What are "must sees" in Barcelona? Any suggestions for guides and/or day trips?
MaureenW

I suggest a trip to the local library and check out a Barcelona Guidebook. Also, there are Barcelona Guides galore already posted on the internet. There are "Top Sights" are there are "Must see's"; sometimes they are the same, often they are not. What is a "must see" for me may not be for you.....

If you are at the right age (12-72), know to protect yourself from pickpockets, have no mobility problems, you can DIY, thus providing flexibility for yourself.

If interested in architecture, you must, must, must see all gaudi buildings you can.

If art is your thing, the Picasso museum with his early work is terrific.

Do not forget the cathedral and the castle and Miro.

Buy Fodors and read about it and make the final decision yourself.

definitely eat some Percebes/Gooseneck Barnacles to start one of your dinners.

The above is based on a trip taken quite some time ago, but which stays fresh on our minds as a family.

Start practicing pronouncing your "C"s closer to "th"s although your companion(s) may make fun of you like my family did.

otherchelebi wrote:

<Start practicing pronouncing your "C"s closer to "th"s although your companion(s) may make fun of you like my family did.>

My husband has been working on his lisp in preparation for the trip.

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beeswing on Jun 8, 10 at 12:36pm

otherchelebi wrote:

<Start practicing pronouncing your "C"s closer to "th"s although your companion(s) may make fun of you like my family did.>

My husband has been working on his lisp in preparation for the trip. "

Even more useful - learn a few greetings in Catalan.

if you are a sports fan, the Olympic Stadium is pretty nice

Danon, that too. Although from my understanding, Barcelona's second language is Spanish. Between our three family members, we can usually handle basic Spanish. Might that be acceptable?

Yes. The Catalans take great pride in speaking Castilian as well.

The tricky part will be to find out if the person you wish to talk to has Castilian or Catalan as his/her mother tongue.
But you will hardly find one person in Barcelona not being able to communicate in Castilian. And it's almost as hard not to find a person who would not know English.

But Hola stays Hola as the most used greeting, so you are always on the safe side with that. And Gracies means Gracias and is also pronounced almost the same, just the "c" looses its lisp.

But Catalan has many unique combinations of vowels and consonants that sounds more or less similar to the "ch" in Castilian in words with "ig". Puig, roig, passeig, for example.
Or like the English "sh" sound of "ix" as in Eixample or caixa. And the many words with "tg", like metge (doctor) or formatge (cheese), where that combination gets a sound like the "j" in French journal.
I find it pretty hard to learn since so many words get a different sound than in Castilian (which is more or less strictly 'what you write is what you say'), and endings are often silent. But you don't have to worry that much about the lisp of the "c" since it's more like a sharp "s" anyway. Or like the English "c", depends on the following vowel. Difficult language.

The probably most relevant Catalan word for tourists might be "tancat", which means "closed".

The information relevant for tourists, e.g. on the subway or in museums, is usually tri-lingual, i.e. also in English.

Bon viatge!

Beeswing : in the center of Barcelona i.e. in touristy places you'll find more people speaking Castillano than Catalan. The situation would be different in small towns.
Everybody will understand Spanish.
The street signage will be in Catalan (Spanish is optional).

"The Catalans take great pride in speaking Castilian as well".

Is this a joke?

Well, beyond not being familiar with Catalan, most of our Spanish has been picked up in Mexico. (And the teacher in my daughter's old school was from South America.) I fully expect it will be a challenge!

Seems like all this language talk is not helping out Maureen at all.

Sorry to have pulled the thread off topic. I haven't been to Barcelona, but will be going soon. I found this list of "must-sees" online, so copied it down for my own reference:

La Ramblas
La Sagrada Familia
Placa Catalunya
Bari Gothic
Port Dell area
Parc Guell
Montjuic
La Pedrera from outside

Again, big caveat, we haven't used this list yet. But it might be good as a place to start looking into what you might like to see.

Okay, I find the initial question always as hard to answer as the liguistic matters, since there is no "one size fits all" top 10 list.

Some of my favorites are:
Barri Gòtic / Cathedral / got lost in the maze of small streets
Barceloneta/ Port Vell (not "dell", if you forgive the critisizm) / take the cable car across the harbor to Montjuic and back / sundowner on the beach
Plaça de Catalunya / not that much to see there, but you can walk up Passeig de Gracia and check up the upscale stores, not only the usual brands but also locals like Vinçon
A beautiful monestary in a quiet neighborhood, the Monestir de Pedralbes.
And, of course, the many museums you find in any travel guide.

"The Catalans take great pride in speaking Castilian as well".

Is this a joke?

It is a great source of pride that Catalans can speak their own language but also a form Castilian that they think is better than Madrileños. This was the case almost 40 years ago when I first visited Barcelona and Franco was trying to suppress the Catalan culture and last week during a discusssion with a Catalan exchange student.

The Bus Turistic provides three routes you can hop on and off to see sites throughout the sprawling city. http://www.barcelonabusturistic.cat/...C50A994A28714C

Some of my favorite sights were:

The Museum of the City of Barcelona. Gives access to the underground ruins from Roman times.

Cable car across the waterfront from Barceloneta to Montjuic.

Maritime Museum, in beautifully preserved medieval shipyards.

Attending a concert in the Palau Musica Catalana, a stunning example of moderniste architecture. http://www.palaumusica.org/

You might be interested in my trip report:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...rip-report.cfm

Cowboy, thanks for the correction on Port Vell. I copied and pasted the list, and the mistake was in the original. Barcelona is the last stop on our trip, so I haven't even begun to look into what to see there.

The Maritime Museum is beautiful, but currently under reconstruction. Some part (maybe 1/3) cannot be visited now.

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beeswing on Jun 8, 10 at 3:23pm

Well, beyond not being familiar with Catalan, most of our Spanish has been picked up in Mexico. (And the teacher in my daughter's old school was from South America.) I fully expect it will be a challenge!"

All my Spanish teachers have been from South America - the people I spoke with ( mostly taxi drivers !) had no trouble understanding.
You don't have to know Catalan , most people in the tourist industry speak some English ( young people insist on it!)
If you speak Spanish well, it is not hard to understand written Catalan.