Grupotel Gravina - Barcelona, Spain     

I stayed for a week in this hotel. Firstly, the location is superb. Right next to the LAs Ramblas and metro etc. However beware if you want to have a good night sleep. When I entered the hotel, the offered us champagne and I was impressed. We were given a hotel room where we had to first take an elevator to the 2nd floor and then go up and around to another elevator and then take to 5th floor. We said ok no problem, i have seen weirder things in Europe. The Room was better than the average rooms, it was good for the size. Bed looked good and the bathroom was good. However, the problem I had was the A/C did not work. It was nearly 90 degrees and the a/c wouldn't work at all. It would just blow air and not cool air as it was running in their lobby. They sent a repairman, he didnt speak english but was very nice and tried his best to fix it. We gave up and had to open windows at nights to sleep. The bedsheets seemed to be full of bed bugs or maybe it was too hot to sleep? I was scratching myself all over and so was my wife..we were so annoyed. 1st night in Barcelona was hell for us because of the room. We woke up groggy and said ok lets just enjoy....maybe it will get better. However they did not change the bedsheets and we complained again and it was then changed. But for some reason the problem still was there. I can go on and on. I just landed and got home and on the plane ride home, my wife kept on reminding me that make sure you write this revieew or you will forget. If you like good location and dont care for good location. This place is it..go for it. If you do want to book this hotel, beware of the rooms where you have to take 2 elevators..maybe those are the bad ones?

Just came back from Barcelona and I stayed in the Grupotel Gravina. I thought I would comment on how good this place was for us. We got a petit double bed room and to be honest it was much smaller than I had expected. There isn't much of a view either - looking outside it was just the other parts of the building. There was construction happening at the same time too - which wasn't as quiet as we wanted. But this little room was fine! Barcelona is a city that you have to experience and when you get back there is two things you want to do - have a shower/bath and then rest for the next day. The bathroom was very nice - we saw pictures of the bathroom and thought it would be nice and it was really nice. Room cleaning was quick and efficient as we had it everyday as we had our adventures. Free satelitte tv too! I think there was two movie channels that were in english (Action and Comedy) and MTV was mostly english too. The time of the day didnt matter with the type of film because when I woke up and switch the tv on - films like V for Vendetta was on - which may not be suitable for kids. The hotel also has two computers in the main lobby which are free to use! We brought a laptop with us to store pictures of Barcelona but if I had known that there were good access to computers with broadband then we could of just uploaded them onto our Facebook accounts straight away. Right next to the hotel is a small shop so if you like to save some cash from the mini bar get your bottled water and stuff there for really cheap and store in the mini bar. The hotel is located about 5 minutes walk to La Ramblas - top half. When you walk out of the hotel you walk left and then turn left again and then it is one straight road. Just so you know there is a bakery on the end of this road before you get to La Ramblas which has the great baguettes for peanuts! The hotel did recommend breakfast for 17 euro which was silly. Keep an eye on your belongings as one evening some guy did try to pickpocket my wallet from my jeans. He pretended to be a football fan kicking a can towards me. and then coming up from behind chanting. Lucky my wallet was squashed under my bottom in the jeans so he has no chance taking them out without me knowing. Please use the safe in the room because in their terms they hold no responsibility for things that are not in the safe. It is only ?2 euro a day which is really quite cheap. The safe is about the same size as a small shoe box but is quite deep. The room we had did have air-con - which luckily we only realised after one day of our 5 nights there. The best thing to do is to leave the air con full blast during your day out so when you go back to your room after a hot day out your room will be really nice and cool. This was a great place to stay - probably not that great if you are there all day but definately a great place to rest from a long day.