The Little Dream House offered everything we desired - inside, out, and beyond - for a relaxing vacation with opportunities to sample Barcelona's bustle as much or as little as we wished. The house is charming, the location is ideal and the owner is an exceptional host.
Ellen, the owner, helped us with expert advice even before we arrived and attended immediately to everything we asked while there.
Inside, the house is spotlessly clean, quiet, cozy, tastefully decorated, and well-outfitted for adventurous cooking. Each item seems to have been carefully chosen by the owner to be both useful and appealing. We especially appreciated the brilliantly planned kitchen and its comfortable seating area.
For our mid-April visit the owner stocked wood for the fireplace and welcomed us to enjoy it for heat or ambiance. The radiator heating system worked very well, although we needed it for a only few minutes on the first day.
Outside we enjoyed the upstairs terrace with lounge chair for reading and watching the monk parakeets visit. The historic fisherman's colony, of which the house is a member, is a quiet neighbourhood of long-term residents who were friendly and yet, respectful of our privacy.
Beyond the gate of the fisherman's colony is historic Vilassar de Mar with narrow streets, little parks and pedestrian zones. Along these streets are shops for everything one might need including a well-stocked supermarket, butcher, bakeries, cafés, restaurants, clothing and houseware stores - all oriented toward serving the needs of a community. The expansive beach is a leisurely 5 minute walk downhill from the house and in mid-April was practically deserted. We enjoyed walking the beach promenade and watching the waves curl on the windy April days.
The Vilassar de Mar area did not feel like a tourist-dense zone, and we had to pry ourselves away from its relaxing pace to do the touring we intended in Barcelona's center. Getting to the Plaça de Catalunya was easy and quite inexpensive. The train station is a 5 minute walk from the house and the ride to the Plaça is a single-leg train ride. As the owner recommended, we bought a T-10 (ten rides, multiple zones) train ticket and zipped to the Plaça station multiple times to sample the bustle of Barcelona center, then returned to our little nest for quiet evenings in what is truly a little dream house.