During our recent Barcelona log, there were a number of thoughts. I wasn’t able to share practical tips. Like what’s the best travel card, which attractions should you book online? Where should you stay? Why you should think twice about buying attraction tickets from third party sites, the best food we didn’t show and much, much more.
And you better believe I’m going into more detail than the average YouTube Barcelona video, because this time I’m bringing spreadsheets. If you’re new here, we make travel videos from around the world. Hoping you might just find your next holiday inspiration. This is suitcase monkey with 14 tips on getting the most from Barcelona.
Now we had four days and three nights in. City, which I think was about right. You could however, visit the city over two nights, assuming you arrived early morning. So I not only wanted to list all the attractions we did here in one place, but put them in order of what is absolutely must do to what’s due.
If you have the time for the itinerary of what we got up to check out our full three days in Barcelona video, which I’ll link below. Sitting firmly in the must do camp is park well for this, I would highly recommend you buy your tickets online in advance. And for a few reasons, now most of the park itself is free to access, but for only 10 euros, you get access to one of the Barcelona views, the impressive serpentine bench covered in, in mosaic tiles.
And you’ll get a nice clean, empty photo of the world’s most famous salamander. If people of course would just get out of the way. There we go. The 10 Euro tickets also includes a shuttle bus, which runs from the Aons X Metro station. So it’s also the quickest way to reach the actual park. The other reason why you should pre-book is this.
We purchased our tickets at nine 30 for a one 30 entry to the restricted area. When we arrived at midday, this was the cue to purchase tickets. And the next available slot was 5:00 PM. If you are just visiting to wander around the free area, there is still easily 90 minutes of exploring to do so. It’s still worth the trip.
The closest Metro or bus lines are on the screen now. And then it’s a 10 to 20 minute walk from there while we’re on the subject of buying tickets online, be aware of third party ticketing, websites, or Google sponsored results when trying to book park. Well, I clicked onto a site that seemed official enough coming up top.
But this site added a three Euro per ticket service fee, even barcelona.com, which you would assume was semi-official wanted to add a whopping four Euro cost per ticket, which is 40% for all you mathematicians out there and here for Ciara familiar. With a seven Euro surplus charge per ticket. Now I’m sure there are reputable third party sites out there, but my point is just be aware of add-on fees in terms of choosing a good location for accommodation, anywhere here will have most attractions within walking distance.
The three areas that are good central districts are L born on the Gothic quarter and where we stayed in E Shala. Here, our hotel was a 10 minute walk to Casa bio and 15 minute to cigar familiar and only a few minutes from the L three, four and five Metro lines. It also meant that we had one simple direct train on the R two nod from the airport.
The area is known for its stylish boutiques bars and restaurants, and we had a great breakfast is nearby, which I’ll cover later. The hotel itself was funky, quiet, affordable, modern, and extra friendly. For example, we had an issue where our safe would tell us with some sarcasm that our piles were open and it just wouldn’t lock.
They quickly fixed this left a charming note. And some sugary goodness for the trouble. Again, I’ll leave a link in the description for those wanting to check it out and you’ll actually be supporting this channel. If you click it. Even if you book a different hotel in a different country at no extra cost to you.
So thank you in advance. If you’ve seen our accompanying video, you’ll know how much I was in awe of the cigar familiar. One thing I’d wish we’d done was to go up one of its two towers. This will give you a unique and close up view of the structure as well as one of the highest viewpoints in the city.
Now there are two towers to choose from named passion and nativity. Since you have to specifically choose one when booking the nativity side seems to be the better choice. And for three main reasons, one is that gaudy himself oversaw the building of this tower before his death. Two, these sculptures on this side are said to be much more decorative and the thirdly it’s the only tower that features an outside bridge letting you cross from one tower to the next.
These tower trips will sell out. So definitely book in advance for the relatively inexpensive seven euros. And as a last tip here, you can also get a hefty 50% discount. If you are below 30 and visit on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday during the last two hours of opening, which if my YouTube analytics are correct, we’ll make about 30% of you.
Very happy you crazy kids. Now for a few general bar owner tips that are useful to know in regards to tipping, it’s actually not considered customery to give gratuity here. However, it seems to be the general consensus that if you wish 5% is appropriate for good service and 10 for great, anecdotally speaking, however, we found that service rarely went beyond as speced and was the one area here that was just okay.
Still would you rather spend not percent to receive the bare minimum of acceptable service or 20% for outstanding? Uh, actually I, I actually dunno the answer to that. It is safe to drink from the taps here. One tip. If you finish a bottle of water is to keep a hold of it. There are hundreds of free public drinking fountains all over the city.
So keep your eyes out for a free top up. Whilst wondering around, even at night, we found Barcelona to be a very safe city. That being said it has unfortunately been called the pick pocket capital of the world. Now we didn’t have any trouble or see any trouble during our time here, but just always keep your valuables in sight and attached to yourself.
Barcelona much like the rest of Europe uses the two pin round connectors for its sockets. If you are looking for the ultimate travel adapter to be used all over the world, then look no further than this video sponsor. Septics. This is literally the granddaddy of world travel adapters, and goes way beyond the average travel plug.
Firstly, it can handle an impressive five devices from one outlet since it fits not only your traditional plug, but also three USB and two USB C slots. This is really convenient when you’re in a hotel room that only has one or two outlets and you end up having to share plugs for all your devices. It’s suitable for your mobile phone, laptop, battery, charges, tablets, and most other things you’ll likely have with you when traveling.
It’s high 33 Watts of power mean it will charge your devices much faster than a normal travel adapter. So even a quick 45 minute blast should see you through the day when you’ll be taking lots of photos, it feels like weight yet. Well built and sturdy and holds even heavy plugs like the beast. That is my MacBook pro 16 inch power brick without falling out of the wall.
The travel adapter also includes surge protection to protect you and your devices from external shock and short circuit. When charging I’ll leave a link in the description. If you want to check it out, and I’ll also place a 10% coupon code. If you are interested, thank you to septics for supporting this channel.
Next is when is the best time to visit Barcelona and is the bit that you’ve all been waiting for? That’s right. We’ve got some spreadsheets coming from the bucket load of destinations that make up our to go list. One of the reasons that made us choose Barcelona was that we were traveling in November.
Barcelona has some of the best winter months when it comes to Europe and temperature. As our spreadsheet here demonstrates let’s just call him. Steve. November can experience a high of 18 degrees. We wanted to travel in the winter, have a short, cheap flight and not freezing cold, which we got with it being around 14 degrees.
If being able to sum on the beach, isn’t important to you. You’ll also benefit from a relatively quiet city, but the main point I’d like to make is there isn’t really a bad time to visit Steve’s cousin here. Larry has kindly broken down the 12 months for you. So feel free to pause and have a closer look.
Now let’s talk public transport and how to get the best from your money. There are a number of different options here, and it can be a bit overwhelming. After landing at Barcelona’s El prat airport, a popular way into the city is the a bus, which is a 10 Euro 20 return. This goes from both terminals and takes approximately 20 minutes into the center, making it the quickest option from then onwards.
Single Metro and public buses are 10 40 each. If you’ll be traveling more, it works out cheaper to get the tea as well. Priced at 1135. This gives you 10 bus and Metro tickets paying for itself. After the fifth journey, we actually opted for the Ola Barcelona travel card. This gives unlimited travel from two to five days, starting at 15 euros.
Although Barcelona is very much a walking city and fairly compact. We found this guy gave us the freedom to zip around without feeding the need to keep tabs on our remaining tickets. There are a few more minor details here. So Larry’s sister, Denise has kindly put this table together for those who want a bit more info originating in the 1920s, the magic fountain game popularity.
Once it was given a new lease of life during the Olympic games, if you want to visit, here’s a few things that are useful to know, firstly, it opens as little as three times a week. So check in advance what days it’s actually running. There are a couple other sites nearby. So allow at least 45 minutes to wander around before Showtime in the summer months.
If you really want a close up view, it’s generally suggested to arrive an hour before, since we visited off peak, we easily got our place at the front 15 minutes before alternatively, however, just arrive late, have no concept with the existence of other people and push past everyone to get in front much like these two massive knob heads and for extra brownie points.
Taking note of the wind direction before you find a spot. I did notice some people getting pretty wet and moving once they realized they were in the spray zone overall though, this 20 minute mixture of pop music and jet. Is a great climax to end your first or last evening in the city. Next let’s talk all the cafes and restaurants.
I’d recommend you mark on your map. I only covered some of them in our travel blog, so I wanted to give a shout out to those. I missed to give a quick recap from our previous blog. The number one I would suggest is El Quim in lab market. Don’t stress. If it’s too busy, though, there are so many good food options here.
You’ll easily find something. We did actually come back another time to sample smaller bites. And it’s fun. Just searching around for food and picking things up as you go then in the Gothic quarter was Tasca El corral, which had this amazing assortment of Rizo cheese and bread somewhere. I didn’t show in the vlog was Calum also in the Gothic quarter.
This pastry cafe was perfect. A quick coffee and sugar us to get us through the day. And if you’re in this area looking for tapas. You can’t go wrong with a stop at bar L plat. Finally, if you are staying in the area, we were a really good breakfast option. Is the Gange PETI bow? Nope. Nope. Uh, the Grande PETI, bow pancakes, eggs, Muley, all good stuff.
Check out our full three day itinerary Barcelona for the full picture of what we got up to and subscribe for more guides and blogs around the world. We already have London, Santorini, Malta, Japan, Marrakesh, Kenya, Tuscany, Rome, the MALDI and much more coming. So we hope to see you in the next one. Thanks for watching suitcase monkey.
This live streaming will show you different sites of the Barcelona (about one each day) such as the Basilica de la Sagrada Família, with a sea view in the background!