Day trips from Barcelona

Barcelona's day trips sort themselves by one number: how long you sit in a car or a train. Montserrat, the Penedès cellars and Sitges are inside seventy minutes and have a train. Girona, the Costa Brava, Tarragona and Figueres are ninety minutes or more, and for the coast there is no train at all.

The train ring

Montserrat is the day trip everybody should do and half do not. The R5 train from Plaça d'Espanya takes an hour to the foot of the mountain, then the rack railway or the cable car goes up. What a tour adds is the timing, the pickup and, on the better ones, a walk along the ridge or a cellar on the way back. If you only want the monastery, take the train and buy the combined ticket at the station. If you want a hike and a winery in the same day, take a tour.

Sitges is thirty-five minutes by train from Sants and a beach afternoon with a pretty old town. Colònia Güell is twenty-five minutes on the suburban line and has Gaudí's crypt, the building the Sagrada Família was rehearsed in, with no queue. The Penedès cellars are fifty minutes west and the cava houses run their own tours, but the 4x4 vineyard days are what people book.

The car ring

The Costa Brava starts an hour and a half north and it is coves, not beaches. Tossa de Mar, Calella de Palafrugell and the paths between them are the reason to go, and the kayak-and-snorkel days from Barcelona are the most booked thing on this page after Montserrat because they solve the transport. A hire car does it too, and parking in Tossa in August is why people book instead.

Girona has a fast train, forty minutes, and does not need a tour on its own. The tours combine it with the coast or with Figueres, and that combination does need wheels. Tarragona is an hour south by train, a Roman amphitheatre by the sea, and is usually paired with Sitges.

The long ring

Figueres is ninety minutes north for the Dalí theatre-museum, and Cadaqués, where he lived, is another hour beyond it on a mountain road. Andorra is three hours and the "three countries in one day" tours spend most of the day in the van. Both are real destinations and both are at the edge of what a day trip should be.

Booking rules for day trips

Book the Costa Brava kayak days a week ahead in summer, because the groups are small. Book nothing for Montserrat except the tour itself, the mountain does not sell out. Read what the price includes: some Montserrat tours include the rack railway and the basilica, some add them at the ticket office, and the reviews that complain are usually about this.