Casa Bella Gracia by Aspasios — Hotel in Barcelona

Location is good, other than that it was a disaster. If you want to stay in a "do it yourself" experiment (will explain below), this is the place for you; otherwise, recommend you avoid it. The place has NO staff on site (in theory there is an office an one of the upstairs floors, but it was always locked, and we never found anyone inside). You let yourself into the building with a code they send you by email, which gets you into the small "reception" area--just an empty counter with no one behind it, and signs on the walls telling you what to do. The email (sent via booking.com) also contained a code to let us into our room--but no room number! There is a phone in the reception area from which you can call an extension for the office (no answer, can't leave message) and another extension for emergencies (no answer, can't leave message). We also had a cell phone number to call for emergencies (again, no answer, can't leave message). So we were stuck in the reception area for 1.5 hours, until I decided to just try the code on each room, finally finding the one it opened, which we assumed to be ours. The room has so little space you can barely walk around the bed, and smelled musty, perhaps because there is no ventilation fan in the bathroom, and opening a window wasn't an option with the heat and humidity while we were there. The air conditioner did cool the room, but didn't do much to decrease the humidity, so our clothes constantly felt damp. More fun and games started on the second day, when the handle on the sink faucet broke while the water was running (cheap crappy hardware!). We eventually managed to turn the water off before the bathroom flooded, but the faucet was no longer useable. We called the office extension, the emergency extension and the cell number, again with no answer and no way to leave a message. Eventually we got through to someone by contacting booking.com and having them relay a message to the hotel, but no one came to fix the problem during our 2 remaining days in the hotel. So we had a bathroom without a useable sink, and had to brush our teeth, fill water bottles, wash hand, etc. in the shower--not especially convenient, as you might imagine! My guess is that someone dreamed up this do-it-yourself hotel idea as a way to save on staff salaries. The idea might work if they were to provide reliable back-up support if needed, but instead no support was available, even in the face of a plumbing emergency. Completely irresponsible for any hotel--and esp. for the most expensive place we stayed in...

I stayed here with my mum and it was a great location. We wanted to be away from the touristy Gothic Quarter (a beautiful area but it tends to be pretty busy and over-priced for accom these days - it's better to visit, not stay there!) You can walk pretty much everywhere from here, or jump on a bus or metro.||Gracia is a lovely pocket of Barcelona and the property was easy to find. It had a sweet little roof garden to escape to. Entry is via a pin code for the front door and also your room. The property is unattended (no recption desk), although there are people to phone if you need to. This worked fine for us; we simply wanted a base to rest our weary heads at the end of our action-packed days!||The nearby Can Codina tapas/bar/cafe was very handy and delicious and there are some really interesting shops on Carrer de Bonavista around the corner.||The only drawback with our room was that it was a bit on the small side for 2 people and we were on the ground floor. The weather/room was warm enough that you wanted to open the windows (which are high up) to get some air, but that meant you copped the street noise in close-up which, on a Friday night, was really rowdy til after 3am. The room was a little dark too, because of the window positioning and inadequate 'compensatory' ceiling lighting. ||I definitely would stay there again but I'd go up 1 or 2 levels. I wouldn't mind facing the street, but there would be way more natural light in the room and the noise might be...

Really lovely, cozy hotel with only a handful of rooms in a very convenient location. It was our first time in Barcelona and we were able to walk to almost everything from here! There’s also an Aldi (grocery store) a 5 minute walk away.

Staff were responsive and accommodating, rooms were modern, clean and relatively spacious with amenities like shampoo/conditioner, body wash, clothes steamer, USB outlets, coffee machine and pods, a safe. Also felt very secure: you are given codes that get you into the lobby, the hotel room area and the room itself so despite the fact that our door was 15 feet from the street, we felt very safe.

We were first placed into room 1 and this room is below street level, facing the street with windows that look out onto the first 2 feet of the street, this made it hard to sleep since it’s a very central area so people are going by, talking, yelling, late into the night. Staff graciously moved us into room 3 after our first night which faced a small garden area and was much more pleasant from a noise-level. Our only complaint here was that the bathroom window had a view of 2 other rooms and there was no blinds or curtains to cover it while using the washroom.

There is also a luggage locker area downstairs, a water refill station and a rooftop terrace!

Would...