The people of Barcelona are rebelling against the city’s tourists, and are protesting in the packed Ramblas at the bum-bagged invasion and shooting the clueless café crowds with water pistols. Hmm. It doesn’t sound like kind of environment that you want to take your children to.
But c’mon, Barcelona is one of the best cities in the world, and has been my favourite for years. The beach, the bars, the restaurants, the shopping, Primavera, the Catalan attitude (shooting water at tourists being indicative of these fine folk), the whole vibe of the place is so cool that to deny your precious children the experience is tantamount to cruelty!
And actually, if you do Barcelona right, seek out the stylish spots away from the crowds and try to blend in to local life more than the usual throngs, you’ll have a time as brilliant as ours.
Where to Stay
With Airbnb’s incredibly frowned upon in the city, hotels are back in a big way. Now, for families, your choice of hotel is all important. Quite simply, even with children the age of mine — 9 and 12 — traipsing around the city all day is not feasible. You end up spending a lot of time in your hotel, so getting a good one with enough activities on-site is crucial. And myGod, did we find a good one.
El Palace Barcelona is the former Ritz, which opened in 1919 as Barcelona’s first five-star hotel and regulars over the years included Salvador Dali, Picasso, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren, Josephine Baker, The Rolling Stones —everyone basically. Located near the Gothic Quarter, the revamped El Palace plays upon its heritage while simultaneously accelerating into the slick modernity of forward-thinking hotels.
This means old world glamour, with a vast Great Hall, a beautiful show-stopping central bar, and incredibly attentive uniformed staff, but also means cutting edge dining in the Michelin-starred AMAR restaurant, modern art on the walls and tech-attuned luxury. This is embodied in the pleasingly chunky gold room keys with red tassels, which are actually deviously digitised when you use them.
We were lucky enough to room in one of their much talked-about Art Suites, dedicated to creative legends like Josephine Baker and Dali, and which also bridge that gap between the past and the future.
Ours was the Carlos Ruiz Zafo Suite, named after a famous Spanish novelist, which provided a stunning set of rooms complete with mirror TVs, two bathrooms with sunken Roman baths, and enough space for children to sprint their way around. Not everyone can afford this type of next-level room experience but the treatment of children in the hotel was unbelievably good from the highly engaged staff, who even arranged a movie night in the room for us after a long day out.
Extracurricular
Now despite saying it’s best to keep away from the heavily touristy areas, you still have to visit Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. Started in 1883, it continued to be worked on after Gaudi’s death in 1926 and is very nearly finished — 2025, people say. I mean, it is just a stunning experience, inside and out, a sort of alien version of a Catholic Church, with a dose of WillyWonka’s chocolate factory. One of those where moaning children are left speechless.
Barcelona has great art museums, including the MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art, but we loved the Moco, the bright and breezy new pop/street artist museum that will soon be opening a branch on Oxford Street. It showcasesworks by Basquiat, Banksy, KAWS and, er, Robbie Williams, all presented unpretentiously with plenty of interactive action. The light room by Yayoi Kusama was a particular highlight.
The Museum of Chocolate is another gift for parents, a fun little ‘educational’ stop-off which of course includes a few free samples.
But one of the brilliantly unique things about Barcelona is the beach. What a glorious thing to have, a stretch of beautifulbeach to get away from the crowds. It has a pleasingly hedonistic Venice Beach feel, and is famed for its socialising and, well, nudity. We stuck to the family end of things and visited the excellent Salt Beach Club at the huge W Hotel which dominates the seafront. The Club proved to be one of highlights of the trip, with cocktails and snacks delivered to your sunbeds. It was like a holiday within a holiday, just pure fun for all the family and highly recommended.
Shopping
While the gigantic Zara in the centre had my partner’s jaw dropping, our favourite discovery was the Triangulo Friqui, or the Triangle of Freaks. Basically it’s an area with a high density of manga and comic shops, which was like a dream to our two children, and should keep even the moodiest of teenagers happy. We spent hours drifting into these shops, all of which have comic and merch collections that put Forbidden Planet to shame, and also have huge displays too. I almost bought a life-sized Iron Man. A mere 10k Euros.
Food & Drink
Salt restaurant at the aforementioned Beach Club was an absolute sensation for lunch, with food coming deliciously off the grill. My partner’s Grilled Chicken and my Sea Bass were both unbelievable, and there was a great kids’ menu. What’s better than a lunch overlooking the Mediterranean?
Fine dining-wise, we went for a tasting menu at Virens, beneath the Almanac hotel. It has a great reputation as chef Rodrigo de la Calle presents a vegetable-first approach based on the philosophy of organic farming and rendered artfully and healthily. Quite honestly, we were blown away by the 12 courses with particular highlights being a plum and tomato gazpacho with feta cheese and greens, and a carrot risotto with crispy seaweed and black olive aoili. My god.
Our children’s patience was admittedly tested by that number of courses, but our exceptional waitress Sophia managed to squirrel them away to some other seating for some screen time, leaving us to enjoy the food. Yes, ok, not laudable parenting but as if you’ve never done that…
Other food recommendations are the excellent Fauna at the Kimpton Vividora (IHG Hotels & Resorts) where our new family love of croquettes peaked, and where I almost fell in love with my Turbot. The great pleasure of your children leaving the toddler age behind is being able to sit and enjoy a meal together. And so it proved.
Entertainment
We’ve learned through the years to keep it simple with the children, so evenings out were simply about finding a nice spot in one of the squares that characterise the city. Bag a table outside a restaurant and let the children run around in the square with the others. Easy, lovely. Bar Mono on the Plaza del Pi was a particular hit on this front, very reasonably priced and fun.
Beyond that, we found the El Palace to be the best best with the kiddies. Their rooftop garden was our home from home in the evenings, a beautifully rendered space with statues and views of the Sagrada Familia. The restaurant is excellent and we had a whale of time on Rumba night, bingeing on croquettes and cocktails (not the children).
Later, we even found time to pop to the amazing bar in the Great Hall, where the barman regaled us with stories of Dali and showed us the room where Freddie Mercury met Montserrat Caballe, and was inspired to write the song, Barcelona. Yes, really. A couple of bespoke cocktails later and we were on cloud 999.
Best city in Europe? Sorry, tourist-haters, but we love it...
