How to get in town from the El Prat airport

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Here are 5 plans worth taking into account:

• Taxi. There are lots of taxis waiting outside the arrivals terminal. A ride to or from the Prat airport is around 25-30 euro plus the fee per suitcase. Expect the ride to take around 20-30min.

• Aerobus. Blue bus departing the airport terminals every 15min., connecting both airport terminals with Plaça Catalunya in 45min. From there, you can take taxis or subway to get to your hotel.

•   Rodalies trains. Departing every thirty minutes or so, from the station in Terminal 2 (free shuttles available from Terminal 1). It takes 30min to enter the city, and the trains stop in Sants Estació and Passeig de Gràcia.

•   Private transfers. If you don't want to have to deal with non-English speaking taxi drivers (or too smart ones that will take the longest way to your hotel so the meter gets higher than it'd be), booking a private transfer is a more expensive but very convenient idea. Make sure that the company you choose uses only professional fully licensed and insured drivers with SP plate vehicles (SP stands for Servicio Público - Public Service)

• Start your tour right at the airport! If you are landing in the morning, it is very likely that your hotel room or apartment won't be available until noon or later. Why would you waste your precious first hours in Barcelona lying in the coaches of the lobby when you could be starting to get familiar with our city? We can send a driver to pick you up at the terminal and then our guides will join you at the entrance of the city for a relaxed city overview ending at the hotel (or apartment or cruiseship). Starting your stay in Barcelona with a great tour starting at the airport is a very smart way to get in town.

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5 ways to move around Barcelona

What's the best way to move around Barcelona?
It really depends a lot on your style and budget, but here are some ideas to take into account:

• Walking. Barcelona is a very walkable city, and if you are staying in the Old Town or near Passeig de Gràcia and you are fine moving around on foot, you aren't likely to use any other means of transportation most of the time except to get to waterfront, Montjuïc, Sagrada Familia or Park Güell.

• Bus and Subway. Safe and savvy, most free city maps given away in hotels have subway maps printed in a corner, and you can get bus maps in Information Points of the main Subway Stations. Unless you are planning to do more than 10 rides a day, the 1-Day or 3-Day passes aren’t such a good deal. Most of them time you’ll prefer a 10-trip card (Zone 1) that you can share with your travel mates, and even allows you to transfer from bus to subway or subway to bus within 1h15min. And it also works for the rodalies train going to the Prat airport! 

• Taxis. Not as expensive as in some other European cities, yet the locals would prefer them to be much cheaper... Stop them anywhere in the street if they have a green light on, which means it’s available, or find a taxi stop. A 10 minute ride shouldn’t be more than 5-10 euro, a longer ride across the city is around 15 euro, and a ride to the Prat airport is around 25-30 euro plus the fee per suitcase. I often use them in my private tours of Barcelona. 

• Tourist Bus. While they can be a great way to get a light city overview, I wouldn't consider using them for your main sightseeing plans unless you have planned carefully your schedule. There are often long lines in the main stops, and they only run in one direction and that means that when you get tired and you are ready to go home... you are right across the city and have to wait another hour or so before you approach the center again... Plus a considerable part of the itinerary takes you through neighborhoods that are only mildly interesting if you don't have much time to explore Barcelona.

• Renting cars. Unless you are planning to go out of town, I don't recommend you rent a car... Or you’ll be paying to park everywhere and get stuck in rush hour traffic jams… Waste of time.

Here are my 5 cents! I hope they were helpful!

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5 top safety tips for a safe beach time in Barcelona

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Is there anything better after a long day sightseeing in Barcelona than enjoying the last sun rays of the day and refreshing your body in the Mediterranean sea?

Barcelona has 4km of beach (about 2.5 miles) that are there for you to enjoy. However, it is always worth to take a few precautions to enjoy the beach safely:

•  For your physical safety, never enter the water if there is a red flag. Orange flag means relatively powerful waves and recommends to avoid bathing. Green flag announces safe swimming. Blue flags are awarded to the cleanest and better equipped beaches in Europe.

• If you will be carrying a bag avoid going alone to the beach or at least do not enter the water leaving your belongings unattended. Locals never do: we take turns to swim so there is always someone from our group staying with our things to watch them out.

• It is also socially accepted to ask your neighbor to keep an eye on your things. In this case the etiquette says that you shouldn’t stay in the water for more than five to ten minutes, and you mustn’t blame them if something is stolen anyway.

• Another good tip is covering your bags with a towel or shawl: this way it is more difficult for pickpockets to grab it and run away.

• And finally don’t trust people walking around normally dressed. It might sound funny, but specially at night, when it is so pleasant to have a night swim and enjoy the breeze and the moonlight, it is easy to identify pickpockets because they move in groups and don’t wear swimsuits but regular street clothes. If you feel watched, just move to a place where there is more people.

And that's very important: don't freak about about safety: locals don't, we just incorporate this little safety rules to our beach routine and then we are ready to enjoy ourselves. You can do that too.
Happy sunbathing!

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Professional beggars at the Cathedral

Yes, I had heard rumors about the beggars of the Cathedral. Rumors about one of them being picked-up by her husband in a Mercedes after her "working day" was over, rumors about being a whole organized mafia of professional beggars... but I thought it was probably exagerations, even if I had seen one of them who always shakes like she's so sick, stopping shaking after deciding it was lunchtime: she just stood up and walked away - no shaking at all. But you know, most beggars do these kind of tricks to look more miserable, kind of "poor people's marketing".

But today, I was there. I had a tour with the Husain family from Bangladesh. We arrived at the Cathedral as on Sunday guides are not allowed to give tours inside I gave them some basic explanations and they entered by themselves. While I was waiting a saw that lady arrive. She walked with the decided energy of someone arriving at work. Her hair was carefully made into a nice pony-tail, she wore a cute jacket, a trendy skirt with new stockings and cute high-heel boots. You'd have said she was heading for her office. But not at all.

I thought her face rang a bell, and sure enough she took an old jacket from a bag and put it on over her nice one, then sat down and cover her legs (skirt, stockings and boots) with a dirty coat, then she took a black shawl from her bag and covered her clean hair with it. Voilà! She had transformed in a beggar in less than two minutes! She took a plastic plate and put it to her side, she was ready to work!

I thought I had to share that. If you want to check it yourself, it was only ten minutes to 9am when she arrived this morning.

Unexpected things during the Moore's tour

Interesting and unusual tour we had with Jim Moore and his friends yesterday.
We started like any other city tour, with the Passeig de Gràcia and Gaudí's appartment buildings Casa Batlló and Casa Milà / Pedrera, and then continued to the Sagrada Familia church. There the first surprise of the tour was awaiting us: they were celebrating the festival of the district and several teams of castellers, the catalan human towers, were performing. I told them about this special tradition and how like they had been to see it, as it isn't hard to hit one of these shows. Here is a picture:

Next, we continued to the Old Town, where we had an encounter with a group of pickpockets. Fortunately enough, I immediately realized those Romanian Gypsy girls had just stopped behind our group and we moved away from them, but we could still see the pick-pockets operating, trying to steal from a young couple of tourists that we alerted, and then finally managing to steal a wallet from another lady...
I hate so much to see this kind of things, it really disturbs me. But I know the only way we can fight them is making visitors aware of them, and that's why I'm writing that in my post: so you know it happens. Please don't consider your back pocket a safe place for your wallet and keep always your bag IN FRONT of you and not in your back. Make things difficult for pick-pockets and have a safe holyday!

I was so angry and could see the gypsies had spotted us telling other people, so I decided to move on. We left the Cathedral and continued to the charming squares of the Gothic Quarter. I showed them the Plaça del Rei, and the Roman Temple and when we got to Plaça Sant Jaume... there was a demostration going on! Oh My... But well, they were moving away from the square so I finally managed to tell them about the site and since it was the end of the tour I recomended them a great tapas place for lunch.

That had been an unusual tour!

Hard to change travellers cheques...

Hi!
Yesterday I was on a tour and my clients asked to help them changing travellers cheques. We tried 4 different banks before we found one that accepted changing them!

It looks like most people aren't using them much and they cause them too much trouble, that's why banks don't want to change them anymore.

So beware, travellers cheques aren't a good idea if you are coming to Barcelona.
Anyway, here is the bank who changed them (for a commission, of course):

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