For a while now, I have had an urge to go to Spain; I want to see the masterpieces of my college art history days at The Prado in Madrid, and I want to see the architecture of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona. I have long had an appreciation for the act of improvisation when taking day trips here locally; I would just go somewhere without specific goals and more often than not, found myself in unexpected adventures that made the day trips fun. But for an international trip, flying around the globe, and visiting a new country with a language I don’t speak, I figured I should do some planning for a change and try to insure that I make the most of it.
I was last in Europe in 2012, when I went to Paris with my (now ex) wife who had a business trip; part of that trip planning was wrapped around her work requirements. The last time I went to Europe completely on my own was in the early 1990s, when I went solo to Italy and visited Rome, Florence, Venice and the Cinque Terre. And when you think about it, planning a trip in the early 1990s, there was no Google, no Trip Advisor; the World Wide Web was released into the public domain in April of 1993, and I certainly wasn’t on the cutting edge to utilize whatever was even there at that early stage. Granted, I’ve planned plenty of solo trips domestically in the past seven years since my divorce, so it’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m just explaining my mindset and perhaps the idea that I put self-imposed pressure on myself to do this right.
So what did I do? I started “old school,” with some Fodor’s Travel Guides from the library. I chose this as a starting point because there’s countless number of websites with travel advice and I find it a bit overwhelming – and not really sure who to trust – so I wanted a consolidated overview and started taking notes of things that interested me from the Fodor’s Guides. I set up a folder in Dropbox so that I could start collecting info and save it in a centralized place.
As I was collecting info on places I definitely wanted to visit, it became apparent that the crowd-control measures that came into play during the COVID pandemic are pretty much standard procedure these days. By this I mean that getting advance tickets for any particular destination (art museum, architectural tour, etc.) involved a timed-entry ticket. I had read from numerous sources that some popular locations (The Prado, Park Güell, Sagrada Familia, and so on) might easily sell out on any given day and become unavailable unless one had advance tickets. There’s also the issue of an advance ticket allowing one to bypass the long lines that come from people who just show up hoping to get in, so it seemed to be a no-brainer to get advance tickets whenever possible. But when everything is timed-entry, how does a first-time visitor to a city know how much time one needs at any particular site, how much time it takes to get to the next site, how to schedule a day of time-entry tickets?
The answer often suggested was to spread things out, don’t try to overschedule, and allow oneself time to free-form explore in-between timed-ticket destinations. I came up with a printed calendar covering the 8 days I would be in Spain, and started to draft a plan. Some museums are closed on Mondays, some destinations had standard day hours, with others open later into the evening – one had to look them all up, to be on the safe side – and start to see how the puzzle pieces would fit together.
After my initial research, I came up with a list of “must-see” locations in Madrid and Barcelona. I also kept reading about Toledo as a should-not-miss day trip from Madrid, so my research evolved into this as my plan: fly into Madrid, have two full days there; take a day trip to Toledo, come back and have two more days in Madrid. Then, take the train to Barcelona and have three days there. My general thought was there is a lot of art I want to see in Madrid, and a lot of Gaudi architecture I want to see in Barcelona, and that informed my allotment of days.
Now, to get more specific, here’s the list of must-see sites that I came up with in Madrid, copied over from my pre-trip notes:
- The Prado – hours, Mon – Sat, 10am – 8pm (free from 6-8pm)
- Reina Sofia – Picasso’s Guernica, along with Dali, Miro, Tapies, etc. Hours: closed on Tuesdays! Mon, Wed-Sat: 10am – 9pm (free from 7-9pm)
- Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza – paintings from Middle Ages to 20th Century. Hours: Tues-Sun, 10am-7pm (free hours are only on Mondays)
- Palacio Real (Royal Palace) – Palace and garden hours: Mon-Sat, 10am – 7pm (free entrance from 5pm – 7pm). Make sure to visit the neighborhood
- Puerta del Sol
- Plaza Mayor
- Plaza de Oriente
- Parque de El Retiro
- El Rastro Flea Market and La Latina neighborhood
- Lavapies – street art hotspot of Madrid
- Gran Via
- Fuenta del Angel Caito – devil sculpture in El Retiro
- San Antonio de la Florida – tomb of Goya and his incredible murals and ceiling art
I didn’t make a specific list for Toledo, as I knew it would just be one day and I would just try to see as much as I could. I knew the Santa Iglesia Catedral Primada de Toledo was a definite, as it was described as “… one of the most impressive structures in all of Spain.” And Toledo as a one-time home to El Greco, I knew I wanted to see his paintings wherever they were located. But on to Barcelona, and this developed as my must see list:
- Antoni Gaudi’s Basilica de la Sagrada Familia
- Gaudi’s Park Güell
- Museu Picasso
- Gaudi’s Palau Güell – off the lower La Rambla – “don’t miss it” – at least see the outside
- Fundació Joan Miró
- Gracia neighborhood
- Gran de Gràcia
- Casa Vicens (Gaudi)
- La Rambla – famous street
- Carrer Petritxol – street from 15th C. with art galleries and chocolate
- Mercat de Boqueria
- Barri Gotic
- Eixample – area and street with 2 Gaudi buildings, La Pedrera and Casa Batllo
Read about my next stage of planning for my trip to Spain and which apps, websites, and YouTube channels were the most helpful in getting all of the details figured out.