Beds & Blankets

Our favourite hip hostels, boutique hotels and other accommodation options…

So you’ve decided to head over to Barcelona for a city break? Naturally the first thing you want to put to bed (pun intended) is your accommodation plans. In fact planning where to stay needn’t be boring, because choose well and you could be sleeping in some of the hippest digs in Europe, from luxury hostels with all the mod cons, to stylish boutique hotels with marble staircases and rooftop swimming pools, right in the centre of Barcelona.

At Steel Donkey’s we’ve decided to put together a guide to the hippest beds in town, with an emphasis on location, comfort, style and originality. Welcome to our Alternative Accommodation in Barcelona section! These are the places we’d stay, if we were new in town…

Hotel Neri

Right in front of the picturesque Placa Felipe Sant Neri… one of our favourite spots in the city, and a regular stopping point on our Steel Donkeys bike tour… is this equally gorgeous four star hotel. Fantastic luxury and style and great staff make this a perfect upscale choice, and the hotel has both a sundeck on the roof and a breakfast terrace on the aforementioned placa (square). You’re right in the heart of the Gothic Quarter here, so you’ll never need to take a taxi anywhere!
www.hotelneri.com

Couchsurfing

If you’ve not heard of Couchsurfing then you’ve probably had your head buried in the sand for the last ten years. This hospitality phenomenon involves sending perfect strangers requests to sleep on their sofa – for free! The idea is that at a later point your kind hosts will ask someone else somewhere else to repeat the favour for them, and so a kindly circle of hospitality is created. Great fun, and a great way to make new friends, but with obvious drawbacks – you may for example not get your own set of keys. Generally speaking we’d only recommend this for open-minded young adventurous types who are travelling for a long time and need to save some money on accommodation.

www.couchsurfing.org

We’ll update this page with more hotels, hostals, guest houses and b’n’bs for the hipster traveller soon!