BEFORE 1992, Barcelona was a somewhat dreary industrial city that turned its back on the Mediterranean, with little to recommend it to visitors.
The coastline was fringed with old processing plants, abandoned railway lines and even some shanty towns.
It was, frankly, a mess.
READ MORE: In the Footsteps of God’s Architect: A Journey Through Gaudi’s Masterpieces in Barcelona
Then it was awarded the summer Olympics and the city was transformed into the gleaming and spectacular home of stunning architecture and well-presented apartment blocks with which we associate it these days.
Some say that it has even been a victim of its own success, pointing to rampant overtourism and skyrocketing rents.
In Valencia, where I live, some warn ominously of “the Barcelona effect” if Valencia does not take steps to dampen down demand for short-term lets and touristic apartments.
Nevertheless, Barcelona is indisputably a world-class cosmopolitan and dazzling city.
My daughter has just completed her university degree and celebrates her 21st birthday so I wanted to mark the occasion with a city break.
Barcelona ticked all the boxes, with her love of high-street fashion and vegan options taken into account.
We opted for an NH hotel. NH Hotels is a large Spanish-founded chain with more than 350 properties worldwide, generally occupying the dependable four-star, upper-mid-market bracket: smarter than a budget hotel, but without the ceremony or prices of full-blown luxury.
Typical room rates ranging from around €150–€350 per night depending on season and category.
We stayed at the NH Diagonal Poble Nou. Poble Nou is a redeveloped upmarket business district somewhat akin to London’s Docklands. The hotel is aimed at business travellers with leisure guests at weekends, and is a modern boutique-style offering with chic rooms, excellent mattresses and a sumptuous breakfast buffer on offer, with cooked food and fruit and continental breakfasts to pick from.
Prices are keen, making it a canny choice for budget-conscious travellers.
A ten-minute walk from the hotel brings you to Barcelona’s answer to London’s The Gherkin. The Torre Glòries, known locally as the Torre Agbar, is a 38-storey skyscraper overlooking the whole city from its vantage point in the new technological district.
Tickets are available for the Mirador, the viewpoint in the dome at the top with views out to the Med and inland across the city, whose skyline is dominated by the newly completed Sagrada Familia.
My daughter was especially impressed by the fact the building is lit up by night, red and blue on our first night and emerald green the next, like something out of Oz.
Next to it is the Westfield shopping mall, with a plethora of high-end boutiques, restaurants and bars. We opted for the unlimited Japanese-style menu at Sumo on the lower-ground floor, called El Mercat.
My daughter is a vegan and found plenty of plant-based sushi and ramen among the more than 100 dishes on offer, while I feasted on sashimi, pork-filled bao buns. With drinks, the bill came to an eminently reasonable €69.
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It’s worth investing in a Barcelona card, which gives free access to more than 25 museums, galleries and venues. We paid €39 for the 48-hour pass.
The following day, we headed to the sumptuous private townhouse created for a family by Antoni Gaudí.
Afterwards, we took the cable car to the summit of one of Barcelona’s two imposing summits, Montjuïc.
The name translates as Jewish Mountain in medieval Latin and Catalan, and remains of a Jewish cemetery have been found there.
There is also the 17th-century Montjuïc Castle at the summit.
The views from the cable car and summit are breathtaking. The day we visited, the Med was as still as a mill pond, fading away into the horizon.
In the afternoon, we took the 196 bus up to the mirador at the foot of Barcelona’s imposing Tibidabo mountain. This is where real residents of Barcelona come to play.
Beside the funicular station, we had lunch at Mirablau, a panoramic Mediterranean restaurant with tables along the curved full-height windows that offer the best views of the city laid out below you, dominated by the Sagrada Familia and with views out to the Med again.
We had padron peppers, bakes artichoke, hummus and patatas bravas, washed down with an especially crisp Albariño from Galicia, flinty with good minerality. This is a must-do.
Given the price of accessing the amusement park via the funicular rail, we decided that starting at 5pm would make it uneconomic and decided to save it for a return visit when we could give it a full day.
From a previous trip, however, I can tell you that it is packed with local families and, naturally, affords outstanding views.
The amusement park is more than a century old and so don’t go expecting Space Mountain at Disneyland Europe. Manage your expectations to avoid disappointment and enjoy it for the sense of heritage and history.
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That evening, we took the seven-minute walk from the hotel following a tip from Vanesa on reception to Racó de la Vila.
We’re glad we did. It is an old-style tapas restaurant with lots of wood and checked tablecloths.
It’s family-run and the owner came and welcomed us personally. It was packed with local Spanish families, a few celebrating birthdays, establishing it as a destination restaurant.
We were shown into the main dining room, a large room with one wall being exposed to show its ancient stonework more than a century old when the building was an isolated farmhouse before the business district sprang up around it, engulfing it.
It was wonderful. We shared another bottle of flinty Albariño, and feasted on padrón peppers again.
My daughter had two that were extremely spicy, proving the wisdom of the old saying, Pimientos de Padró, Algunos pican, otros no. Padron peppers, some are spicy, others not.
We chose a plate of asparagus, more patatas and a vegan paella to share that was delicious and meant I didn’t resent not having meat or seafood.
We rounded off dinner with a tiramisu and a Catalan cheesecake that was heavenly. The bill came to €110 all in.
My daughter looked at me and said, “When we come back, can we come for longer?” She wasn’t wrong.
This is a city that, like a good wine, should be allowed to breathe.
• NH Hotel Diagonal Poble Nou; https://www.nh-hotels.com/en/hotel/nh-barcelona-diagonal-poblenou; double/twin rooms from 125€ per night
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