Ways of Seeing Barcelona

[gallery link="file" order="DESC" columns="4" orderby="title"] Most visitors to Barcelona are intent on seeing the city’s sights – Las Ramblas, La Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, La Pedrera and all of the other Gaudi buildings, the Picasso Museum, Miró museum, Barcelona Cathedral, and so on. We know we were the first couple of times we visited – and they are worth seeing. You could easily spend a week playing at being Vicky and Cristina in Barcelona, ticking off monuments, churches and museums, but in the process you will probably miss out on exploring some of the city’s many fascinating neighbourhoods, such as Gràcia, where we’ve just spent two weeks. As travellers, it can be a challenge to strike a balance between sightseeing, which keeps you in the tourist zone, largely interacting only with other visitors to the city, and simply kicking back in everyday neighbourhoods, which gives you opportunities to connect with locals. We’ve been giving this a lot of thought and over the last six weeks of our grand tour we’ve been exploring ways to try to achieve that balance. One strategy we have just experimented with has been to do a tour that helps you to get acquainted with the place and tick off as many sights as quickly as possible so that you can get on with the more enjoyable task of getting to know the city’s neighbourhoods – and its residents. In Barcelona, with the help of our friends at Viator we tried four different ways of seeing the city and here are our conclusions: GOTHIC EXPRESS TOUR This brisk one-hour walking tour should have been called the ‘Barcelona Express’ because it covered more than just the Gothic Quarter. I met my guide at Plaza Catalunya and our small group (just three the day I did it, although sometimes there can be as many as 25) strolled down Las Ramblas, the city’s main pedestrian walkway, passing La Boqueria market, Bethlehem Church and the Liceu Theatre, before heading into the Gothic Quarter. On the way, our charming young Catalan guide Cristina, a specialist in literary and historical tours who studied journalism and film at university, pointed out the Canaletas fountain and Miro mosaics (neither of which I’d noticed before and yet I must have strolled Las Ramblas scores of times), the old city walls and the Raval neighbourhood. Once in the Gothic Quarter, we pinpointed all the main sights as we wandered through the atmospheric Jewish district, following the old Roman roads: Plaça del Pi and the Church of Santa Maria del Pi, Plaça Sant Josep Oriol, Plaça de Sant Jaume, where the seat of the Catalan government and City Hall are, Barcelona’s History Museum, and Plaza del Rei, before finishing at the Cathedral. Verdict: Highly recommended. This speedy tour didn’t take up a tremendous amount of my time, yet it took in all the main Old City sights, making it a great way for first-time visitors to get their bearings. Our lovely young guide was Catalan, and shared lots of great insights into local customs and traditions that I didn’t know. She was smart and knowledgeable, and her commentary was fascinating. The group was tiny, so it was easy to engage with the guide, however, I’m not sure I’d enjoy it as much with a large group. BARCELONA CARD WITH GUIDEBOOK Not a tour as such, of course, but the Barcelona Card comes with a small booklet with information on the main city sights, a map, transport plans, and vouchers for free entry into a heap of museums, plus discounts on other key sights, museums, and attractions. It also includes a card with unlimited free travel on public transport including metro and urban buses, and travel on the airport train. You can choose from 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-day passes and the vouchers must be used on consecutive days. Verdict: Highly recommended. Order this online before you arrive in Barcelona, so you have it for the airport train. We really liked using this as it directed us to all the main sights and yet gave us freedom to choose what we wanted to see and when we wanted to see it. It’s also terrific value. Our only complaint would be the requirement to use it over consecutive days; unless you got the 4-/5-day Card we think it would be impossible to see everything. But we’re happy to be proven wrong! Has anyone used this before and did you manage to see everything? HOP-ON HOP-OFF SIGHTSEEING BUS This open-top double-decker tour bus follows three different tour routes, covering all the major sights, with 44 stops to choose from where you can hop off, explore at your own pace, then hop on again, spending as little or as long as you like at places. You get a handy booklet with info on the sights and maps outlining the different routes, clearly identifying stops and how long it takes to get between them. They also throw in a discount voucher booklet you can use at the main city sights. There’s a guide who gives you headphones when you board and the booklet and voucher book if you don’t already have one, however, while he’s there to answer questions, on our trip he stayed downstairs, and we were on top so there wasn’t really an opportunity. You plug your headphones into the back of the seat in front of you and there’s a fairly constant stream of commentary throughout the journey. If you stayed on board for the whole ride, then the Forum route would be 40 minutes long, while the Northern route and the Southern Route would take two hours each. The routes are also inter-connected so you can change buses at transfer points and create your own route. Verdict: Recommended. Especially for first-time visitors who don’t have short attention spans – if you do you’ll get bored quickly as there are long gaps in what is a rather serious commentary and the bus goes slowly, although obviously this is so you can take in the sights and shoot some good pics as you cruise by. If you can get a seat up top it’s brilliant – time your trip so you’re riding along Passeig Gracia, Avenida Diagonal, Montjuïc and the waterfront in the late afternoon when the light on the elegant buildings and views over the city and sea are just gorgeous. Also make sure this is the first thing you do, otherwise, again, you might get bored if you’ve already walked down some of the streets. ARTISTIC BARCELONA AFTERNOON TOUR I chose this 3.5-hour tour as it covered the key Gaudi sights, which for many visitors to Barcelona is the main reason to visit the city. The bus headed up Passeig de Gracia, cruising slowly by Gaudi's gorgeous apartment buildings, Casa Batllo and La Pedrera, and stopping at Gaudi's whimsical Parc Guell which we walked around for 50 minutes, before driving to the city’s most recognized landmark, La Sagrada Familia, where we did a quick whizz around the church with the guide pointing out the main biblical scenes. The bus then cruised down to the Ribera-El Born quarter for a visit to the stupendous cathedral of Santa Maria del Mar, before finishing at the Picasso Museum. Verdict: Only recommended if you’ve done large group tours before and like them. This was my least favourite option, partly because of my expectations and partly because I didn’t read the fine print. I thought the focus was going to be on art, and yet our guide’s commentary was laced with all kinds of trivia from shop opening times to the fact that the owner of Zara is Spain’s richest man. She also had a tendency to point out every place that featured in the film Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I didn’t read the info on the site properly, so I didn’t realise that most of the tour was on a big coach and that it was a large group tour. It was also multilingual, meaning there was a lot of time when our tired guide was speaking in French and Spanish as well as English, so I was hearing the commentary three times – great for improving my language skills, but tedious after a while. Being in such a large group meant sometimes I simply couldn’t hear the guide at all. This was also the first time I’ve ever followed a guide around with an umbrella, and I really didn’t like it one bit. Having said that, aside from a couple of others, the majority of people appeared to enjoy it – they seemed to know what to expect and enjoyed chatting with each other more than they did seeing the sights.