My sister is taking our daughters (16 &22)to Barcelona for 6 days - lucky girls!. I'd love suggestions for activities for them, particularly fun shopping (given that we live in NY and the dollar is worth a penny), vegetarian restaurants, has anyone done a private tour they thought was particularly worthwhile?
Thanks

Train to Torres or Cava producers, cable car across the bay. Las Ranbla shopping is good but watch the hand bag, the gaudi trail is good

They'll likely enjoy strolling down La Ramblas down towards the port to view the shops, flower stalls, mimes and actors, etc.

Hello!,

There are a lot of things to do in Barcelona, for shopping they can go to Catalunya Place - Portal del Angel - Puertaferrissa to buy clothes and shoes in standard chains, or to Rivera district if they want to buy forefront fashion.

For shops of great firms (Channel, Carolina Herrera, Armani.......) Paseo de Gracia it's specific adress to go.

On the other hand, it's very interesting to visit buildings of Modernism (Pedrera, Casa Batlló, Palau de la Música; Parc Guell...). They have to walking for Las Ramblas as someone has already said in this forum, and in the morning going to Boqueria Market, it's fantastic!, also it's nice walking for the maritim front.

Referent to vegetarian restaurants you can visit the page web http://www.sincarne.net/castellano/r...-barcelona.htm, where there are information in English and Spanish about situation of restaurants, price....

Bye,

A day trip to Montserrat monastery is fun. If they like (pretty easy) hikes, there are several trails on top of the mountain that have awesome views).

I highly recommend Maribel's guide for good Barcelona info:

http://maribelsguides.com/

There is a Fat Tire Bike tour there that I think young folks would enjoy. It ends up down by the sea on the beach with snacks and drinks available. Also I think there are "dancing" fountains on the weekend - I can't remember the name of the location but maybe another poster will. A daytrip to Figueras for the Dali museum might be appealing if they are at all into art - tho his is a bizarre form of it. Hop on / hop off bus for overview of the city, Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell are interesting sights as well.

This looks awesome, just started there, we saw the promo car tooling around town back in January.

http://www.gocartours.com/

I've never been good at copying links to prior reports. If you put "missypie barcelona" into the search box, you will find my report from last year-where we ate and shopped. We loved it.

The shops/stores/boutiques with the cutest clothes for young women are in El Born. Great things there!

You might be interested in reading my trip report:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35086408

Thanks for all the really appropriate and helpful suggestions and the great trip reports. What's the trip like to Montserrat? Should I hire a driver/guide for them or is that ridiculous? We generally travel on our own but did have 2 private guided tours in Rome last summer which were unbelievable and also we won't be with them. I'd like to make things easy for them, and not leave my sister completely responsible for keeping them busy enough.

Montserrat is very easy to get to by train, and at the station you can buy an inexpensive package ticket that covers the RT train, gondola ride up the mountain side (really cool!) and the funicular that takes you from the monastery to the top of the mountain. It's very easy and no need for a guide.

thanks alan

A very efficient, yet flexible way to see the city is the Bus Turistica, a "hop on, hop off" tourist bus with three routes (see here: http://www.barcelona-on-line.es/eng/...s_turistic.htm).