Barcelona

Good Morning Ladies/Gents,

I've just registered for Barcelona Marathon 2014 and hope to take in the joys of this wonderful city and I'm looking for any tips/advice/information of things to do and see whilst out there for the few days before the race.

Thanks in advance

I used to live in Barcelona.

The bus tour is worth doing. Hop on/hop off and takes you past all of the architectural delights of Gaudi. La Sagrada Familia (which is still to be completed after umpteen years but is nonetheless spectacular) is well worth a visit, and the bus takes you past the Nou Camp as well if you wish to see that. Not much from the outside, in my opinion, but a mammoth stadium that is mightily impressive from the interior.

Other than that, I'd suggest an afternoon roaming Las Ramblas, the main strip in the city. It's always heaving with all sorts of folk, has some intriguing and bizarre markets in equal measure, street performers and con artists alike.

The marina is nice of an evening. Some excellent restaurants and pretty pleasant to stroll around.

Awesome, thanks for the feedback guys.  

I can recall a story my uncle told me about once when he was on an open air bus tour in Barcelona and he was taking in the sights and really enjoying it until he took a tennis ball to the head, still makes me laugh now.  

I'm really looking forward to it.  It's one of those cities I've wanted to go to for a long time but just never got round to doing it.

Champagne could you part with some local knowledge seen as though you used to live there?  Sites to see?  Off the beaten track geographical gems?

Il Gialloblu wrote:

Champagne_Socialist wrote:I used to live in Barcelona.

Interesting statement C_S but not sure it helped the OP!

The marina is really nice too, the beach was man made for the '92 Olympics. I went on a stag do so didn't see many of the sights other than a brief walk through the gothic quarter which was stunning. Ended up in a club called Razmatazz (after the Pulp song as Jarvis Cocker used to dj there). When we got their at 1.30am it was dead and it just looked like some blacked out warehouse. By 2.00am it was rammed though and had a brilliant night. Hadn't closed by the time we left at 5.30am. You might want to save that til after the run though! The best man organised the trip but hadn't officially booked our accommodation! Not really sure how he hadn't wondered what all that money was doing in his account! We got a quality hotel in the end though for not much more than we were going to pay for the hostel. It was during the 2010 world cup and we got on with all the locals watching the games together. Great place and would love to go back to see it properly.