Hello! Our family of 3 is planning a trip to Spain. Our plan is:
5/21 arrive BCN, fly to Bilbao and go by bus/taxi to Santander
5/22 Santander
5/23 Bilbao
5/24 Bilbao
5/25- 6/3 Barcelona with day trips to Figueres, Cadaques, Girona, Tarragona, and Zaragoza.
This is basically our first visit to Barcelona as we only spent a day a few years ago.
What do you think of this schedule?
How many days in advance do we purchase the tickets for the main attractions?
Thanks.
Santander ? Not San Sebastián ??
You should allocate 3 days at the end for ....
1. Via Figueres to Cadaques (1N)
2. To Girona (1N)
3. Direct to Barcelona Aitport
The reason to visit Santander is to see where my wife's ancestors came from and try to reconnect with distant relatives.
Santander is 64 miles from Bilbao, so a very, very costly taxi ride away. A bus would be perfectly viable. There is also train service, but is much slower.
I loved my ten days in Barcelona last August (not counting time in Girona) so I heartily approve of the time you plan to spend there.
Off the top of my head, these are the places for which you should buy advance tickets (if you want to see these sites, I mean) to avoid standing in probably-lengthy lines:
Parc Guell: Again, early morning is recommended. If you want to see the gatehouse (which Rick doesn't particularly emphasize and which I didn't see), you will definitely want that first time slot and should go directly to the gatehouse. There's a separate line there which builds up rapidly as soon as the park opens. This is an outdoor site, so if it's hot, that's another reason to prefer an early-morning visit. The tourist office told me buying 1 day ahead should be OK. Takes time to get here if you don't taxi. Bus is better than Metro because the latter leaves you about a 1-mile uphill walk from the park.
Palau de la Musica Catalana: Requires a tour (English available). Tours do sell out, but you can certainly take care of this after you arrive. This visit takes less than an hour, all-in.
Picasso Museum. An utter zoo. Don't think of doing this without pre-purchasing a ticket. If you don't like early Picasso or Cubist Picasso, I'd skip it; it's not like there aren't plenty of other good museums in Barcelona.
Casa Mila/La Pedrera. Buy a ticket in advance to avoid the line Can do this once you get to Barcelona; I'd be surprised if any day every sells out completely until late in the day. Someone pointed out the other day that you can pay a bit extra for a sort of wildcard ticket that doesn't tie you to a specific time slot. Might be worth it for the flexibility, but the site will be crowded whenever you go. Rough estimate: 90 minutes here if you ignore the interesting information on the top floor about other Gaudi sites; otherwise, perhaps 3 hours.
Casa Batllo: As above as far as tickets are concerned. Even more crowded. Maybe 90 minutes if you can push your way through the mob.
Places I enjoyed that did not appear to require advance-purchase tickets when I visited:
Sant Pau modernista site (wonderful multi-building site, not yet discovered by masses of tourists. See it now.)
Miro Museum on Montjuic.
Museum Nacional d'Art de Catalunya on Montjuic. Lots of good stuff, not just paintings.
In sum: As long as your visit is, you really don't need to buy any of the sightseeing tickets before you get to Barcelona, but if there are places you want to go on the Day 2, you might want to buy a ticket for at least the first one from home. In 2016 the tourist office beneath Pl. Catalunya was selling tickets to all the advance-purchase places I highlighted above except the Palau de la Musica Catalana and the La Sagrada Familia towers (T.O. does sell church tickets). There's a 1-euro service fee per ticket. T.O. is busy but efficient; very helpful. Lots of English-language brochures displayed.
ALSA provide frequent bus service between Bilbao and Santander. Running time is 90 minutes, and there's generally at least one bus per hour. The bus departs from the bus station in the San Mames area, which is labeled "Termibus" on Google Maps. ALSA has ticket-vending machines there that generally work well. You can switch the language to English. There's a schedule-printing option, too, so you can print out the return-bus schedule to take with you to Santander. Ticket windows at bus stations commonly stop selling tickets 5 or 10 minutes before the bus is due to depart, so don't cut it too close.
I'm not sure whether this link will work, but in theory, here's the Bilbao-Santander bus schedule for May 21.
Good news: there's frequent bus service from the airport to the city, terminating at that same bus station.
Be aware that weather in the Basque Country is fickle and can be much cooler and damper than the rest of Spain during the warmer months. Don't bury your umbrella and rain jacket too deeply in your suitcase.
Edited to add: The same goes for weather in Cantabria.
Thank you very much. This is very helpful.
Vueling does offer a direct morning flight to Santander from Barcelona. I guess it depends first on your BCN arrival time.
I would look at the 8 days (26th to 2nd) like this...
Zaragoza, whilst possible in a day, is in my opinion better left as a future overnight stay.
Our flight arrives BCN at 0900. What time should I schedule the flight to Bilbao.
There aren't all that many non-stop options shown on Skyscanner.com:
3:50 PM
7:45 PM
9:00 PM
9:45 PM
It's risky to book an onward, separately ticketed flight on your day of arrival since there's a risk of a delay on your inbound flight. But prices are likely to increase a lot if you wait to try for tickets on the day you arrive, and the flight you want might be sold out at that point, so I guess the 3:50 PM is the best bet. It's available for around $69 at the moment. Beware extra charges for seat selection, luggage-checking, etc.
I doubt that there's a one-stop flight or connection that would get you to Bilbao sooner.
