My husband & I have been traveling in Spain by car. Our flight is Thursday at 4pm from Barcelona. We told the car rental agency we would drop the car off at noon. Does anyone have recommendations for a place to stay outside the city so that we don’t have to deal with parking in Barcelona?

Sitges is a nice seaside resort town not too far away and small enough for easy driving. why not return car day before and get hotel in Barcelona and take metro to airport? save a day of car rental.

Thanks for your advice. Stiles is a good suggestion. Also, we have experience taking the Barcelona airport bus to and from Plaça de Catalunya so could possibly leave the car off the day before at the airport. If we choose to do this, do you have recommendations where we can safely leave our luggage until we are ready to go to the airport the next day?

Hotels will often stow luggage in situations like that - you could make it a condition of staying there. Not sure if airport has luggage storage but most do.

I stayed in Sitges for 2 nights before my flight home. Easy drive from there to the airport and car drop! Loved Sitges!

Sitges is also known as a premier gay resort - I took train and saw on platform several gay couples saying goodbye and throughout town - only added to the interest and loved the openness they obviously felt. A lovely town and unique place.

You might consider Tarragona or Girona, as long as you are sure you can make it to the airport in time. Or return the car to one of them, spend a night or two, and use public transportation to get to the airport.

While I am not gay, Sitges is known as a gay and an expat resort. I enjoyed my stay very much. I found it very relaxing to spend my last 2 nights of a 32 day vacation on the beach and in such a wonderful town. Best way that I have wound up a vacation that I can remember! I even had 5 friends that arrived in Barcelona on a cruise take a train to meet me for dinner on my first night there.

Barcelona airport does have a luggage storage facility, surprisingly, many airports wont' do that nowadays. Not sure how that would work if you don't intend to leave that same day, but perhaps it won't bother you to have nothing with you while staying overnight in a hotel.

However, I agree any decent hotel whatsoever is going to keep your luggage for you after checkout until you need to leave for the airport, at least if it's the same day.

YOu could easily stay in Barcelona, just not in the dead center, just near a metro stop. I don't know why you can't stay in Barcelona, there are lots of places you could do that. For example, being near Plaza Espana, there is a public parking garage there and you could even take the metro to the airport from there, if you wanted, with one change to L9. However, the airport bus stops there also, as I recall.

Thanks for all the advice. In the end, I left the decision to DH and he chose Sitges. We will drive there tomorrow and spend the night.

We had a 1pm reservation at the Guggenheim in Bilbao today. Everything about it was amazing. We then drove a bit south of Pamplona to Javier, a place we knew nothing about other than it is near the mountains and in the direction of Barcelona. The full moon had risen and, as we pulled into the parking lot, it lit a castle! Castillo de Javier. Magic happens when you least expect it.

Sounds wonderful! Thanks for sharing that delightful moment.