Sitges or Lloret de Mar
 

My wife and I will be in Barcelona in early September. We would like to end our visit with a couple of days on the beach near the City. This is our first trip to Spain.

Sitges looks charming and a reported gay population is fine with us (we live in SF). Lloret de Mar looks charming as well. Are these two beach resorts the best choices? Do you have any romantic or charming hotels near or on the water to recommend? Thanks in advance.

We like Sitges very much, both for the beach and for a large number of moderniste (art nouveau) buildings on side streets; nice shopping in a cute old town, and very convenient for day-tripping into Barcelona.

We stayed at the very hamish Santa Maria hotel in the middle of things across from the beach. Family-run, good restaurant, not fancy but clean and reasonable.

We were going to stay last month at the Hotel Estela in the Port Sitges area (maybe a km from the main beachfront area) - see http://www.hotelestela.com/ - which looks seriously cool. We couldn't make it; maybe you can report.

Depends what you want.

Sitges has a nice beach and is a nice, laid back, relatively quiet charming place.

Lloret is everything Sitges isn't, noisy, busy, full of bars and nightclubs and full of drunken yobs.

If you want a quiet picturesque arty resort go to Sitges.

If you would find that boring and you want to party all night, go to Lloret.