Barcelona over New Year

[FiguringItOut]

Potentially will be in Barcelona from December 28th to January 3rd.
Considering that this is New Year and I will be with two teenagers 14 and 16, what would you recommend to do, see, eat?
What is your experience finding decent lodging for 3 people?  We need three separate beds, nobody here shares beds.
It looks like the only AirBnB available for under $120/night is hostel style.  Hotels via Expedia also look very scuzzy in the same price range, with very questionable bed arrangements.

Any recommendations are appreciated.

[FiguringItOut]

Also, I have 150K Aadvantage miles and 150K AmEx MR points. I need 90K Avios for plane tickets to book on Iberia.
What's the best way to do achieve this?

[fuzzy math]

PTF I also have a mix of Amex Mr and AA miles

[Spanman888]

Check out the "Gracia" neighborhood. It's a little out of the way from the touristy areas but still a fun and safe area to be in. We stayed near the Vila de Gracia Square in May and had a great time. There was a local festival with fireworks in the neighborhood. The neighborhood has a very artsy vibe.

PS-La Chula Taperia is great if you make it there. They were very friendly and the tapas were to die for. Have fun!!

[mathlete]

I had a nice AirBnB experience near La Rambla that I remember being pretty cheap, but we were just two people - one bed.

With all your miles, you seem like a pretty good travel hacker who probably doesn't need this advice, but Chase Freedom (if you have it) has 5% back on Walgreens this quarter. If you're looking to save money on AirBnB, you can buy amazon gift cards and then buy AirBnB giftcards on Amazon.

Or you can get AirBnB giftcards for ~3% off at Raise.com.

If you can justify spending a bit more on an AirBnB, you can save some by shopping at markets to do some home-cooking some of the days of your stay.

There is tons of nice city walking to be done in Barcelona. I like La Rambla and Plaça de Catalunya. Touristy, but lively and fun. Plenty of interesting architecture and buildings to look at like Casa Milà.

[Monkey stache]

Staying in Barcelona can be quite expensive. It's cheaper to stay in a small coastal town outside of Barcelona and take the train directly into the city.

[socaso]

We really enjoyed a lot of the tapas places, they aren't very expensive and you can pick and choose what you are interested in. Most of the food we had was very good but I would say the subpar experiences usually happened on streets that were very obviously touristy. Walk a little farther away from streets like this and the food gets good again.

La Boqueria was a terrific market and a great place to pick up food to take with you for picnics and such.

If you want to go to Sagrada Familia buy your tickets in advance.

Find out where the actual grocery stores are, the quick mart type places have crazy prices. We paid 3 Euro for a bottle of water in a quick mart and half a Euro for a bottle twice the size in a grocery store.

Overall, Barcelona was rather expensive but we didn't realize how elevated the prices were until we went to Seville and all the prices dropped dramatically.

[EconDiva]

Sorry I don't have recommendations on places to stay but wanted to mention just in case...you may already know to do this but just be sure for all of the places you know you want to visit/check out, make sure you check the days/hours of operation before arriving.

Sounds like a great trip!  I love Barcelona.  Last visited Christmas 2016 and it was very nice.  I left right after Christmas to head to Madrid, then ended spending the New Year in Lisbon.  Can't wait to get back to all these places; particularly Portugal.