Bike Tour Barcelona: A Story…

My friends and I had been looking forward to our holiday in Barcelona for ages. We only had three in the city before we were going to finish our Spanish trip in Valencia. After a fair bit of discussion and reading online we decided the best way to see the city would be by bike as many forums were saying how cycle friendly the city is. Sean had done a bike tour in Prague and loved it so we typed in bike tour Barcelona into Google and had a look at the options. Near the top of the list was Free Bike Tour Barcelona. After reading some glowing Trip Advisor reviews we booked it for the following day.

At 1.45pm the following afternoon we went at Barceloneta metro station down by the beach and met our guide. She was a really charming Finnish girl called Noora. She had lived in Barcelona for years and had been working on the tours since the previous spring. We arrived a little early so there was a short wait for the rest of the group to arrive but Noora was very chatty asking where we are all from and how our holidays we going.

When everyone arrived, there were 14 of us in total we took a short walk to the Free Bike Tour Barcelona office. When we were there we were all given a bike which all had different names inscribed on them! I had Sophie, Sean had Jesse and Emily had Mary Poppins! When we all had our bikes we were lead to the first stop by Noora. It was a lovely route hugging the port Vell around to the Columbus Statue at the bottom of La Rambla. When we all arrived Noora found us some shade under a tree which was great because it was quite hot out! She gave us a brief introduction about Barcelona and the history of the city, then told us the story of Christopher Columbus. I had no idea that Columbus had started all his voyages from Barcelona, that it was the capital of Spain at the time, it was such an interesting account of, what turned out to be, a pretty unpleasant man! One thing that struck me right away was how well Noora engaged all of us in the group. Even though English wasn’t her first language she spoke very clearly and was very engaging and spoke very passionately about the subject.

After we finished there we went on a cycle lane down to a big colour face sculpture. We had seen it on the way down to Barceloneta metro and had no idea what it was but Noora filled us in on the blanks! It was made by Roy Licenstein and was commissioned for the Olympics. She told us a little about how much the Olympic games had done from the city promising to tell us more s the tour went on. Our next stop she took us on a back route through the Gothic area to the Cathedral. It was at this point I thought how thankful we were to have a guide showing us all this and these routes because we never would have found our way otherwise! The cathedral is so beautiful and there is a huge square in front of it where we stopped to listen to Noora’s speech. It was an extraordinary story about a girl in the 3rd century who rose up angainst the Romans who occupied Barcelona at the time, then her subsequent torture and death at the hands of the Romans and about how her life is the first evidence we have that Christianity had arrived in Spain and that is why the Cathedral is dedicated to her. It was such a moving tale I looked over to Emily at the end and there were tears in her eyes and mine as well!

When we left the cathedral we took another back route to get to the Arc De Triumph. We heard some fun facts about the Arc and other Arc de Triumphs around the world (the biggest one in the world is in North Korea I remember that!) And then the next stop was right next to the Arc which was Park Ciutadella. Cycling through the park was so lovely, there are lots a paths to cycle on then all of a sudden we were brought in front of the most beautiful fountain which were told is called ‘Cascada’ which means ‘Waterfall’ in Spanish. Noora told us the history of the park, why it was named so, which is a crazy story about it being a fortress and it being bombed from a mountainside!

After a little break and a wander around the park we took the next leg up to Segrada Familia, Gaudi’s famous church. It is incredibly overwhelming when you suddenly find yourself underneath that beautiful church, which from certain angles looks like a big sandcastle! Noora told us all about Gaudi and the building process which has been going fro over 100 years! We couldn’t go inside because you need to book your tickets online a day in advance but after we had been given a taster on bike tour Barcelona we all said then and there that were going to go back tomorrow to go and have a look inside! We all had a lot of questions about the church and Gaudi and I was very impressed as to Noora’s knowledge in answering even the most obscure questions!

After Segrada Familia we took a one long road with a bike path all the way down the middle to get to the Port Olimpic for our final stop. Here we heard about what the Olympics did for the city, I really had no idea how much the city changed because of the Olympic games! I don’t want to give away too many spoliers because you should hear them in person but the beaches in Barcelona are man made and all the sand is actually from the Sahara desert in Egypt! It was shipped over and the beaches were built for the Olympics!

When we left the Port it was a short cycle back to the bike office. Free Bike Tour Barcelona works on tips. When we were researching the tour we found other tours that charged 30 euros to sign up. On the Free Bike Tour we signed up for two euros and the tips were up to us. We all tipped 20 euros each because the tour was fantastic, Noora out guide was such a dear and took really good care of us all and we felt like she earned every penny! If you are looking for a great introduction to the city Free Bike Tour Barcelona is absolutely fantastic! Highly recommended!