A guided bike tour is a great way to quickly get to know a new city. For our visit to Barcelona we used Baja Bikes to find a bike tour that suited our needs and ended up going with Green Bikes.
Disclosure: we joined this bike tour free of charge in exchange for this post. Note that we still gave our honest opinion about our experience.
Booking a bike tour through Baja Bikes
Baja Bikes selected the best bike tours in Barcelona (among other cities), which you can easily and safely book through their website. Browse through the different options and choose the bicycle tour that best suits your needs.
In Barcelona you can go do a highlights bike tour, combine it with a tapas tour, or bike up Montjuïc for a panorama tour. Are you a soccer fan? There’s a bike tour including Camp Nou as well. Something for everyone! Check them all out on the Baja Bikes website.
We went with the highlights bike tour, which we booked for our first day in Barcelona. That way we would start our visit learning a bit about the city and quickly have an overview of its must see places. Bonus: ask the local guide for some recommendations for the rest of your visit!
The highlights bike tour with Green Bikes
Baja Bikes is a booking intermediary. The actual tour we booked was organised by Green Bikes. The email with your booking confirmation has this info. We booked the Dutch highlights tour, but they offer the same tour in English as well.
The tour
We met up with our guide Merijn in front of the Green Bikes Shop. It was December, so there were just 4 of us (not counting Merijn), instead of the usual 14 in summer.
We got our 3-speed bicycles and hopped on, heading to a spot from where we could see Port Vell, the old marina, and the column with Columbus' statue on top. The perfect spot for a short history lesson.
From there we biked through some of the most popular neighbourhoods in Barcelona, like L’Eixample, with the fancy shopping street and couple of Gaudí’s houses, El Raval, with the Museum of Contemporary Art, and El Born, a small but fun part of the city with lots of restaurants and boutiques.
Merijn showed us some hidden spots as well, like the Old Hospital de la Santa Creu, paired with a lot of interesting facts about these places.
It wouldn’t surprise you that we also stopped at Barcelona’s main attractions: the Sagrada Familia, the Arc de Triomf, and the Ciutadella Park with its impressive fountain.
Our guide Merijn
Merijn is a very enthusiastic guide, who kept things interactive throughout the tour by quizzing us a bit about our knowledge of Barcelona. He himself is very knowledgeable and happy to answer any questions, or give tips for the rest of your time in the city.
He started out asking if we had any particular interests or preferences about what to see. We didn’t, but appreciated him asking. So if you’re a history geek or architecture enthusiast for example, let your guide know!
Biking in Barcelona
Barcelona is a well-equipped city to explore by bike. Only in the last couple of years though, when they started adding bike lines. There are about 300 km (~ 186 miles) of bike lanes now and still growing.
Since they are such a recent addition it does mean that the bike lanes are all over the place: left, right, on the sidewalk, or in the middle of the street. So you have to pay attention, but overall they provide a safe network to explore Barcelona.
Practical info
The Barcelona highlights bike tour with Green Bikes takes about 3 hours and costs €27.50 (~ $30.75) per adult. You can book this tour through the Baja Bikes website.
The morning tour starts at 10:30 or 11:00, depending on the language you prefer, English, Dutch or German. They also offer an afternoon tour at 14:30 in Dutch, but only from April to September.
During the morning tour, you’ll have a moment to go buy a bite to eat and something to drink. We enjoyed it standing, while admiring the Sagrada Familia and listening to Merijn sharing his knowledge about this extraordinary work in progress.
This highlights tour we joined is overall pretty flat, you won’t be biking yourself sweaty. I had no trouble to keep up being almost 6 months pregnant at the time.
Bike rental, more precisely a 3-speed city bike, is included in the tour price. For a surcharge of €15 you can upgrade to an e-bike. They also have child bikes, child seats, helmets, and tandem bikes available.
This is not a private bike tour. Expect a group of maximum 14 people in high season, and smaller groups of 4 to 6 in low season. Note that there must be at least 2 participants for the tour to take place at this price rate.
We had a great experience with Baja Bikes, the booking intermediary, and Green Bikes, the bike tour provider. This Barcelona highlights bike tour was a wonderful and informative start of our city trip and we can definitely recommend it!
Like it? Pin it!
Did you find this post helpful? Help us spread the word by sharing this post or pinning the following image.
