Spain runs on timed tickets. Here is what to book first.
Which Alhambra ticket actually gets you inside the Nasrid Palaces. What a catamaran day off Mallorca costs. Reviews of every tour and ticket you can book in Spain.
Gaudí, the Nasrid Palaces, a Seville stage, a boat off Tenerife.
The four reservations a first Spanish trip is built around. What each costs, and what the travellers who booked it say afterwards.
01Barcelona, day oneSagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideTimed entry to the basilica with the audio guide. Take an afternoon slot and the west windows do the work.
02Granada, booked earlyAlhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsThe Nasrid Palaces run on a half-hour slot and sell out weeks ahead. This one carries the ticket with it.
03Seville, after darkLive Flamenco Dancing Show Ticket at the TheaterA proper tablao rather than a dinner show. An hour of dancing, close enough to hear the floor.
04Tenerife, on the waterEco-Yacht Whale and Dolphin Watching and SwimmingPilot whales off the south coast on a boat that cuts the engine and waits. Cheapest good day in this list.
Six cities that each hold a week, and the best day out in each.
Barcelona for Gaudí and the Boqueria, Madrid for the Prado and a lunch that starts at three, Seville for flamenco and the Alcázar, Granada for the Alhambra, Tenerife and Mallorca for everything the mainland cannot do.
Four Spanish reservations that close before you land.
Most of a Spanish week can be decided over breakfast. These four cannot. Each runs on a capped half-hour slot, and in summer the good times are gone a fortnight out.
- 01Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsEntry to the Nasrid Palaces is stamped with a half-hour slot and the daily cap is small. Miss it by ten minutes and the palaces are gone for the day.
- 02Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideTimed entry, and the tower lifts are a separate booking that closes in high wind. Late afternoon is when the stained glass earns the ticket.
- 03Park Güell Admission TicketOnly the Monumental Zone is ticketed, at a fixed number of people per half hour. The free park around it is not the bit with the mosaic bench.
- 04Royal Alcázar Entry TicketSeville sells a capped number of slots a day for the Royal Alcázar and the queue outside is for people who did not buy one.
Catamaran day, sunset sail, or out to the whales. Pick a deck.
Spain has more coast than anywhere else in western Europe and the best hours of a hot week are spent off it. Three kinds of day on the water, what boarding each one costs, and which coast it belongs to.
Barcelona: book Gaudí first, then walk everything else.
Everything in Barcelona →
Two buildings carry the city and both are ticketed by the half hour. Around them sits a flat, walkable old town, a market that opens at eight and a beach at the end of the metro line. These three take more travellers than anything else here.
Plain ticket, or a guide on the facades
The audio ticket gets you in and lets you sit. A guide is worth it for the Nativity facade, where every figure is a decision Gaudí argued about. Tower lifts close when it blows.
Park Güell, and which part is ticketed
The mosaic terrace and the gatehouses sit inside the paid Monumental Zone; the pine woods above it are free and worth the extra half hour. Arrive on the early side of your slot.
Boqueria first, then the small bars
Through the market while the fishmongers are still shouting, then a run of counters in El Born and Gràcia where vermouth is poured from the barrel and nobody hurries you out.
The Spanish days out travellers take first.
Every Spanish review we have written →What fills up across the whole country, from a $12 cathedral ticket to a full day on deck, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
Enter Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia at a booked time and explore Gaudí’s unfinished basilica at your own pace. Your phone-based audio guide explains the facades, interior, museum, and construction story, with augmented reality features available in the app. Select a Passion or Nativity Tower visit if you want narrow stairs and higher views.
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
24 or 48-Hour Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour
from $39
7
Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets
from $64
8
Park Guell Guided Tour with Skip The Line Entry
from $31
Tapas counters, bodega cellars, and a paella cooked properly.
Eating is the one thing a Spanish city will not let you rush. Book the market walk before the heat, the paella class that ends as lunch, the bodega tasting that finally explains sherry.
The Balearics and the Canaries are a separate holiday.
Mallorca has sea caves under the road to Porto Cristo and a cathedral that throws colour across its own floor. Ibiza has a coast best seen from a hull. Tenerife has a volcano you ride a cable car up and pilot whales in the channel below it.
Every island day out →
The real price of a day out in Spain.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good share of the best Spanish days cost less than the dinner you will have afterwards.
Cathedral and palace tickets, old-town walks, tapas crawls and the short boat hops out of the marinas.
- 1Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guidefrom $39
- 2Park Güell Admission Ticketfrom $25
- 3Royal Alcázar Entry Ticketfrom $23
Full days: the Alhambra with a guide, Caminito del Rey with transport, catamarans with lunch on board.
Private guides, chartered sailing days and the one splurge a trip can carry.
Three things that happen in Spain and nowhere else.
Beaches and old towns run all round the Mediterranean. A tablao at midnight, a walkway bolted to a gorge wall, and a mosque with a cathedral built inside it do not.
A tablao, not a dinner show
Flamenco is not a folk performance here, it is a working art form with a bad temper. A tablao seats forty people at most, starts late, and runs on whatever the singer decides the night needs. You sit close enough to hear the boards flex and the guitarist counting under his breath. Seville, Jerez and Granada each keep their own style, and the crowd knows the difference.
- 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
Caminito del Rey
A metre-wide boardwalk pinned to the side of the El Chorro gorge, a hundred metres above the river, built for hydroelectric workers in 1905 and left to rot for decades. The rebuilt walk runs one way only, north to south, with a set number of tickets a day and a shuttle bus at each end. Three hours, no scrambling, and a glass floor panel most people cross quickly.
- 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
- 3Caminito del Rey: Entry Ticket and Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 8,149 reviews
The Mosque-Cathedral
Eight hundred and fifty striped arches on recycled Roman columns, and a full Renaissance cathedral dropped into the middle of them in the sixteenth century. Charles V is said to have regretted allowing it. Go in the first hour, when the light comes in sideways through the eastern doors and the forest of arches reads as one continuous room.
- 1Skip-the-Ticket-Line Mosque-Cathedral Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 9,634 reviews
- 2Cordoba Mosque-Cathedral: Skip-the-Line Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 6,610 reviews
- 3Mosque-Cathedral E-Ticket with Audio Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 2,124 reviews
Seville in August is a planning problem, not a write-off.
Inland Andalusia and the Meseta cook from one until six. The answer is the local one: move early, eat late, and spend the worst three hours underground, in a gallery, on the water or behind a thick wall. The coast and the islands run ten degrees cooler.
By place — mainland, Balearics, Canaries
By kind of day — ticket, table, deck or trail
Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Granada: the run most first trips make.
Montserrat
ToledoThe newest Spanish reviews.
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Food and Wine Small Group Tour from Barcelona – Maximum 8 people
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Spanish Wine and Tapas Tour in a Local Neighborhood in Barcelona
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Costa Brava & Medieval Village Tour with Lunch
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Barcelona Sagrada Familia and Guell Park drink and tapa
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Combo: Skip the Line Sagrada Familia & Park Guell Guided Tour
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MNAC Barcelona: National Art Museum of Catalonia Admission Ticket
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Palau de la Musica Catalana Admission Ticket with Audioguide
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Best of Barcelona Guided Tour with Port or Hotel Pick up
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