What to expect in a Visit to Barcelona ? A Tour in Barcelona – Page 2

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Park Güell – Gaudi

Another one of Gaudi’s works and a must visit. Built between 1900 to 1914. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site. (Map) Watch this Video of a visit at Park Güell.

Park Guell

Park Guell

Casa Batlló and La Pedrera – Gaudi

At the avenue “paseo de Gracia” you can see two more famous buildings with Gaudi’s architecture:  Casa Batlló and La Pedrera-Casa Milà You can admire the nice monuments from the outside or wait in a long line and visit them inside.  (see Map)

La pedrera

Plaza de España

Just 4 metro stations from Plaza Cataluña there is another important and beautiful square: Plaza de España. The Montjuïc hill starts here with the fountains shows in the evenings. The very nice “Las Arenas” mall is on the other side.(Map)

Plaza Espana

Magic Fountain show of Montjuïc

A show of fountains with lights and music. It happens in the evenings, at dusk every half hour, but in the winter only during the week-end. You access the place from plaza de España.(Map) Watch this Video

Magic Fountains

Las Arenas mall (at Plaza de España)

It was once a bullfighter ring, it got renovated and opened in 2011 as a very nice mall with great 360 degrees view from the top terrace (Map).
Watch this Video of a visit at the roof of Las Arenas. Visit the page about the Shopping.

Arena mall

Montjuïc hill

The Montjuïc hill is stretched from plaza de España to the sea, in front of the port. At the top there is a fortress from the 17th century. At the side close to plaza de España there are Olympics facilities from the 1992 games and “pueblo Español”, a Spanish village museum. (Map)

Monjuic

See the different ways to get to Montjuic here, on the page about Barcelona Tourist attractions.

Montjuic

Teleférico del Puerto – the cable car to Montjuïc

One nice way to get to the Montjuïc hill is with the cable car that starts from the Barceloneta beach. There is also a middle station not far from the Colón statue but it is not opened all the year. The total length of the travel is 1300  meters. (Map)
(Cable car site)

Cable car

Pueblo Español – A Spanish Village museum

If you don’t have time to visit all Spain, come to visit in Barcelona a village with architecture inspired from different places in Spain. The “Poble Espanyol” was built in 1929 for the Barcelona International Exhibition and it remained as an open air museum. Access the place from plaza de España. Map, Site.

Pueblo Espagnol

Pueblo Espagnol

Tibidabo

You can see Tibidabo from downtown if you look at the mountains, opposite the sea. Upstairs there is a church, an amusement park for children, trekking paths and a view over the city. Map, Site

Tibidabo

See the different ways to get to Tibidabo here, on the page about Barcelona Tourist attractions.

Tibidabo

Gracia neighborhood

Gracia is a residential neigborhood with bohemian character and a lot of students. At night, the squares, like plaza del Sol get crowded with young people talking, drinking and smoking on the ground. The main street is Verdi and there is a small cinema with movies in V.O. The closest metro station to Gracia is Fontana (green line). (Map) Watch this Video of a weekend walk.

Gracia

El Raval neighborhood

If you go down la Ramla, “el Raval” is on the right (see Map).
El Raval is not as beautiful as “El barrio Gotico” (left side of la Rambla) but it has its own character. Don’t miss the gardens “Rubió I Lluc”, here in the picture.

Raval

Raval

Barça (FC Barcelona) and Camp Nou

If you live on this planet, you should know the football team of Barcelona.
If you want, you can visit the Stadium “Camp Nou” in a guided tour but first you have to arrive to the metro station “Les Corts” and walk a little bit (the touristic bus has a station there). If not, you can buy Barça related souvenirs in one of the many dedicated shops in Barcelona. Don’t worry, you will see them, these shops are everywhere.(Map – Camp Nou),
Internet site

Barca

Pretty often, there is an invasion of foreign supporters before an important game at Camp Nou stadium : It gets warmer, right before the match : Watch this Video

Barca

And it usually ends, like this :

Barca

Demonstrations in Barcelona

If there is not a football game, there is probably some other demonstration in Barcelona :

demonstrations

The Barcelona Touristic Bus

There are 2 companies of touristic bus in Barcelona. Barcelona Bus Turistic and Barcelona City Tour . They both let you get on and off the bus at any station and give you some discounts for museums and other attractions. You can buy the ticket for 1 or 2 days at hotels and at tourist information booths, at plaza Cataluña for example.
Taking the touristic bus is nice, but you can also decide to reach Barcelona’s attractions with the metro and by walking, it’s easy.

touristic bus

Bike tours, Walking tours and Segway tours

One great way to see Barcelona is with a guided bicycle tour. During half a day you will be part of a group and visit the Barrio Gotico and other neighborhoods. You will also stop for tapas and drinks at a Chiringito at the beach. It is fun.
There are several companies for Bike tours and Walking tours, you will see many leaflets at your hotel. 

bike tours

Renting Bikes

Barcelona was one of the first cities in the world to implement a system for public bike rentals with stations (Bicing).
Unfortunately the system is not adapted for tourists, you can not rent one of these bikes with a credit card, you have to live in Barcelona. So if you want to rent a bike, you can do it in one of the many private shops in Barcelona, there are many in the Center, in the Barrio Gotico and in the Barceloneta, the beach (also electric bikes).

Bicing

Bike Paths

As you can see in the photo, there are many bike paths in Barcelona, and it is usually sunny in the city, so using a bike is a good idea :

bike paths Barcelona

Museums

Barcelona has many, many museums, if you will visit all of them you will not have time for the beach (nor money for the dancing clubs at night).
Here are some: Picasso, Maritim, Cataluña history, Barcelona history, Art museum and many others. Note that Gaudi is represented in all Barcelona with his monuments (La Sagrada Familia, parc Güell, Casa Batlló and La Pedrera)
See this list of Museums. See map with museums

museums

Tapas

Tapas are small portions of food and this way of serving is popular in all Spain. One of the popular tapas is the “tortilla” (in front in the picture) which is a thick omelet with potatoes and onion, it is one of the few vegetarian tapas. Note that in Spain you are often served a bread, spread with tomato (pan con tomate), a very good idea.

tapas

Paella

Another famous Spanish dish is the Paella (originally from Valencia) which consists of rice with more interesting ingredients. I am vegetarian and I wanted to put a vegetarian paella picture, but I admit that the seafood one looks nicer.

Paella

Street Food

Barcelona is an excellent city for street food. You can find in Barcelona: Falafel, Wok, Piadina (Italian dish), Tapas, Pizzas, Pasta, and even Arepa (a Venezuelan and Colombian dish) all for less than 10 euros with a drink. There are also chains of “all you can eat buffet” with discount flyers, (one of them is Fresc Co), there is the big carrefour supermarket at the middle of la Rambla and the Boquería market where you can find many tapas and fruit salads for 1 or 2 euros.

fast food

Ice Cream – Helado – Gelateria

Whenever you are out of ideas about what to eat in Barcelona, just eat an ice-cream.
The ice-creams are great in Barcelona, most of the places seem to have an Italian owner and Italians know how to make good ice-creams (and Pizzas and Piadinas and Pasta and other stuff).
For me the best Gelaterías in Barcelona are Farggi and Dino, both Italians, but I’ll let you investigate this issue by yourself.
Tip 1 : The best ice-creams are not necessarily where there is a show-off in the presentation, like in La Rambla (or in this picture for instance), it’s more for tourists…
Tip 2 : I personally avoid Gelaterías where they have an ice-cream color blue, it’s more for kids, I am a professional.

ice cream barcelona

Vegetarians in Barcelona

Barcelona is Vegetarian friendly, certainly better than Madrid where there is “Jamón” hanging everywhere as decoration. See the page I created about the Vegetarian options in Barcelona (suitable also for carnivores).

vegetarians

In a visit at a supermarket in Barcelona, I discovered that not everyone is vegetarian like me  :

jamon

Then at the market, I received even more proof:

vegetarians

 Let’s go for something sweeter, for dessert there is the “Turron”, a traditional Spanish sweet. You will see it a lot in Barcelona, especially at Christmas period.

turron

 Or, you can take a “Churros con Chocolate”. If you can eat at McDonald’s, you can also eat this. The hot chocolate you see, is very dense and the churros, quite oily. As if it was not enough, they give you also sugar.

churros

Beers

Drinking beers is usually an important part of a visit. The main beer in Cataluña is Estrella Damn, it is very good (A Catalan Brewery) there is also a version with double alcohol: “Voll Damm”. Another one is San Miguel which is different from the one made in the Philippines (same name, different companies). And another beer from Barcelona : Moritz.

beer

Sangría

Sangría is a wine punch with fruits, it is popular in Spain. If you insist on drinking it at “la Rambla”, it will cost you the double (but you will have a nice view).

sangria

Water fountains

If you don’t want to get drunk, you can always drink water from one of these lovely water fountains of Barcelona and it is completely free.

Water Fountains Barcelona

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