24 Hours in Barcelona: What We Did Wrong, Barcelona, Spain

If you want to see Barcelona in just one day, learn from our mistakes first! Barcelona is one of Europe’s most exciting cities - a vibrant mix of Gaudí’s colourful architecture, beaches, tapas bars, and world-class football. But with only 24 hours to explore, it’s easy to waste precious time if you don’t plan ahead.

In this guide, I’ll share what went wrong on our whirlwind visit (so you don’t repeat it!) and my tips for making the most of even the shortest trip to Barcelona.

Hopefully if you are visiting this amazing city, then you will have longer than 24 hours in Barcelona. If you only have a small window of time, this guide gives you highlights of places to see and a few tips of how to plan a short trip.

We absolutely love Barcelona; the architecture, vibe and energy is just incredible and there’s so much to see and do from city sightseeing, admiring works by Gaudi, watching one of the best football teams in the world at their home stadium, to drinking cocktails on the beach.

We have been to Barcelona a few times, including a week for our honeymoon 22 years ago and a weekend to watch Barcelona football team play.

This quick stop in Barcelona was actually a tag-on at the end of a week in Menorca. Direct flights back from Menorca to the UK were really expensive, so we decided to fly home via Barcelona to save money (see my blog: Menorca in October). ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).