Fall Trip - Train and festival questions.

You should book your train well before you get there. Waiting will cost more and risk fewer options for sellouts. There are now 4 train operators in Spain, so you can compare schedules, costs, and services.

La Merce is a very special time to be in Barcelona. You should book your hotels sooner rather than later (like, now-ish). Transportation won't be much of an issue.

We have had hotels booked for a couple months, so we are good there. We were just concerned about getting around, mainly from airport to hotel in town.

I just used the Aerobus to get into town from the airport in Barcelona. That will be very convenient if you're staying near Placa de Catalunya. It runs very often.

Where exactly are you staying in BCN? and when are you arriving? During La Mercè festival there are 600+ street activities across several days therefore they might be street traffic restrictions at certain moments in certain places, especially in the narrow winding streets of the neighbourhoods downtown.

Also, while most activities tend to be the same or similar to previous years, the current year festival calendar is not made official until a few weeks before the festival, therefore you'll only be able to fully confirm by then whether any restriction will affect your arrival or not. In any case, this doesn't necessarily have to be a major hurdle in most cases. As said, inform about hotel location and time of arrival and I might be able to assess.

Mentioned above by Scudder:

There are now 4 train operators in Spain...

Should read:

There are now 4 long-distance train operators in Spain...

Clarifying this because while RENFE -the state train operator- has been monopolising the long-distance routes until very recently, for decades there have been some regional train companies providing services to a number of destinations within the same region. Thus, should any reader be planning short getaways from a base city when visiting, it's well worth investigating whether there is a regional train company in that region. This offers 'alternatives' :)

Thanks for the info. We are arriving around noon on Sept. 23rd and will be staying at the Hotel Granvia. Appears to be pretty centrally located, as most are with Rick’s tours. Looking forward to our visit!

That hotel seems to be about 3 blocks from the Aerobus termination point.

Ah, all right. Located in Gran Via with Passeig de Gràcia you won't have any trouble getting to the hotel. These are two major arteries and traffic is very rarely restricted there, only for very special occasions.

As Anne said, you can take the Aerobus either at Terminal 1 or Terminal 2 and will drop you a couple of streets away. Alternatively, you can also take the train which would take you also very near to your hotel. Still, the train departs from Terminal 2 so you if you're landing in Terminal 1 you'll have to take the free shuttle to the later.

This past June we booked train trips from Barcelona to Madrid (2 persons), Sevllla to Madrid (2 persons), Madrid to San Sebastian (6 persons), Madrid to Toledo roundtrip (6 persons), San Sebastian to Zaragoza (4 persons), and Zaragoza to Barcelona (4 persons). We booked them all while we were in Spain. We didn't have a problem with availability, price, or schedule.