Day Trips from Barcelona

Day trips are the best break from Barcelona.

Most travellers do Montserrat, an hour out by FGC train and rack railway from Plaça Espanya. Beyond it there’s plenty more. The Dalí trail through Figueres and Cadaqués. Medieval Girona on the AVE in under forty minutes. The cove towns of the Costa Brava. The Pyrenean microstate of Andorra. The pre-Pyrenees villages around Besalú. PortAventura down the coast at Salou.

These are the best day trips from Barcelona we’d send a friend on, listed from quickest to longest. Catalonia stretches a hundred kilometres in every direction north and south of Barcelona, and each compass point opens to a different kind of day out.

Visit the mountain monastery at Montserrat

Montserrat is the half-day Barcelona almost demands you do. The serrated massif rises straight out of the Catalan plain in nine sandstone peaks, and the Benedictine monastery sits on a ledge two-thirds of the way up.

Take the FGC R5 from Plaça Espanya to Monistrol and switch onto the Cremallera rack train for the 15-minute climb up to the basilica platform on a cogged track that rises straight up a near-vertical face.

Two landmarks anchor a visit inside the monastery.

• La Moreneta. The dark Madonna behind the altar in polychrome wood almost black with age, the most revered artefact in all of Catalonia.
• The Escolania boys’ choir. Sings at 13:00 Monday to Friday in term time, one of the oldest choir schools in Europe and founded as part of the monastery school in the 13th century.

Hike up to Sant Jeroni from the upper funicular if the legs and the weather hold for the climb to the 1,236-metre summit and the panoramic back over Barcelona.

Take the family to PortAventura

If you’re travelling with kids, this is the day. Spain’s biggest theme park sits an hour and a quarter south of Barcelona on the Renfe regional line from Sants, six themed worlds plus the Ferrari Land annex bolted on next door.

Each world has its own character.

• Shambhala in the China world. The headline drop coaster.
• SésamoAventura. The under-eights zone.
• Mediterrània. The fishing-village entrance with calmer rides for grandparents.
• Ferrari Land. Red Force is the headline ride. A 112-metre vertical drop, 0 to 180 km/h in five seconds.

Ferrari Land is ticketed separately. The combo pass covers both and the two parks share an entrance plaza, so you can swap between them on foot in a few minutes.

Follow the Dalí trail to Figueres, Cadaqués, and Port Lligat

Three places, one man’s obsession.

Figueres

Figueres is where Salvador Dalí was born and where he chose to be buried. The Teatre-Museu Dalí sits inside the shell of the town’s old theatre and Dalí designed the whole rebuild himself. He’s interred under the floor. You walk over him. The museum is a Dalí piece more than a gallery: glass eggs on the roof and a giraffe at every turn.

Cadaqués

From Figueres it’s an hour east to Cadaqués through the cork-oak country of the Empordà, the whitewashed village where Dalí kept his summer place for decades. The drive over the Cap de Creus headland is the cinematic stretch. Cadaqués itself stays small and quiet. Picasso visited. Dalí lived.

Port Lligat

Port Lligat is fifteen minutes’ walk from the Cadaqués waterfront around the next cove. The house is a string of fishermen’s cottages that Dalí bought one by one over the years and joined together into a single rambling residence. Admission to the house is paid separately at the tour office on the day and not included in the headline ticket. Go for the lipstick-shaped sofa in the living room.

Full day is eleven hours by tour, three places no public transport links cleanly, return to Barcelona around 19:00.

Spend a day in medieval Girona

Girona is the smartest pick if you only have one day and you want a city.

An AVE from Sants drops you in the medieval centre in under forty minutes. The Onyar river houses are the postcard shot of Girona with their ochres and yellows reflected in the water below. Stand on the Eiffel-designed iron footbridge to take it.

Three landmarks anchor the walk.

• The Call. Settled before the 1492 expulsion. Stepped lanes wind up the hillside.
• The Banys Àrabs. A 12th-century bathhouse on the Roman pattern.
• The Passeig Arqueològic. A walk along the city walls with the view down over the cathedral.

Those cathedral steps are the Game of Thrones moment for anyone who wants one. Season 6 was shot across the Barri Vell with the cathedral and the steps standing in for King’s Landing.

Girona on the AVE makes a clean independent day if you only want the city. The bundled tour adds Pals, Calella de Palafrugell and Cabo Roig on the Costa Brava coast. It gets you the day’s two best things in one eleven-hour run.

Book the Girona and Costa Brava day trip →

Swim and lunch on the Costa Brava

Drive forty minutes north of Barcelona and the beaches turn rugged. Pine-lined cliffs, hidden coves, fortified seaside villages. More drama, fewer crowds north of August.

The day-trip version anchors on two stops. Marimurtra Botanical Gardens at Blanes sits on a clifftop above a private cove, with Mediterranean pines on switchbacks down to the water and a path to the sand below. Then Tossa de Mar for lunch and the swim.

Tossa de Mar is the medieval fortified village above the beach. The 12th-century Vila Vella walls climb the headland to the lighthouse and the curved bay opens below for the postcard shot of the day. Cobbled lanes inside run uphill to a ruined chapel. Lunch at one of the chiringuitos along the promenade is the right order of operations and the menu defaults to grilled fish and the local rosé in summer.

A standalone Costa Brava day runs ten hours with lunch included and the operators recommend a swim kit and a change of clothes for the cove at Blanes.

Cross two borders into Andorra and France

The passport-stamp collector’s day. Twelve hours total, three countries, one bus.

The route climbs north-west out of Catalonia through La Cerdanya, the high broad valley straddling the French border. The French stop is Mont-Louis. A Vauban star-fort on the French Pyrenees side, UNESCO listed for the same reason as Carcassonne. Far less visited.

From the French side it’s another hour into Andorra, the Pyrenean microstate with no airport and no railway between itself and the rest of Europe. The Spain-side border is a hand-wave. Andorra la Vella, the capital, sits in a narrow gorge between the peaks. The walking tour covers the old centre.

• Casa de la Vall. The medieval house that’s been the Andorran parliament since 1702.
• Sant Esteve church. A 12th-century parish church on the main square.
• Casa Felipó and Meritxell Avenue. The old town’s surviving stone houses and the shopping street that knits them together.
• A Dalí sculpture in Plaça Rotonda. The melting bronze clock he donated to the country.

The rest of the time is yours for the duty-free shopping strip.

There’s a variant that swaps Mont-Louis for a French thermal-spa town and runs the same length. Same novelty, fewer fortifications, a hot-water foot dip instead.

Bring the passport. They check at the French border.

Or book the three-countries variant with a spa town.

Wander three medieval villages in inland Catalonia

The day for travellers who’ve already done the icons and want the version of Catalonia most visitors miss.

Besalú

The headline stop. The 12th-century Romanesque bridge over the Fluvià is one of the most photographed in Catalonia, an angled stone arc cutting across the river. Cross it into the medieval centre. Jewish ritual bath (the mikveh), Romanesque monastery, the lot.

Rupit

The volcanic-country village an hour south-west of Besalú, perched on a basalt outcrop above the streambed. You cross to it on a wooden suspension bridge that bounces under your feet. Inside the village, the streets are paved with the same volcanic rock the houses are built from. Lunch happens in Rupit and runs at your own expense. Order botifarra amb mongetes (the Catalan sausage with white beans) in any of the village’s three or four restaurants.

Tavertet

A cliff-top village on the sandstone edge of the Collsacabra above the Sau reservoir. The drop off the back is a couple of hundred metres straight down. The Romanesque church sits at the edge.

Eleven-hour day, tour-only realistically. Three versions of medieval Catalonia in one route.

Which day trip should you pick?

The honest answer is: which one matches the trip you’re already on?

• First-timer with one free day: Montserrat. Five to six hours door to door, back in the city by mid-afternoon if you leave Plaça Espanya at 09:00.
• Art and lived-life completist: the Dalí trail. There’s nothing else like it.
• City lover who wants a break from Barcelona: Girona on the AVE, independently. Twenty minutes out, the whole evening back.
• Beach plus a real lunch: the Costa Brava run. Tossa de Mar version, with the swim.
• Passport stamp and a story for the trip home: Andorra and France.
• Quiet medieval Catalonia with no crowds: Besalú and the villages.
• Family with kids over eight: PortAventura, full park day.

FAQs