This is a family home, not a serviced apartment. It's located in a residential building.
Pros:
- No parties, bedrooms facing inner yard, no street noise.
- Family setting of apartment (baby chair), big dining table, 5 sleeping places
- Patio is safe and good for child to play, no height drop.
Cons:
- Location - very far away from all touristic attractions, no direct metro line to El Born/Catedral, taxi to Barceloneta - 12 euro, bus - 45 mins. Forget cycling, as it's steep uphill and the building is on 5 lanes one way autopista without bicycle lane. Very hard to park unload/load luggage.
- Safety major - the neighborhood is residential, no tourists or shady characters, however, I was unpleasantly surprised by the amount of "private social clubs" like "My Cherry" in every second building. We have stayed in Barceloneta, Poblenou, EL Born before and I haven't seen them in there.
- Safety micro - On a micro level the safety was compromised by the fact that the entry door can't be locked from inside, there is no safety chain, no safe in the apartment. We were told that the lock can't be changed when we tried to lock door from inside with the key and almost got locked out.
As the result there were several occasions when the door became ajar because the neighbors banged their doors. Another time cleaning man walked in with his own key while I was alone in underwear in apartment, next occasion somebody fumbled with the door and when I opened it, there was old lady who mixed up the floor. Our toddler also could easily open it just pushing the handle, which I don't think should be a case with small children.
- Internet - there was no internet first two days, there was another black out of around 3 hours at the end of our stay. You can't do anything with it, as it's provided to a whole building, restarting router didn't help.
- Management - I'm not sure why the contract wasn't brought for check-in, we were required to travel to the office (6 km away) to sign it during week day working hours, which is hard if you are in Barcelona for work. On occasion I went, there was nobody inside, so we somehow agreed to sign it online (we never saw the contract signed by them though). You only get 1 key for apartment, but manager and cleaner have 2 more (it was ok for 1 month, but hard with the toddler).
Last but not least we have been told on occasion that we are not a good fit and have to vacate it overnight because we were too difficult (mostly for the door issue). At the end we stayed but I was counting days until this experience is over.