I agree with lptravellerfgirl on this one after staying one night and sleeping OK, having a hot shower and not paying a lot of money. Business is not good at the moment so I looked for the cheapest room I could see on booking.com that was close to Port Vell where I had to be for the day. I am too old and grumpy to consider sharing a dorm room in a backpackers hostel so a single here right on the most iconic street in Barcelona for €27 is about as cheap as you can find, I suspect. I didn't look at the reviews on here until after I had made the booking and began to wonder if I had made a terrible mistake but as it was only for one night I decided I would give it a try anyway (hate to lose €27 as a no show). I also had a room at the front on the Ramblas and yes, the window still does't close properly and it is something of a procession of late night drunks singing and shouting but it is the Ramblas. What did you expect? Reception were perfectly helpful to me, ok, I speak Spanish but they let me check in early, got me a towel when I asked and pointed out where they was another shower room when the one on my floor was being used. Could not organise an invoice for me before I left but promised to email it to me. O.K. I didn't see any other rooms but mine was clean enough and looked rather like the one in the advert. I think they may have just replaced a lot of the flooring with wood 'parquet' as there were some piles of it around the place still. The shower room is a bit dingy but that is the curse of energy saving light bulbs these days. The shower head still needs to be jammed over the soap dish as the fitting hasn't been fixed so I guess the maintenance programme is not in full swing but they do clean, I saw them.The step out of the shower I used is verging on the lethal but surely shared bathrooms are what crocs were invented for.
I must have got the time of day wrong for the 'prostitutes and pickpockets' promised by one reviewer. Sure it's a racy city at times but this isn't Times Square before the cleanup. There are many four star hotels and good restaurants along the Ramblas and even the Liceu Opera and lots of unmolested tourists at most times of day. Most people try to visit here while in the city so you can tick that one (and the Barrio Gotico, Cathedral, port etc) off if you stay here and you haven't had to travel across town to get here. I found it great for a morning run through Port Vell and to the beach at Barceloneta. If you want a real breakfast experience walk 5 minutes up the Ramblas to the market of St Josep, Boqueria. It's in all the guide books but rather than just walk round and take a photo why not get fresh fruit salad cut up in front of you, fresh fruit juice, or go to the real tapas bar in the middle of the market and have what the locals have. Anyway, enough already. Would I stay again? Not if I could afford something better but for me the most negative reviews on here don't reflect my experience. I stayed out of season, I can imagine it may be a bit grim in high summer if it's hot but overall it's like the sort of 'no star' place you used to find in Paris a long time ago before they all went upmarket.