B-Hotel

Class: Comfort

Style: Cutting edge

Rooms: 84

There’s no shortage of ultra-modern accommodations in Barcelona — it seems there’s a stylish little boutique or two on just about every street. This is a first-class city, though, and a phenomenally well-traveled destination, and so there’s always room for another good one, something like the B Hotel, just off the Plaza Espanya. Here the interiors, in a palette of slate grey and black, are spare and masculine, an effect that’s only intensified by the Spanish predilection for dark spaces — bedrooms in Barcelona aim to provide a refuge of cool (the literal, temperature kind of cool) against the blazing midday sun. These ones are cool in the other sense as well, with platform beds, sleek modern sofas, futuristic fixtures and high-tech lighting systems (perhaps a bit too high-tech for some; ask your porter for a demonstration if you’re not technologically inclined). If there’s a drawback, it’s that the neighborhood, a good half-hour’s walk west of the Plaza Catalunya, isn’t the pedestrian tourist’s paradise that some may envision. It makes up for this weakness, however, with convenient Metro and bus access, as well as a few attractions of its own; there’s a hip little lobby lounge and an extensive wine cellar, and the rooftop terrace is the ace in the hole — infinity-edge pools have been done before, yes, but rarely on a rooftop overlooking the skyline of a city as picturesque as Barcelona.