The Alhambra sells out weeks ahead. The tapas bar never does.
Which Sagrada Família ticket takes you up the towers. How far ahead Granada really goes. What a day on a Costa Brava boat costs, and whether Seville in August is a mistake. Reviews of every tour you can book in Spain.
Four bookings a first trip to Spain is built around.
The ones that run on a printed half-hour or a boat timetable. What each costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The Barcelona morningSagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideEntry runs on a timed slot. Take an early one and the east windows are still throwing blue and green across the nave.
02The Granada dayAlhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsYour Nasrid Palaces entry is stamped with a half hour. Miss it and there is no second attempt that day.
03The Seville afternoonRoyal Alcázar Entry TicketUpstairs the Múdejar plasterwork runs unbroken room to room. Go at opening, before the courtyards fill.
04The day on the waterGirona & Costa Brava Small-Group Tour with Pickup from BarcelonaCoves an hour north of Barcelona with no road down to them. The day that talks everyone into coming back.
The four Spanish tickets you cannot buy at the door.
Most of this country can be settled over breakfast the same morning. These four run on daily caps and printed half-hours, and in summer they are gone long before your flight lands.
- 01Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsEntry to the Nasrid Palaces is stamped with a half-hour slot and the daily cap is real. High summer goes weeks ahead.
- 02Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideEvery ticket carries an entry time, and the tower lifts are sold separately in small batches that go first.
- 03Park Güell Admission TicketThe mosaics sit inside the monumental zone, which is capped by the half hour. The free part of the park is not the part people come for.
- 04Royal Alcázar Entry TicketThe Royal Alcázar limits how many people are inside at once, so the queue at the door moves at its own pace.
Spain sells you the same monument three different ways.
Plain entry, skip-the-line, or a guide who tells you what the stonework says. What separates them is the queue, the half-hour slot and whether anyone explains the building.
Six Spanish cities, and the day out each one is worth booking for.
Gaudí and a working port, a gallery city that eats at eleven, a Múdejar palace, a fortress on a hill with the Sierra Nevada behind it, a mosque with a cathedral inside, and a cathedral standing over the water.
The coves worth swimming in have no road down to them.
Costa Brava inlets an hour north of Barcelona, pilot whales that live year round off the south of Tenerife, a catamaran out of Palma with lunch cooked on deck. Spain keeps its best water well away from the car parks.
The Spanish days out that more travellers take than any other.
Every Spanish tour we have reviewed →What earns each of these its place, and what you actually get for the money.
1
Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
Visit Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia with timed entry and a multilingual audio guide, then explore Gaudí’s unfinished basilica at your own pace.
From · $39
Read the 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
Dinner starts at ten and the good flamenco starts later.
Tapas crawls through Seville and Granada, a paella class beside the Boqueria, sherry in Jerez and cava out in the Penedès. Book the room that holds forty people, not the arena show with the set menu.
Seville, Granada and Córdoba sit an hour apart and look nothing alike.
Everything in Andalusia →
Seville keeps the Múdejar palace and the flamenco rooms. Granada has the fortress on the hill and bars that still bring tapas free with the drink. Córdoba has the Mezquita, and patios that open to the street every May. One train line joins all three.
- 1Royal Alcázar Entry Ticketfrom $23
- 2Cathedral and La Giralda Entry Ticketfrom $20
- 3Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Ticketsfrom $64
Alcázar, cathedral, or the pair
The Alcázar is the one people fly for and it caps numbers at the door. The cathedral next to it holds the Giralda, which you climb by ramp rather than stairs because it was built for a man on horseback.
Whether you need the guide
The plain ticket gets you in. What it does not do is tell you that the walls are covered in poetry, or which of the courtyards was rebuilt by the Christians afterwards.
The Mezquita before the coaches
Eight hundred arches on columns older than the mosque itself, and a cathedral nave built straight up through the middle in the sixteenth century. It is quiet for the first hour and not after.
The Canaries hold their heat in January. The Balearics do not.
Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura sit off the coast of Africa and stay in the low twenties all winter. Mallorca, Menorca and Ibiza empty out after September and go quiet until Easter. Which set you want is decided by the month printed on your ticket.
- 1Siam Park Entry Ticketsfrom $52
- 2Eco-Yacht Whale and Dolphin Watching and Swimmingfrom $13
- 3Cathedral of Mallorca Skip-the-Line Entry Ticketfrom $12
What a day out in Spain actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what you pay. A good half of the country comes in under the price of a proper dinner in Barcelona.
Monument entries, old-town walks, a flamenco room and most of the tapas crawls.
- 1Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guidefrom $39
- 2Park Güell Admission Ticketfrom $25
- 3Royal Alcázar Entry Ticketfrom $23
The full days out: the Alhambra with a guide, Caminito del Rey, Montserrat, a catamaran with lunch.
Private guides, chartered boats and the once-a-trip blowout that earns it.
Three things that only happen in Spain.
Cathedrals and coastline turn up all over Europe. A mosque with a cathedral growing through it, a walkway bolted to a gorge wall, and a dance that counts to twelve do not.
The Mezquita of Córdoba
Row after row of red and white arches stand on columns the Romans and Visigoths cut first and the builders reused. When Córdoba changed hands in 1236 nobody pulled the mosque down. They raised a cathedral nave straight up through the centre of it and left the rest standing, so you walk out of one religion and into the other in about forty paces without going outside.
- 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
- 3Jewish Quarter, Mosque, and Alcázar Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 4,279 reviews
The Caminito del Rey
The original workers’ path up the Gaitanes gorge fell apart so badly that it was closed for years and people kept climbing in anyway. The replacement opened in 2015: a boardwalk a metre wide pinned to the rock face about a hundred metres above the river, walked in one direction only, helmet on, with a bus back to your car at the far end.
- 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
Flamenco in a room that holds forty
The compás counts to twelve with the stress landing in three places you would not put it, which is why the clapping sounds wrong until suddenly it does not. Seville and Granada keep the small rooms with no microphone and no set menu. The arena version with dinner included is a different art form wearing the same dress.
- 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
Seville hits forty degrees and the whole city goes indoors until six.
The shutters come down after lunch for a reason. Move the sightseeing into the first three hours of daylight, then spend the afternoon behind thick walls: a mosque, a gallery, a cellar, a cooking bench, a hammam. The streets refill around eight and stay busy until well past midnight.
- 1Prado Museum Entry Ticketfrom $21
- 2Reina Sofía Museum Entrance Ticketfrom $14
- 3Park Güell and Gaudí House Museum Entry Ticketfrom $33
By place, mainland and islands
By kind of day, ticket, boat, table or road
Madrid, Córdoba, Seville, Granada: the line almost everybody does first.
Toledo
CórdobaThe newest Spanish tour reviews.
Everything else just added →
Flamenco Show with Andalusian Dinner at La Cantaora
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Flamenco Show Entry Ticket with Drink & Artist Talk
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Unique Sunset Sailing Tour with Tapas & Open Bar
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From Costa del Sol or Malaga: Granada and Alhambra Tour
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