Julia's apartment may be the very best place to stay in Barcelona. It has a great elevator and security access. It was a quarter block from the subway station and there was always cabs waiting beside the subway entrance to take you anywhere you wanted to go at almost the same price as the subway. In fact we only rode the subway one time because most of our trips the cab fare was about the same price as a single subway ticket for 2 people. One cab fare was even less. The one time we took the subway back to Julia's apartment was when I forgot to bring the address with me and wasn't sure how to pronounce the street name. I knew the name of the subway stop so we took it.