Barcelona's hotels read the church calendar more closely than most churchgoers. Easter sends Spain on holiday and April room rates climb to meet it. The week after, they ease off, the weather is no worse for walking, and on 23 April the city stages Sant Jordi, the best day in its year, for the price of a rose. If your dates can move, move them past Easter and spend the difference on dinner.
Sant Jordi is Catalonia's day of books and roses. Stalls fill La Rambla and Passeig de Gràcia, and the roses traditionally come with a ribbon in the Catalan colours and a sprig of wheat. The rose is the only thing you have to buy, and even that is optional. City Hall on Plaça de Sant Jaume holds one of its three open days of the year, with the Saló de Cent, the old council chamber, as the room to see. Get there in the morning. By mid-afternoon the lanes of the Gothic Quarter are jammed with people holding roses above the crush.
Sundays are for museums. A long list of the city's museums let you in free on Sunday afternoons, and more join them all day on the first Sunday of the month, the Museu Picasso among them, though that one has to be booked ahead. The MNAC on Montjuïc keeps its own free afternoons, so check which before you climb the hill. Hold those Sundays in reserve for April's rain and a wet day turns into a saving.
Count your journeys before you buy a travel card. The T-casual gives one person ten rides on the metro and buses, loaded onto a rechargeable T-mobilitat card, and for anyone who walks most places that is plenty. Its blind spot is the airport: it isn't valid at the two airport stations on metro line L9 Sud. If you land there and expect to ride a lot, the Hola Barcelona card gives unlimited travel for a set number of hours, airport metro included.
For a morning that costs one coffee, start at Barceloneta and walk north-east along the promenade, past the Olympic Port, to Bogatell, where the beach widens and the crowds thin. Few people swim in April. Turn inland there into Poblenou, where the cafés charge what the neighbours will pay.
As for beds, a room a street or two off La Rambla charges you for the postcode, and the terraces on it charge you for the view. Sant Antoni and Gràcia are better places to come home to, and Poblenou keeps you near that seafront walk. Sant Antoni has a consolation prize for anyone who missed 23 April: every Sunday morning the book market around the Mercat de Sant Antoni, running since the 1930s, sets out second-hand novels, comics and stamps.