Catalonia Rubens Hotel Barcelona

Good points

• Great breakfast service
• Satisfying traditional English breakfast buffet though the water for the tea was not exactly hot as, once they bought it out from the kitchen they didn’t put it on a hot plate or anything to keep it hot, so no doubt it got cold quickly! But you just ask them to get you hot water and they do so promptly
• Friendly staff- at breakfast and Daniel at the reception desk
• When going to see places, ask the reception staff how to get there and what subway you should take. They were very helpful. Well two of them were anyway!
• They don’t exchange money
• The hotel location is in a residential area, despite being surrounded by blocks of buildings which are different to the ones we’re used to (well I am used to) you don’t really feel like your in Barcelona until you get out of the area or at least the hotel
• Hotel is close to one of the popular tourist sites Park Guell
• There is a row of local shops down the road from the hotel including a bank which we found gave the best exchange rate compared to all the other places
• We had dinner in the hotel once, which surprisingly worked out cheaper than eating out. Portions were also much bigger, I would say too big if you order two dishes!
• The local people are nice (once you actually see them) and very helpful. Even if they can’t speak English, they try their best to explain in Spanish! just pay attention to their hand movements and words like left and right and you’ll be ok hopefully ☺

Bad points

• It’s approximately 8 minute walk uphill to get to the hotel from the metro, not something you look forward to after walking ALL DAY at the touristy sites
• The room was freezing, so cold that we had to wear double layers to bed. They have a small heater which hardly warms the room fully (despite being left on during the whole of our stay)
• Room is a bit old- all I would say is; you get what you pay for. Its tidy and bathroom is nice but it does need re-decorating. But if you don’t intend on spending a lot of time in the hotel, as we didn’t, then it’s an ok place to stay
• Check out is 12pm. our flight wasn’t until 20:50 pm. So we decided to stay until 16:00 pm without asking first. When we checked out we just played dumb and said nobody told us what the checkout time was (despite the fact that I actually knew!) they asked for a supplement of 30 euros which I was kind of willing to pay. But fortunately my housemate WAS NOT going to pay extra so we got away with it. So tip: if u don’t mind feeling bad about doing what we did; then by all means try it if need be ☺
• Some of the staff is rude and arrogant though I can’t understand why!
• You don’t really meet other tourists in the hotel. It seems like they don’t have very many guests!
• You could hear traffic and a lot of the noise from outside and the bed mattress was uncomfortable at first, which I personally think doesn’t matter when all you want to do is sleep after a loooooong day out with plans for an early start the next day!