Greg,

You'll love Barcelona. The first thing I'd suggest is that you get an excellent, free, online guide to Barcelona and the surrounding area at: Barcelona Guide . You can customize the guide by only selecting the sections of the guide that interest you but I suggest selecting the entire guide. You then download the guide to your computer. The guide is formatted as a PDF file. The Barcelona Travel Newsletter ( Newsletter ) also contains a lot of useful information.

I can't help you with accommodations since we stayed at the Grand Marina Hotel. I'm sure others will have good suggestions.

We used the Hop-on, Hop-off bus one day in Barcelona and enjoyed the day. There are three routes and you can take any or all of them on a day pass.

IMO, Montserrat is a must see. There are tours there from Barcelona but we like to tour independently on land and went there by train. If I remember correctly, it was about a 60 to 90 minute train ride. You can buy train tickets from a machine at the station. You have a choice of taking the train all the way to the monastery or, you can take a cable car from the valley floor to the monastery, which is what we did.

There are so many great restaurants in Barcelona, it is difficult to narrow it down to a few restaurants. Probably our favorite dinner was at a restaurant in the Gothic Quarter called: Café de L'academia. We also really enjoyed a funky, non-touristy restaurant called Tapioles 53. Both restaurants are highly rated on Trip Advisor.

If you like cheese, Formatgeria La Seu, run by a woman from the UK, is excellent. ( http://www.formatgerialaseu.com/ .) For breakfast, lunch or a snack, don't miss Bar Pinotxo in the Boqueria market on Las Ramblas. It's a Barcelona favorite and a real adventure. :D

I'll try to add more as I think of things but this should get you started.