6 days - Barcelona and Girona or just Barcelona?
 

Help please! Husband and I are spending 6 nights and full days in Barcelona in March for our 10 year anniversary. We like a mixture of culture & architecture, outdoors & beautiful scenery, food & wine. While we love NYC and loved Rome, we tend to prefer smaller villages or towns (the hilltop towns in Tuscany are my favorite places on earth). So - I am not entirely sure after reading about Barcelona that I will love staying in the city the entire time but could be wrong?! I am trying to decide between 2 options:

Option 1: Stay in Barcelona the entire time and schedule a couple day trips/tours out of the city- there is one to Montserrat that will give us the outdoor hiking experience we are looking for, and another to Girona and Costa Brava that looks like it will give us the picturesque small town experience we also love. Pros are that we will spend a couple days outside the city while having one home base...cons are that it sounds like we won't have much time to really experience Girona and Costa Brava....


Option 2: Stay in Barcelona 4 nights and in Girona 2 nights. Pros here are that we get out of the City and really spend time in Girona, but cons are switching hotels and completely missing Montserrat.

Thoughts?

Based on your description of your "likes" - are you sure that Montserrat is a "fit". We thought it was more impressive from the outside than from the inside - but the inside was OK (abbeys are not our "thing").

Girona is still a city. I would go for renting a car and explore the Costa Brava and all the interesting villages in the Pyrenees close to France.

Stu Dudley

The good news is that either choice should be great!

With an interest in hiking, I think a day trip in Montserrat well worth considering. The scenery is certainly impressive! And if you can time it so that you can hear a performance of the boys' choir at the monastery, I don't think you would regret it.

Girona is a small enough city that you can see its highlights in a day. I really enjoyed it, and found it sufficiently different from Barcelona to be easily worth the time. That said, as Stu Dudley notes, it is another city.

No need to join a tour for either, as you can visit each easily using public transportation.

Enjoy!

This won't make it any easier, but....

Have you considered a day trip to Figueres to see the incredible Salvador Dali museum? I'm no art aficionado, but it was amazing - as was his house, now a museum, at cadaques on the coast a short bus ride away. http://www.salvador-dali.org/en_index/

Girona is really amazing, but you can go there just for one day from Barcelona. The centre of Girona is really small, so you can see everything in one day.

Very much possible to have an <outdoor hiking experience> and <the picturesque small town experience> in Barcelona itself.

Go to Montjuic (Jewish mountain) right in the centre. Spectacular views of both the city and the sea from the castle on the top, and the huge Montjuic park in general is lots of greens, museums, theaters and 1992 Olympic sports arenas . Walk to the top or take the Teleferic: http://www.telefericdemontjuic.cat/en/

About Montjuic:
http://www.barcelonaturisme.com/wv3/...-lalcalde.html
http://www.barcelonaturisme.com/wv3/...-montjuic.html

At the bottom of Montjuic, you'll find the very local atmosphere Poble Sec district with it's many great tapas bars and restaurants. https://www.airbnb.no/locations/barcelona/el-poble-sec
http://www.barcelonaturisme.com/wv3/...to-bodega.html

And for a more small town feel, go to Gracia, just north of the central Eixample district: http://www.barcelona-tourist-guide.c...ia-barrio.html
https://www.airbnb.no/locations/barcelona/gracia

Thank you so much everyone - we have decide to stay in Barcelona the full time and now just need to decide where to go on a couple day trips...I am looking into Figueres and probably crossing off Montserrat but keeping Girona. Also appreciate the tip on Montjuic - will add that to one of the days we will be staying in Barcelona.

Another question - we are thinking of arranging a private tour when we land so they can pick us up from airport and that way we aren't wasting time wandering around aimlessly waiting for our hotel room. Since it's a private tour and we can customize - what do you all suggest we see with them (Gaudi park, etc?) vs what can we/should we do on our own? Would love to get advantage of skipping lines and all with the tour company but we will also be tired and jet lagged so don't want it to be too intense.

You can obtain tickets/reservations to several of the Gaudi sites from your home. Do that to avoid lines and choose early-in-the-morning admission times.

IMO, unless you are huge Dali fans - I would not sacrifice a day in Barcelona to visit Figueres.

Stu Dudley

If hiking and scenery are goals, I would not think Montserrat and Montjuic interchangeable. Montjuic is, IMO, well worth seeing -- for its museums, not for the kind of hiking or spectacular scenery you would encounter on Montserrat. JMO. But you can decide which to visit once you are there.

Many hotels will let you leave off your luggage before checking in. If your goal in considering a private tour is simply to avoid wasting time, that might be worth exploring. I can't imagine what you would learn from a guide at the Park Guell that you wouldn't learn from the audio-guide, and if you are looking for a relaxing way to spend part of that arrival day, going there might be a good idea.

Lots of ways to avoid skipping lines -- most of which are covered in any decent guidebook. Check all the Gaudi and Domènech i Montaner sites on-line in advance; definitely reserve anything you want to see at the Sagrada Familia in advance. I am not a morning person and found NO reason to book early a.m. times to see anything in Barcelona -- as long as I had the right advance ticket or pass.

>> I am not a morning person and found NO reason to book early a.m<<

So - you didn't go there in the morning - but your advise to others is to not necessarily go there in the morning??? We are morning people, and there were very few people in Casa Batillo when we were the first few people in line (with pre-purchased tickets). We took dozens & dozens of pictures with no people in the pictures. By 11AM - it was quite crowded.

https://stududley.shutterfly.com/29

Click "Full screen"
Casa Batillo is on pages 12-19

Because of Shutterfly software problems, captions & titles are often truncated or missing.

Stu Dudley

"So - you didn't go there in the morning - but your advise to others is to not necessarily go there in the morning???"

Correct -- IME, going early in the morning is not the only way to avoid lines. For those of you who WANT to go early, do it! For those who do not want to go early and who make appropriate arrangements in advance, my experience was that one could still avoid lines later. To each his / her own!

I liked Tarragona more than Girona .
Both are easy day trips , but there is so much to see in Barcelona ,
you might not wish to leave .
It took several trips to Barcelona, before I went to
Tibidabo above the city. On a nice day, the view is grate.
There is a church on the top worth seeing.

Regarding Montjuic:

Two of my favourite restaurants in town are at the foot of Montjuic. La Perla is as genuinely Barcelona as it gets, only open for lunch (until about 5pm). http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restauran...Catalonia.html

And I had one of the best meals in my life in close by, old school and rock'n roll Xemei last March. The Bigoli en salsa Veneciana is unlike anything I've ever tasted before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lvcjtoh0tU

Went to Xemei late at night after seing an out of this world perfromance in Mercat de les Flors some 300 meters up the road. Montjuic is also "theater city" http://www.barcelonaturisme.com/wv3/...el-teatre.html

When you are in Montjuic, perhaps a glass or cup of something in tranquile and secluded La Font del Gat: http://www.lafontdelgat.com/

>>one could still avoid lines later<<

OK - I understand. I guess I was more concerned with the crowds inside & not the lines outside early vs not early.

Stu Dudley

I went to Casa Batllo in the evening, the line wasn't long then, either. It's open until 8 pm, I believe, so perfect thing to do before dinner, as I was dining in the area.

As for this private "tour", I would say Parc Guell might be a good idea because it isn't as easy to get to as other main tourist sites. At least most people don't know how to or don't use the buses -- it's easy to get to by bus but the closest metro stop is a bit far away, and the place the hopon/off bus leaves you is, also. YOu don't have to be paying attention to a lot of details, etc., and it's outdoors -- I think it's always a good idea to be outside a lot with jet lag. They do have tickets now for that park and limit people, I guess, not sure the details, they didn't when I went. SO look into that. And you might combine that with something logical, something not in dead center where it is so easy to visit the sites yourself. So you could maybe combine that wiht a visit to the Gracia neighborhood and then go west a bit and visit the monestery of Pedralbes, as it's a bit off the beaten track, also. http://www.barcelonalowdown.com/mone...-kept-secrets/

Taxis are not expensive, 10 euros ? from
Diagonal to Parc Guell.

Suggest the following 2 low-key sites for your arrival day when you're a bit jet lagged. The 1st one - Hospital Sant Pau - was suggested by our B&B and turned out to be our favorite site. It's best to book tickets on line for both of these as well as all the other major sites to avoid standing in line.

Besides the Gaudi sites, we also enjoyed Palau a la Musica and Casa Lleo Morera (both designed by the same architect as Hospital Sant Pau.)

Hospital Sant Pau
English guided tour given a few times per day - can reserve on line.
https://www.santpaubarcelona.org/en/visits

Parc Guell
Must book online for a timed entry ticket - we visited at end of day close to sunset but have heard early a.m. is also good to avoid the crowds.
http://www.parkguell.cat/en/buy-tickets/

If you're still interested in hiring a private guide, can highly recommend Spanish Trails. I have done 7 tours with them - a combination of private and group (group tours are limited to 8 people.) They offer a variety of tours - historical city, food & wine, various day trips outside Barcelona.
http://spanish-trails.com

And if you are looking for a place to stay, I can recommend BarcelonaBB located in the Eixample district. I have stayed there twice in the White Room suite. Beautiful place with helpful, engaging owners who really add to the rental experience. They offer 3-4 rooms (set up like suites) with private baths - the rest of the rooms have shared baths.
http://www.barcelonabb.com

We have fallen in love with Barcelona and hope you will, too. Have a wonderful trip.