, Poblesec, the born and the Eixample are all within maximum half an hour walk. The only neighbourhood that may be considered off the centre is the Poblenou area.

Many people also ask me whether travelling with kids should affect the location of the apartment. Well, again it depends. Basically it shouldn’t affect your decision as all our apartments are located in normal residential buildings where local families are living very happily. But then again, if you are terrorised by immigrants are by the multitudes then perhaps the Borne or the Eixample areas would be better locations.

The best way to learn about the different areas of Barcelona and their character is to read a little the summery that we have prepared on each one with a lot of care and locals insight.

Once you have selected the area you should consider the following parameters:

1. apartment quality
2. apartments features (equipment/terrace/balconies etc).
3. size of the apartment
4. number of bedrooms / beds
5. the apartment internal distribution
6. does it has an elevator and if not in which floor is it

Apartment quality and size: most of the apartments that we have selected to be announced in our web are of high quality and some are really luxury apartments. All of them has been refurbished within the last 7 years and it is quite easy to evaluate by reviewing the pictures. When viewing the pictures of the flats you should have in mind that we took them with wide lance so it can include all the spaces and all the details. However using this kind of photography create an illusion in which the spaces seem to be much bigger then they are. For this reason you should always look for the exact size of the apartment in order to determine it actual size.

Apartment features: perhaps the most important feature in any apartment as a terrace. However, in Barcelona there are only few holiday apartments that include this feature. Our site is unique by the large amount of apartments that include terrace (whether it is private terrace or shared by the whole building). In each apartment page you will find a full list of all the equipment included in the apartment.

All of the apartments are fully equipped and furnished. The equipment always included bed linens, towels, cooking facilities, dishes and full kitchen, TV, music system, DVD, heat. Iron boards and iron, hair fan and basically everything you need in your home away from home…

Some properties offer special features such as satellite or international cable TV, Air conditioning (see below), swimming pool and garden, parking place, ADSL Internet connection, safety box etc.

Air condition: many clients asks specifically for Air conditioned apartments thinking that Spain is an extremely hot country. Spain is indeed hot country but Barcelona is not so much. Until this decade most of the residential apartments in the city didn’t have AC installed in them, for the simple reason that most of the year it isn’t really needed, and if it is then maybe 1 or 2 month a years, normally during July and august. And even then, most of the time a normal fan is sufficient, as temperatures are normally around 26-28 degrees Celsius and Barcelona enjoys a nice breezes of air. Every year in summer there are short periods of heat waves (few days a year), but it is the same as in northern parts of Europe where AC hardly exist. So of course an AC installation is an advantage but I wouldn’t discard an apartment just because it is lack of it.

Number of bedrooms: that is mainly related with the number of people that plan to occupy the apartment although not always. For couples coming to spend few days of vacation I believe a studio apartment would be sufficient. However having a separate bedroom or even 2 is always an advantage and make the stay even more pleasant, even tough not necessary. For those who are travelling to Barcelona with children it really depends on the level of commodity they seek and their budget. I always recommend to have a separate bedroom for the kids but many clients say that having them sleeping in the sofa-bed of the living room is fine. So this is very subjective and each family has it own preferences of accommodation.

Internal distribution: we have made a great effort to include for most of the apartments a detailed floor plan or at least a detailed description of the internal distribution of the apartment. It is very important to pay attention to the beds distribution when you book an apartment for more the 2/3 persons. You should take in to account that some double bedrooms has only one bed (double bed), that means that 2 persons has to sleep together in the same bed. The same works for the sofa-bed in the living room.

Elevator and number of floors: Barcelona and especially the old part of the city has many old buildings that doesn’t have an elevator installed in them. For young people it is normally not relevant and I can’t remember somebody young complaining for its absence. However with old people a high apartment without an elevator may be a problem. My father has 74 years and he has no problem to climb 4 floors. But I would like to believe that he is an exception. Most of the older people wouldn’t like to climb more then 3 floors. For this reason we are indicating specifically for each apartment in which floor it is and whether is has an elevator or not. Also note that even in buildings with elevator sometime there are parts of stairs, normally few stairs to access the lift or it is it a roof top, penthouse or just last floor, some times the elevator stops one floor below. This is very important detail for people with a physical disability.

Please remember that if you are not sure about which apartment to choose or if you feel that you need some recommendation you can always send an enquiry to us or to call us directly and we will be more then happy to recommend you an apartment. And the most important: whatever apartment you book with Apartime.com we are sure you will enjoy it!

Thank you and we hope to see you in Barcelona.

Y.B Meshullam

Director.

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