Like many people in town this weekend, we were there to see Barca play Celta Vigo. Great game by the way! The Hotel Catalonia Magdalenes is in a little back street near the cathedral and La Rambla, very close to the Gothic Quarter, great location. Only downside is taxi access, the side streets are tight and although they can get to the hotel the taxi drivers don't like to and ours said it was inaccessible and he had to drop us 400 metres away on the main road and we had to navigate our way with our bags. Taxis by the way.......don't get me started but I guess they're the same the world over. Be careful though; we git thoroughly ripped off by 4 out of the 6 cabs we used but what can you do...?
The hotel is small but really nice rooms and the staff are absolutely lovely; full of personality, excellent English, sense of humour and really helpful and efficient. The rooms are spotless and hotel room hygiene isn't always a high scorer on my travels!
Another big winner is food; from 2:00pm til 11:00pm every day, they lay out a free buffet for guests in the lounge area; sandwiches, wraps, burgers, crisps, fresh fruit and free soft drinks. There's no actual restaurant in the hotel but there's a breakfast room and breakfast is excellent too.
Only small downsides....? External soundproofing is really good so very little noise from the street but quite noisy at night from internal activity. I think our room was right underneath a laundry or storage room so from about 4:00am we had lots of noise of stuff being moved around, thrown in trolleys etc......
There's NO information in the rooms about hotel facilities or ideas for things to do but if you ask at reception they're really helpful.
Overall, it's a great little hotel that I would recommend to people and the big winner is staff friendliness, they were all lovely people.
Note of warning on The Camp Nou by the way, even though they are the richest club in the world, the stadium is a decaying old concrete heap so don't go with high expectations about comfort or modern facilities!
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.