Gaudí needs a timed slot. The Alhambra needs a month.
Which Sagrada Familia ticket opens the towers. What a catamaran afternoon off Mallorca costs. Whether Granada is worth the drive from Seville.
from $39The basilicaSagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
from $64The Nasrid palacesAlhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets
from $27The tablaoLive Flamenco Dancing Show Ticket at the Theater
from $41The kayak dayGuided Kayak Tour Nerja Cliffs and Maro Waterfall
from $114The paellaBarcelona Paella Cooking Class with Market Visit, Tapas & Sangria
Spain has coastline on three seas and an Atlantic besides.
A catamaran with lunch, a kayak into a sea cave, a boat that cuts the engines when the pilot whales surface. Three kinds of day afloat, what it costs to board each one, and the stretch of coast it belongs to.
Six Spanish cities, and the best day out of each.
Gaudí and the Gothic lanes, a royal capital with three of Europe’s great galleries, the Andalusian triangle of Seville, Granada and Cordoba, and two island groups that run on a different calendar entirely.
The buildings people come to Spain for all sell timed entry.
Gaudi’s basilica, a Nasrid palace on a hill above Granada, Velazquez in the Prado. Every one of them runs on half-hour slots, and the cheap plain ticket is rarely the one you want.
The days out that carry more travellers than anything else in Spain.
Every Spanish tour we have reviewed →Eight bookings with a queue behind them, and what earns each one its place.
1
Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
Enter Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia at your booked time and explore Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished basilica at your own pace. The downloadable audio guide covers the facades, interior, history, and design, with augmented reality features in the app. Some ticket options include access to the Nativity or Passion Facade tower. Bring a charged phone and headphones.
From · $39
Read our review →
2
Park Güell Admission Ticket
from $25
3
Royal Alcázar Entry Ticket
from $23
4
Casa Batlló Entry with Self-Audioguide Tour
from $34
5
Cathedral and La Giralda Entry Ticket
from $20
6
Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets
from $64
7
Park Guell Guided Tour with Skip The Line Entry
from $31
8
Prado Museum Entry Ticket
from $21
A Spanish day out, sorted by what it costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best Spanish days come in under the price of the dinner afterwards.
Cathedral and palace entry, old-town walks, a tapas crawl, an hour on the river.
- 1Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guidefrom $39
- 2Park Güell Admission Ticketfrom $25
- 3Royal Alcázar Entry Ticketfrom $23
The full days: the Alhambra with a guide, Montserrat and a winery, a catamaran with lunch.
Private guides, chartered sailing, and the one splurge a fortnight can carry.
Barcelona rewards booking two things in advance and improvising the rest.
The Gaudi buildings run on slots and sell out; the Gothic lanes, the Boqueria and the beach at the end of the Ramblas never do. Get the tickets first, then leave the afternoons alone.
Every Barcelona day out →
Seville, Granada and Cordoba are two hours apart and nothing alike.
One has the Alcazar and the loudest Easter in Europe, one has a Nasrid palace with a booking calendar of its own, one has a mosque with a cathedral built inside it. The train between them takes less time than the queue at either end.
- 1Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Ticketsfrom $64
- 2Live Flamenco Dancing Show Ticket at the Theaterfrom $27
- 3Alhambra and Nasrid Palaces Entry Ticketfrom $33
Dinner starts at ten, so the evening has to start earlier.
A tapas walk that works as the meal, a paella class that ends at the table you cooked it on, a cellar an hour out of the city, and a tablao that runs late enough to go afterwards.
Three Spanish things with no equivalent anywhere else.
Beaches and cathedrals are everywhere on this coast. A palace built as a poem, a dance invented by people with nothing, and a walkway bolted to a gorge wall are not.
The Nasrid Palaces
The last Muslim court in western Europe built itself a palace out of plaster, cedar and running water, and covered the walls in Arabic verse describing the rooms you are standing in. Entry to the Nasrid rooms is capped at a fixed number per half hour, stamped on the ticket, and the stamp is enforced at the door. Nothing else on the hill needs that treatment.
- 1Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 19,801 reviews
- 2Alhambra and Nasrid Palaces Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 15,130 reviews
- 3Alhambra & Generalife Fast-Track Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 8,313 reviews
Flamenco in a Tablao
Flamenco came out of the Roma quarters of Andalusia and it is still argued about there. A tablao is a small room with a wooden floor, three or four performers and no amplification, which is why the good ones hold eighty people and not eight hundred. Seville and Granada run the oldest; Madrid runs the latest.
- 1Live Flamenco Dancing Show Ticket at the Theater★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 16,396 reviews
- 2Casa de la Memoria Flamenco Show★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 12,964 reviews
- 3“Emociones” Live Flamenco Performance★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 12,866 reviews
El Caminito del Rey
A metre-wide walkway pinned to the side of a limestone gorge a hundred metres above the river, built for hydroelectric workers in 1905 and left to rot for eighty years. The rebuilt version is one-way, capped daily and takes about three hours with the shuttle back. Look down through the grating at the old concrete and you understand the closure.
- 1Caminito del Rey Guided Tour with Transportation★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 12,183 reviews
- 2Caminito del Rey: Guided Tour and Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 11,286 reviews
- 3From Málaga & Costa del Sol: Caminito del Rey Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 7,488 reviews
Four Spanish tickets that will not be there in the morning.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four are capped by the half hour, and the caps are set by conservation rules rather than by demand.
- 01Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsThe Nasrid Palaces admit a fixed number every half hour and your slot is printed on the ticket. High season goes weeks out.
- 02Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideEntry is timed to the half hour and the tower lifts are a separate, smaller quota. The lift slots empty first.
- 03Caminito del Rey Guided Tour with TransportationThe gorge walkway is one-way with a daily cap, and it closes outright in high wind. There is no turning back halfway.
- 04Park Güell Admission TicketOnly the Monumental Zone is ticketed and it runs on timed entry. Arrive at the wrong hour and you see the free park.
Spain shuts in the afternoon. Book the afternoon indoors.
From June the sun makes any open plaza in Andalusia unusable between three and six, and half the country closes anyway. The answer is the same either way: get underground, into a gallery, or into a kitchen, and come back out for the evening.
- 1Prado Museum Entry Ticketfrom $21
- 2FC Barcelona Museum “Barça Immersive Tour” Ticketfrom $35
- 3Reina Sofía Museum Entrance Ticketfrom $14
By place — mainland cities and the islands
By kind of day — ticket, deck, table or road
Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Granada: the fortnight almost everybody does first.
Montserrat
ToledoNew Spanish tours, newest first.
The rest of the new Spanish reviews →
Bizkaia Bridge, Gaztelugatxe, Bermeo and Gernika from Bilbao
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White Rabbit Catalonia’s Top Immersive Experience
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Welcome to Barcelona: Private Tour with a Local
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Barcelona Wine Tasting: Catalan and Spanish Wines
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El Born and Gothic Quarter Wine & Tapas Bar Tour
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Casa Vicens, Pedrera, and Casa Batlló Guided Tour
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