Hotel Principal

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The hotel is lovely, clean and fresh and centrally located to all the key sites and areas you and the staff are friendly. Breakfast is good. The rooms had air conditioning and breakfast is optional, so you can decide whether to eat there or not.
The hotel is on a parallel road from Las Ramblas but as its a couple of streets away you can't hear the general noise of the the surrounding roads, even with the balcony windows open. You can access the tube and buses easily and it's a stone throw away from the harbour. Everything is accessible on foot from here, the buses and tubes are no more than 5 minutes walk and there's no shortage of good places to eat.
If you want to keep costs down I would strongly suggest to go to La Boqueria, the infamous food market, which is nearby and is a great place to go and pick up some fresh produce and picnic at Parc de la Ciutadella, or wherever you're visiting. Also another way to keep costs down but still get great food is if you head away from las ramblas and go to the Poble Sec area. There are loads of restaurants down Avinguda del paral.lel, this road leads eventually down to the marina.
Do feel comfortable to sit for coffee and a bite to eat at the cafe at the end of the road before you turn in to the hotel. Its GOOD coffee and has a really chilled out atmosphere.
Couple of tips whilst in Barcelona:
1 - When you pay make sure you ask the Hotel to charge you in Euros - I forgot to check and they charged me in £ which meant I got their exchange rate rather than the true rate.
2 - If you're gonna use the tube system then make sure you get metro card called T-10. This lets you have 10 journeys for about 6 Euros and can be shared with a second person. So you could get 1 card for two people.