Barcelona Mar Youth Hostel

Worst stay of my life
This hostel is right in the middle of the red light district -- you walk past pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers to get to it or to Las Ramblas. Although the rooms are clean, they are uncomfortably small and stank. On our way home on the first night, the man at the reception would not let us in and me and three friends were attacked right outside the hostel door and I had my bag stolen. After eventually getting inside screaming for the police, the man at reception refused to and told us we would have to walk to the nearest police station if we wanted to -- we were far too scared and shaken up to even step outside again as it was such a rough area. He also refused to change our room even though the attacker had run off with our room key which had the room number written on it. We now believe the man at reception may have had something to do with the attacker. Do not stay here, it is unsafe.

Rude man at the coounter
I stayed in this place September 2007. The guy running this place was one of the most rudest people I ever met. The one night I was there all of a sudden in the middle of the night this loud racket starts. It was the fan on the air conditioner motor. It kept going for a couple hours making all kinds of racket. Everyone woke up. I asked to be moved to another room as I could not sleep in this loud racket. He said no way I will just give you your money back and find another place know there was not a place to be had as there was some sort of festival going on. Plus this was 2 a.m.! He was not even apologetic for the racket. The beds are terrible especially if you are on the top bunk. they are made of steel, there is a steel/tin barrier between you and the next bunk. It was very loud if you bumped into this wall, you would always wake people up if you did. He would never let me move to a bottom bunk even when the place was vacant. He was so rude. The place is not is a great area. Not so good for a single girl traveler in my opinion.

Perfect! I was there in august 2006. I went to different places in Europe and Barcelona Mar was the best one! Very clean, the beds are very confortable, the rooms are clean, bathroom too. The breakfast is simple but very good. And it's a perfect place to meet people because the place it's good to stay and they offer some types of tours around the best Barcelona's tapas bar and clubs. So, if you're looking for a cheap and wonderful place to stay in Barcelona, you should choose Barcelona Mar Hostel!

Stayed early Aug '06. Clean and tidy hostel with a (busy) kitchen and (poor) free breakfast. Facilities were fine if at times crowded (get your timing right for hot water), internet was free and usable. Area the hostel's in is fine given the proximity to LaRambla, but would advise against late-night wandering alone. Common room exists but is somewhat minimal so would advise against for solo travellers looking to meet up with people. Decent hostel that's certainly worth the price for air-conditioning in a spanish summer.

While this hostel had a great atmosphere, it was unbearably hot. We were in a "private" room, rather than a dorm, and shared a common area (including bathroom and kitchen) with four other rooms. Our room had no window, no air conditioning, and no fan. In July in Spain this is pretty unacceptable, especially as this place was the most expensive hostel we stayed at and it claimed to have air conditioning in the rooms. Our room was up four or five long flights of stairs, which was a nightmare if you forgot something and had to go back up them. Having said all this, it was in a central location, and the free breakfast and internet were good.

Great place! Clean rooms and bathrooms, nice staff, feels safe. The street from Las Ramblas to the hostel is a bit shady at night, but manageable. The staff was super helpful when we had to switch hostels for one night(we didn't have reservations) and needed a place to store our stuff. We didn't stay in one of the pod rooms, but the other rooms were fine. Good place and pretty okay price. Free internet!!

Overall a great hostel. Everything was very clean; I would almost have eaten off of the bathroom floors (almost, it's still a bathroom!). Breakfast was ok (no one watching how much you took), and the staff were really friendly. The rooms had curtains around the beds (in most of them) and a coin-operated locker big enough to put just about any pack into. The neighborhood wasn't super clean, but all of the old part of Barcelona that I saw was dirty, so I won't complain. It's quite close to Las Ramblas and two Metro stops. I would definitely stay there again.

I stayed at this hostel for about three days. It's a nice place. Odd location, but it's not far from the ferry terminal, Las Ramblas, or the big mall. Let me clarify the Hostelz.com review... there are some rooms with these curtains and whatnot, however not mine. My room had like 14 beds, no curtains and one air-conditioning vent, which was at the door so it couldn't hit 90 percent of the room. Well, it's Barcelona so you expect it to be hot, so it's not a huge deal, but it's not what it's cracked up to be. The other little downside to our room was that there was a window, but it basically gets no air through it. It leads out to a tiny picnic table and it's like a room, just with no roof, so there's no air circulation. Thirteen guys, hot room, smelly morning, I'll tell you that. Despite all this I really had no problems with the hostel. The staff were nice and quite accommodating to us walking in at all hours. And the showers were fine. You just gotta pick the right one, people.

Just returned from fabulous stag weekend in Barcelona. So the memory is still a bit blurred. The staff are truely fantasic, even the fat lad who shouted me down at 5;30am after catching me singing in me pants through the corridors. The dorms are fine, beds are metal, but who cares, sleep for about 4hrs max, then get back out and party!!! Breakfast is pretty poor, consisting of Spanish coco pops or bread and butter. The immediate area is a disaster. It became affectionately know as "CRACK ALLEY", but if you can do 1/2 a mile in about a minute you will miss the toms, barbers, trannies, charlie sellers, and just about the weirdest bunch of people I've ever seen, anyway!!! You must try the guinness bar at the Las Ramblas end of CRACK ALLEY, fantasic atmosphere created by the delightful Swede, Sandra and the Italian, Simona. What a couple of belters. Thanks ladies, you were superb.

I have just returned from Barcelona, where 11 friends and I partied hard for my stag trip. We had two nights at Barcelona Mar Youth Hostel and it was more than adequate. We found that the rooms were comfortable and the staff were very helpful and friendly. If you are in a large party and think that you will have a room to yourselves, you are mistaken. We came back one night to find a stranger amongst our bags and beds, little did we know that he was allocated a bed in our room and wasn't a thief!! Not sure we ever saw the air conditioning in the rooms though, despite the description on the home page. There is plenty of hot water, which you can control and the lockers were ideal. Watch out for drug dealers and toms [prostitutes] in the surrounding streets. Quality place though, especially the Irish bar at the top of the street.

I stayed here about 2 weeks after it first opened years ago. It had very friendly reception staff and was very clean.

I just came back from Barcelona and this hostel was the best I've ever stayed in! The location is close to Las Ramblas and you can walk everywhere. The streets are a bit filthy but there's only a problem if you are not careful! And you have to be careful all around Barcelona, so you don't have to worry!! We had a dorm for 14 people and it was very clean all the day. The breakfast (until 10) was pretty good to have a nice start in the day and the staff were awesome! Really friendly and helpful. I will come back.

This hostel is in a bit of a scary area.

We stayed at this hostel in September 2004. The hostel was located on a really seedy street. The bathrooms were filthy, the little metal privacy cages were ok — but they were very noisy. The included lockers were nice, too. It's somewhere to leave your valuables that you wouldn't want to take out with you, thanks to the seedy area the hostel's in. Not great at all, try and find somewhere else first.

Okay, first about the neighborhood: it's filthy, it smells, the people are ugly, there are prostitutes everywhere, it's cramped, crowded, and probably no place for single women to be. Well get used to it, because the rest of Barcelona is to varying degrees, exactly the same. I've never seen so many ugly people. Anyway, the hostel can be summed up in two words: unrealized potential. It's a youth hostel, so there are a bunch of silly rules that prevent people from doing such things as bringing in a bottle of wine. This truly is a pity since they have these great little courtyards adjacent to the dorms where you could sit out with your roommates and really have a great time getting to know everyone. The washrooms were okay, but the sewer was being replaced when I stayed here and so consequently they really stank. One night I saw a rat in the sewer trench. That put me off the free breakfast anyway. The metal beds are a DISASTER! Whoever came up with them was very well intentioned and attempted to give a great deal of privacy to the occupants; said individual woefully miscalculated, however, when he chose to make the beds out of sheet metal. The slightest movement whilst in the bed creates an ungodly BARANG!!! Which is guaranteed to awake all in the room no matter how soundly they may have been sleeping. The common area needs to be revised with couches instead of picnic tables. Sure, that makes having breakfast hard in the morning, but it is much more conducive to social interaction among the guests than the current setup. Overall this is not a bad place to stay, but you might want to look elsewhere first. With a few changes the social aspect could be greatly improved, making this hostel a much more desirable place to stay.