Gaudí by ten, tapas by two, a boat by Thursday.
Which Alhambra ticket actually gets you inside the Nasrid palaces. What a catamaran day out of Palma costs. Whether Toledo or Segovia is the better day away from Madrid. Reviews of every tour you can book in Spain.
Gaudí, the Nasrid palaces, a deck off Palma, flamenco after dark.
The four bookings a first trip through Spain hangs off, what each one costs, and the thing to know before you click.
- 01The first morningSagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideThe nave lights up when the sun swings west, so the late-afternoon slot beats the early one. Audio guide included; the towers are sold separately.
02Book this one nowAlhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsThe Nasrid palaces admit a fixed number every half hour, months ahead in summer. A guided ticket is the version that comes with the slot already held.
03The day on deck5-Hour Catamaran Cruise with Lunch & SwimFive hours out of Palma with lunch and a swim stop. The one splurge the rest of the Mallorca week gets planned around.
04The eveningLive Flamenco Dancing Show Ticket at the TheaterSeville dances at ten, not at eight. A theatre seat is the version you can book without a Spanish phone number.
Sagrada Família, Alhambra, Alcázar: the tickets that go first.
The whole Spanish catalogue →More travellers book these than anything else in the country, and each one earns the slot for a different reason.
1
Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guide
Review of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia entry ticket with audio guide, tower options, practical tips, timing advice, value, and honest drawbacks.
From · $39
Read our 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
Tour Bernabéu Entry Ticket
from $41
7
Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets
from $64
8
Park Guell Guided Tour with Skip The Line Entry
from $31
Catalonia, Castile, Andalusia, the Canaries: pick your Spain.
Gaudí’s Barcelona, three world museums in Madrid, the Andalusian triangle of Seville, Granada and Córdoba, and two archipelagos that keep their own weather. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Spain has two seas and an ocean. Choose which one you spend the day on.
Catamarans out of Palma and Barcelona, whale boats off the south Tenerife coast, kayaks into Costa Brava coves that have no road. Three kinds of day afloat, what it costs to board each, and which coast it belongs to.
Seville first, then ninety minutes to Córdoba and Granada.
Everything in Seville →
Seville is flat, walkable and merciless in August. Córdoba and Granada are both a short train away, which makes Andalusia one base and three sets of tickets, each with its own way of going wrong.
Alcázar alone, or the pass with the cathedral
The Alcázar sells a plain timed ticket and a combined one that adds the cathedral and the Giralda climb. Take the combination only if you are staying two nights; the palace on its own is a comfortable morning.
The Alhambra, and the half-hour that matters
A general ticket lets you into the grounds; only a Nasrid-palace slot lets you into the rooms everybody came for. The name on the ticket is checked at the door, so buy it in the name you travel under.
A tablao seat, not a theatre balcony
The small rooms in Santa Cruz put you close enough to hear the floor. Later sittings draw a local crowd and a longer set; the eight o’clock house is the one built for coach parties.
Nothing in Spain starts before nine. Book the evening separately.
A tablao in Seville where the boards are closer than the stage, a rooftop over the Gran Vía, a vermouth crawl through the Gothic Quarter that ends at a table nobody wants to leave. The night here is its own excursion, not the leftovers of the day.
Tapas in Seville, paella in Valencia, pintxos in Bilbao.
Nobody in this country eats a bad lunch by accident, but the good ones are booked. Take the market walk before the heat lands, the rice class that ends as the meal, the crawl that finally explains why dinner waits until ten.
Half of Spain costs less than the taxi in from the airport.
Every tour on the site sorted by price. Entry tickets start at pocket money; the boat days, the private guides and the long lunches are where a budget actually goes.
Museum and monument entry, old-town walks, a flamenco seat, the short harbour cruises.
- 1Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio Guidefrom $39
- 2Park Güell Admission Ticketfrom $25
- 3Royal Alcázar Entry Ticketfrom $23
The full days: catamarans out of Palma, Caminito del Rey with transport, Toledo and Segovia by coach.
Private guides, chartered sailing, diving courses and the once-a-trip meal that earns it.
The Nasrid palaces, a mosque with a cathedral inside it, and a path bolted to a gorge.
Cathedrals and beach bars run the length of the Mediterranean. Muqarnas ceilings, a forest of red-and-white arches and a metre-wide walkway a hundred metres above a river do not.
The Nasrid Palaces
The last emirs of Granada built rooms out of plaster, water and arithmetic: honeycomb vaults that hold no weight, walls carved with the same phrase ten thousand times, a courtyard where twelve stone lions still tell the hour. Entry runs in half-hour bands and the palaces empty as fast as they fill, which is why the ticket, not the visit, is the hard part.
- 1Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 19,801 reviews
- 2Alhambra and Nasrid Palaces Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 15,130 reviews
- 3Alhambra & Generalife Fast-Track Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 8,313 reviews
The Mosque-Cathedral
Eight hundred columns of jasper and granite carry double horseshoe arches in red brick and white stone, and somewhere in the middle of them a Renaissance cathedral was dropped straight through the roof. Nothing else in Europe reads like it. Go at opening: the first hour is free of groups and the arches still catch low light.
- 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
A metre-wide walkway pinned to the wall of a limestone gorge a hundred metres above the Guadalhorce, built for hydroelectric workers in 1905 and left to rot for eighty years. The rebuilt route runs one way, north to south, with a hard cap on numbers and a closure any time the wind gets up.
- 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
Four tickets in Spain that sell out before you land.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed bands, name checks and a walkway with a daily cap that takes no interest in when your flight gets in.
- 01Alhambra & Nasrid Palaces Tour with TicketsThe Nasrid palaces admit a fixed number every half hour, and the name on the ticket is checked against your passport at the door.
- 02Sagrada Familia Entry Ticket with Audio GuideEntry runs on timed slots and the tower lifts are sold separately. Weekend bands go weeks out in summer.
- 03Caminito del Rey Guided Tour with TransportationOne-way, hard daily cap, and it shuts outright when the wind picks up in the gorge.
- 04Park Güell Admission TicketThe Monumental Zone caps visitors per half-hour band. Turn up without one and you are on the free side of the fence.
Two archipelagos, and the boats that make them worth the flight.
The Canaries run summer all year: pilot whales a mile off the Tenerife coast, a volcano you can drive most of the way up, black sand that stays warm past sunset. The Balearics do the other thing: calas you reach by hull, a cathedral on the harbour wall, and a lunch that runs until four.
Every Tenerife day out →
Seville at three in July is not a plan. Book around it.
Inland Andalusia clears forty degrees most summer afternoons and the old towns empty until six. The answer is the same in every city: put the walking and the monuments early, then go somewhere with thick walls. Galleries, cellars, a hammam, and a table you are in no hurry to leave.
- 1Prado Museum Entry Ticketfrom $21
- 2FC Barcelona Museum “Barça Immersive Tour” Ticketfrom $35
- 3Reina Sofía Museum Entrance Ticketfrom $14
By place: mainland, coast and islands
By kind of day: ticket, boat, table or road
Down the middle: Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo, Seville, Granada.
Montserrat
ToledoLatest from Barcelona, Andalusia and the islands.
The rest of the new ones →
Historic Gibraltar Rock and St Michael’s Cave Tour from Seville
Read our review →
Gibraltar with St Michael Caves Guided Tour from Costa del Sol
Read our review →
Jewish Quarter and Mosque-Cathedral Guided Tour
Read our review →
Hammam Al Ándalus Entry Ticket w/Optional Massage
Read our review →
Madrid Countryside Wineries Guided Tour with Wine Tasting
Read our review →
Ribera del Duero Wineries Guided Tour & Wine Tasting from Madrid
Read our review →
Jet Ski Guided Tour with Optional Photo Service
Read our review →
