Trip report - Barcelona Escape, 15-18 May 2024

[Mathmagicland]

Bona dia! I have searched and cannot find a trip report for the Barcelona Escape, though I found several comments from folks who have booked it. So, I thought I’d do one. I did find a Spain trip report from 2018 or 2019, which started in Barcelona. Disney used to offer a Spain adventure with one day in Barcelona, but the last ones were in 2023.

This Barcelona Escape seems to remain popular for pre and post cruise with the Disney Mediterranean sailings; I’m here before a cruise. We did have two guests who booked the Escape as a stand alone trip; they flew in a couple of days early, then did the Escape, and flew back home. When I started to research Barcelona & things to do, I kept reading about the Barcelona crowds and long lines at most of the iconic sites. I decided the Disney adventure would be a better plan to easier visit the must-see sites with their private tours, guaranteed entrance, and/or priority access…and it was! More on this later.

So, here we go…

The Barcelona Escape is 4 days/3 nights. It does not include a visit to the Picasso Museum, which the Spain trip did, so if that is of interest then you’ll need to add time to do so. Some of the group did go there and said it was excellent.

The Escape does not offer adding pre or post night stays through Disney. However, since I booked a couple of pre-nights at the same hotel as the adventure, Disney did provide the airport meet & greet and transfers from the airport to the hotel. The Adventure started on a Wednesday; I flew in to arrive on Monday.

The goody box from Disney arrived about six weeks ahead of start date. It still contained the current gifts of the backpack, water bottles, and the orange luggage strap. There were no bag tags or printed luggage tags; then it clicked that luggage tags would not be needed as we were in the same hotel for the entire time. The daily trip pins are no longer mailed ahead of time, based on guest feedback from the last couple of years. However, the Adventure Insider pins, for return travelers with the number of trips taken, are included in the goody box.

Another difference to the escapes from the longer adventure trips - in the escape itinerary and the guidebook, each day doesn’t have a catchy name related to the day’s activities. The pins do have the catchy phrases, so I am not sure why those are not included on the itinerary descriptions.

The hotel for this trip is the Silken Gran Hotel Havana. The Disney greeter was at the airport and it was about a 40-minute ride to the hotel as we hit some evening traffic. I had booked the same room category Disney uses, and the hotel was able to coordinate the bookings so I could stay in the same room throughout my stay. This was pretty seamless; the only thing I needed to do was get my keycard rekeyed for the Disney stay dates on the morning my pre-nights stay ended.



Many of the buildings on street corners in Barcelona face out on a diagonal, this from the days of street cars in the city. My room looked out the front of the hotel, on this diagonal, so faced trees and felt very airy. Rooms on the sides of the hotel faced other buildings across the streets. Even with facing the intersection, I didn’t hear any traffic or crowd noises.




There were two complimentary bottles of water, which were replaced daily and was appreciated. The safe in the closet was nice and deep, plenty of room for a couple of laptops plus other items.





The room was nice. Being on the end of the front-facing rooms, I had a small angled hallway to get the bedroom area. It made the room feel bigger, and also meant I heard no noise from the hotel hallway.







There were L’Occitane toiletries and amenities in the bathroom.






The hotel is in a good location, close to a main shopping area and with several restaurants within walking distance. It has a breakfast buffet with hot and cold items, and serves dinner in the evenings. There is also a bar in the small lobby area with some seating. There is a small convenience store across the street. On the other side of the street & down a couple of storefronts is an Aldi, the European supermarket chain.

The hotel has several environmentally conscious features. Along with the larger bottles of toiletries, there was a wooden comb, paper laundry service bag, a wooden key card, and dimmed lighting in the hallways with motion detection that would brighten when someone walked out of their room or off the elevator. This did not mean we had dark hallways, as there is a central atrium with a skylight which provided enough natural light.




Barcelona is in Catalonia, and residents of this area are very proud of their Catalonia heritage. While everyone speaks Spanish, there is is also a separate Catalan language which is an official language here. It is different from Spanish; learning a few Catalan phrases goes a long way with the locals here.

I’ve booked a couple of tours for my pre-days, to see things outside of the Barcelona area not included with Disney. Tomorrow, I’m off to see medieval Catalonia!

 

[sayhello]

So cool! I really, really wish they'd had this Escape when I did my DCL/ABD Med cruise, but it wasn't offered yet. Looking forward to hearing about your experience!

The hotel looks lovely! And as side note, I really love how the safe opens up like a drawer so that you can see into it better. So much less likely to miss something in a corner...

Sayhello

 

[floribr1]

Your hotel looks wonderful! Looking forward to hearing more about your adventure.

 

[Mathmagicland]

So cool! I really, really wish they'd had this Escape when I did my DCL/ABD Med cruise, but it wasn't offered yet. Looking forward to hearing about your experience!

The hotel looks lovely! And as side note, I really love how the safe opens up like a drawer so that you can see into it better. So much less likely to miss something in a corner...

Sayhello

Thanks! I asked an Adventure rep about those imbedded trips they used to offer, as this question comes up here from time to time. I was told those likely won’t come back as they don’t want to overlap too much with their land tours. So I’m going to quit hoping to see them again…

Your hotel looks wonderful! Looking forward to hearing more about your adventure.

Thanks! It’s been a crazy week, I’m finally ready for the next post.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Adventure-eve day -

Today started with breakfast at the hotel. It is a buffet with lots of both hot and cold items. Since I wasn’t yet on the Adventure, it was not included in my room rate.












Today I have booked a tour that will go outside of Barcelona to some medieval villages in the mountains. We will also see a National forest. On the way out of town we passed a BMW dealership, which had this fun eye-catching display of a Mini Cooper parked on the side of a window.



As we drove out of the city, urban changes to countryside. We saw several of these old chimneys at what appeared to be random spots, so I asked about them. The greater Barcelona area was previously a leading industrial area with lots of factories. While most of the factories have been torn down, the chimneys were kept as a reminder and memory of that historic past.



First stop - Tavertet, a small village of 300 full-time residents in the mountains about an hour north of Barcelona. This village is popular for locals on the weekends as a place to escape crowds of Barcelona. It has 9 small lodging facilities, but today on a spring weekday we are the only visitors there. Even after just an evening in the busy city, it felt very quiet and special to be able to be here.




We stopped at the only small cafe that was open, and had traditional Catalan Pa Amb Tomaquet, or Bread with Tomato. They bring the ingredients to the table on a plate for you to make it up fresh. Take toasted bread, rub a clove of garlic on it, then rub it good with half a sliced tomato. Drizzle on some olive oil, sprinkle some salt, and enjoy! This turned up again premade at some of our Adventure meals, and the ingredients were also part of the hotel breakfast buffet, but it was never as good as what we had here because those did not include the garlic clove. I’m sorry, I neglected to take photos…I rarely remember the food pictures.


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[Mathmagicland]

Medieval villages continued -

There is a very old church here, the original parts of the structure going back to 1078 with Medieval construction.





All of these stones, done by hand, a bit uneven and very medieval. This church is still in use today,





They added on to the sanctuary many years later in a gothic style. This is not the best picture but shows the two styles in the one building.



The views from Tavertet of the surrounding hills and valleys were pretty.



Barcelona is experiencing several years of severe drought, boy does that sound familiar for those from California and the southwest. This one of a valley shows a dam with the water level so low, it is hard to see the water there. This shows how bad their drought situation is.



After Tavertet, we headed to another small medieval village of Rupit. This is the road we took, a beautiful drive on a narrow road through a beech forest.




And, it started to rain along the way. It ended up raining every day in Catalonia, but I couldn’t complain much as they really need the rain. This day was the worst for the rain as once it started it was a hard rain off and on for the rest of the day.

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[Mathmagicland]

Villages continued-

Our next stop was Rupit, considered one of the nicest medieval villages in Catalonia. It is visited by more tourists, as we saw some other travelers there.

We had just started walking in the town when the skies opened up and it started raining very hard. The cobblestone streets looked like rivers, there was so much water running down them. It was very difficult to walk, and the cobblestones were slippery, so I did not get any pictures here in because I couldn’t safely figure out how to multitask to hold the umbrella, try to walk without falling, and also take pictures. We decided to head back to the car, and I ended up with wet socks and shoes..not fun.

As we drove out of town, the worst of the rain paused for a while. The guide wanted to go check out a possible waterfall. Why not, we were already wet so let’s go! It was a bit of a hike off the road but the trail wasn’t too bad in most spots as the rain had soaked into the ground. Fortunately the rain held off for most of our hike. Here are some pics from this area, though we were at the top of the waterfall and the rocks were too slippery to get close to the edge to see all of it.










After Rupit, we headed to Fageda d’en Jorda, a nature reserve in Parc Naturel de la Zona Volcanica de la Garrotxa. This was a beautiful nature park area created from volcanic eruptions many years ago. Volcanoes in Spain, who knew? I didn’t.





And these moss-covered rocks reminded me of the Trolls in the movie Frozen.



We saw several small groups of red poppies along the country roads today. They reminded me of military Veterans, as the poppy is symbol of remembrance mostly in the UK but also in the US for their service going back to WWI.




We headed back to Barcelona, time to try to dry out my socks and shoes, and get ready for tomorrow.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Adventure day 1 -

Our Barcelona adventure will start this evening. We were able to check in this morning with the guides, who provided highlighted maps of the areas around the hotel to help folks find the main shopping streets as well as restaurants within walking distance of the hotel. We were also asked to pre-select our dinner choices for the first and third nights via link to a Google docs, which seems like an easier process for the guides than a several pieces of paper. We have the day free to explore on our own as the group will meet up tonight at 6pm for dinner.

Since I’ve got almost the entire day, I’m off for another tour outside of the city, this time to the south and Tarragona. What’s in Tarragona? Roman ruins, as the Roman Empire extended to most of the Spanish peninsula and some of the later Roman emperors were from Spain. Wait, aren’t we going to see Roman ruins in Rome and Naples? Yes…so, why did I book this tour? I did ask myself that, but decided to stay with it as I’d be seeing different things from my plans for Italy. I’m very glad I did, as it was very interesting and provided an unexpected foundation for some of the Adventure tour content.

On the drive south, we can see Monserrat in the far distance. The guide today encouraged me to take a picture, as this overall view is not possible when we will be visiting it later in the week.



First stop today is an old Roman stone quarry, where more than 2000 years ago blocks of stone were cut to make buildings, aqueducts, walls, etc. This is part of a UNESCO site and is one of the largest and best preserved Roman quarries. We saw less than a third of it; there are walking paths which go all around the perimeter. Here is a map at the entrance sign which shows how far back into the hills it extends. We saw the area on the right side of the quarry map.



The Romans left this pillar in the center of this area. Best estimate is the pillar is about 20-25 feet high, which gives an idea of depth of this quarry. Over time trees and vegetation have grown in the emptied quarry but it is still possible to try to imagine how many blocks of stone were taken from here.




We cannot see all the way to the back.



And we were able to get up close to some higher areas where blocks were cut out. From the cuts, it’s estimated the blocks were about 3-4 metres long, 2 metres high and 2 metres deep. It boggles the mind to think about these blocks being cut, hauled out, and transported all via manual tools and labor.



And here, we have a close up of an area in the far right of the photo above, where we can see a cut for another block was started but never finished.



Side note, there is a LOT of graffiti everywhere in the cities and along the roads. I’m describing it as respectful graffiti, for while most all of the Roman ruins we saw today were out in the open and easily accessible to anyone, there was not one drop of graffiti anywhere to be found on any of them. To me, it is as if these ruins are respected as an important part of the area history, not to be defaced.

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[Mathmagicland]

Tarragona continues -

On to our next stop, a double-arch Roman aqueduct, amazing good condition and still fully stretching across the ravine. We are able to walk all around both the bottom and the top. It is also open to walk across. Best guess is it is at least 50 feet high.














The curve of the aqueduct water flow sysfem feeding the water across is still there.






This one shows the aqueduct with the city skyline behind it.





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[Mathmagicland]

Tarragona continues-

We then headed into the city of Tarragona, older than Barcelona and an important sea port for the ancient Romans. From a model in a museum, this shows the context for some of the ruins we would see in this part of the city -



This is built from footings, walls, and structural elements that are found today. Exterior walls all around, back upper interior walled area is the original Roman temple site. Central larger interior walled section was administrative uses. The front long open rectangular area with the arches on the front was a Circus Maximus type area for chariot races, the racers would all enter from the left side and only the winner would exit out the single archway at the far right side.

Of the significant ruins available for viewing, there is not much - we see small sections of the left outer wall, part of the upper left wall, the tiled floor from a small temple structure visible in the center of the temple area, a few of the right front arches of the administrative area, and the lower left outer edge area of the chariot racing track. It took a few hours to walk and see all of this, and was hard to grasp how little we were seeing compared to how large this complex was when it was built.

City walls -





Note the carvings on some of the blocks, not graffiti but the marks of the ancient brick masons who built the wall. They would mark their work as they went along, to show how much they need to be paid.



I like the dichotomy of this picture - over 2000year old Roman wall, with an Amazon delivery vehicle parked in front. This also shows how the more modern buildings (“modern”being 1800s) are built around the ruins, and sometimes the ruins are incorporated into the newer structures.



This is the original Roman flooring from the small temple structure in the model above, still in use today as the altar of a church built on the site. The workmanship is beautiful.



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[Mathmagicland]

Taragonna continues -

This is the ruins of the chariot races area. We could walk both above and underground.







Note the modern buildings right across the street.












Across from this and along the coast is a Roman amphitheater



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[Mathmagicland]

Adventure day continued-

Time for our Adventure to begin! Our guides for this adventure are Alyssa with Disney, who has been guiding this adventure for many years, and local guide Carolina, who was born in Portugal and now lives in the region of Valencia which is south of Catalonia.

We met each other in a room at the hotel for introductions prior to leaving for dinner. Alyssa said there were …88… people signed up for this trip! Before you all stop breathing at the group size it was two groups of 44 adventurers. For our group of 44, about a third to half of the folks were on their first adventure. We have two kids in our group, girls I’d estimate to be around 10-11.

This Escape departure was very popular because it is running ahead of the 2024 D-V-C member sailing, so there was a lot of interest, thus the two groups. Alyssa explained the groups would be separate but parallel with some of the itinerary order switched up a bit at times as needed. The other group was housed at a different hotel in the city. We were never in the same place at the same time except for our group lunches and dinners, and even then we were seated in different areas of the restaurants.

We board the bus to head to our welcome dinner, at El Xalet de Montjuic. This restaurant is on a hill, with panoramic views of the city and beautiful gardens.



Anyone out there remember when Barcelona hosted the summer Olympics in 1992? Their swimming and diving events were held in a facility adjacent to our restaurant. These panoramic views over the entire city made for some very iconic photos of the diving athletes. Since those are copyright-protected, I can’t post the pictures. So, here’s a link that I’m hoping will work - to a Google search of Barcelona Olympics Diving Photos where you can see some of them. Alyssa walked around sharing a few of these amazing photos, which show the divers floating above the city during their dives.

People in Spain eat meals later, dinner is usually around 10:00pm per our local guide, so the restaurant opened just for Disney at 7:30pm. This is one of our pre-ordered meals, our choices were beef, fish, or vegetarian. The main course was preceded by several different types of tapas. I thought for sure I’d taken at least one picture of our dinner items, but I guess not…though I did get a picture of the sunset.



After dinner, we got our first Pin of the Day - Goofy as a matador. Considering bullfighting was outlawed in Catalonia as of 1 January 2012, I thought pin design was an odd choice.



Back to the hotel, to get rested for our first full Disney day tomorrow.

 

[sayhello]

That is so cool about the Olympic diving photos!! I never noticed that before (or my old brain just forgot it!) What a view!

I really love your day trip to visit those Roman Ruins. Really, really spectacular. It's obvious they treasure their history! And that aqueduct is amazingly intact! Although it's a bit narrower than it seems from the first photos!

Sayhello

 

[Mathmagicland]

That is so cool about the Olympic diving photos!! I never noticed that before (or my old brain just forgot it!) What a view!

I really love your day trip to visit those Roman Ruins. Really, really spectacular. It's obvious they treasure their history! And that aqueduct is amazingly intact! Although it's a bit narrower than it seems from the first photos!

Sayhello

I didn’t recall those diving views & photos either. The thing that sticks in my mind from those Olympics is the guy who shot the arrow to light the flame in the opening ceremony.

And, yes, those Roman ruins were an amazing day; I am really glad I did that tour.

 

[Eastridge]

Thanks for doing this report!

I was shocked that there were two groups running simultaneously, each with 44 people! Didn't realize that an escape like this would be that popular, nor that ABD would run two groups on the same date.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Thanks for doing this report!

I was shocked that there were two groups running simultaneously, each with 44 people! Didn't realize that an escape like this would be that popular, nor that ABD would run two groups on the same date.

This usually does not sell out. I think the popularity for this departure came from the D-V-C MC, and so many on a wait list that they could support a parallel tour.

 

[Mathmagicland]

Today is our first full Disney adventure day. We have a late (for Disney) start of 09:00. We also have change (from the handbook) for the order of today’s activities. Alyssa has advised we will be split into two groups as we visit the various sites today, a Mickey group and a Minnie group; Alyssa and Carolina will swap off leading the groups. We will also have a local Barcelona guide Ava with us both on the bus and at the sites. We are given whisper listening devices, to be able to hear the guides as we walk.

We start with a drive through the city, Ava describing some of what we are passing. Antoni Gaudi is a very famous Catalan architect, and we will be seeing a lot of his works today. Our first Gaudi sighting is a home in the city he designed, known as the Candy house. Someone wanted to purchase it and take it out of the country; it is now owned by Spanish candy company Chupa Chup, who uses it for events in the city. Trivia note, their company logo was designed by Salvador Dali



First stop - our private guided walking tour of the Gothic quarter in Old Barcelona. Narrow cobblestone streets, Roman walls, old architecture. The Gothic quarter area has a strict rule to help manage crowds, groups must be no more than 20 including the guides. For the tour of this area, we needed a third group; five of us volunteered to be a “Donald” group with our own local guide, Magdalena. We five were spoiled with our small group size here, missing it when we were back to the larger Mickey and Minnie groups for the rest of the day.

Barcelona was founded in 15BCE, making it a younger “old city”; the Romans occupied the city until approx 400. As we walked, we saw some evidence of Roman walls, much less than I’d seen in Tarragona the day before.

The older shops in town have plaques at their entrances showing the first known year a shop was at that location. The oldest one we saw shows the year 909! (lower left of the brass plate)



Another not quite as old, “only” from 1761 -



We stop at the Barcelona Cathedral.









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[Mathmagicland]

Barcelona continues-

Almost every shop on the street levels throughout the city have roll up metal doors. And every one is covered in graffiti…unless the shop owner has other art on it, in which case the graffiti artists leave it be.



About half way through our tour, we stop at a small bakery for churros with dipping chocolate. This is the first and only time today we saw the other Disney group, as they were already at the bakery when we arrived.

In this area is a wall sculpture carved from a Picasso drawing -



Lots of narrow walkways. No vehicles allowed these days, but long ago these were one-way alleys for the horse-drawn carts, with old ceramic directional tile signs still in evidence.









It takes a lot of wires to get power and internet into 13-16th century buildings.



This sculpture, El Cap de Barcelona by Ray Lichtenstein, was done for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, with lots of mosaic tiles as an homage to Gaudi.



When Gaudi was a college student, one of his art classes had a project where each student had to design lampposts for the city. Gaudi’s lampposts, there see two. are still in use today, across a street from the Gothic quarter.



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[Mathmagicland]

Barcelona continues-

Time to head to our next stop, Gaudi’s Park Guell. This place is extremely popular and for me shows the value of taking this trip with Disney vs trying to arrange it myself. Since reopening after Covid shutdowns, Park Guell has maintained limited attendance of 400 timed tickets per hour, which must be purchased well in advance. There is no onsite or nearby parking, and the closest subway station is a 20-minute uphill walk away. There is a small parking area by the entrance reserved with space for 4 or 5 tour busses, with assigned spots and a time limit to park. As we were waiting for our group to gather to go in, I saw at least a dozen people walk up without tickets and get turned away. I was very happy to not have had to try to coordinate and obtain timed tickets!

We were again split into our Mickey and Minnie groups. Once inside, our guide led us as she explained what we were seeing. It started to drizzle while we were here. The pathways are mostly compacted dirt, with slippery stone stairways. We had to avoid some mud puddles, and walk very carefully to avoid slipping or falling. Because of the time limit for our bus parking, we had to stay on a steady pace to get through the tour.

Commissioned in 1890 as a garden for aristocracy and designed by Gaudi, it is now a public park and a UNESCO world heritage site. This is another hilltop venue with some views of Barcelona, lots of mosaic work and interesting stone statues.



Note the crane in the far left, that is Sagrada Familia, which we will be visiting later this afternoon.















And, there is a Hidden Mickey!






Here is a bit of Disney trivia for you, you can thank me when you win by knowing this Disney visual artist Lorelay Bove, who is from Spain, took inspiration from Gaudi and Park Guell for the gingerbread houses in Sugar Rush in Wreck-It Ralph.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1176916531877298176

https://www.entertainmentaffair.com...-how-wreck-it-ralphs-sugar-rush-came-to-life/

Note the similarity?




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[Mathmagicland]

Barcelona continues -

We had a late group lunch, starting approx 2pm, at Can Travi Nou, an 18th century farmhouse, for authentic Catalan food. This is located at the outer edge of the city and no longer has any farmland around it. The farmhouse has several rooms of various sizes for different groups. It is known for its huge beautiful bougainvillea on most of the front wall.





Very old horse collars on the wall -



Our lunch today was probably the best group meal of the trip. It was tapas only, about 12 or 13 different ones, and something for everyone. It was very filling! And, finally, I remembered to take a few food pictures!

The traditional Catalan Pa Amb Tomaquet, or Bread with Tomato, minus the garlic -



Some of our tapas-








After lunch, the drizzle is gone and it was time for our visit to La Sagrada Familia, another must-see place in Barcelona with very hard to get timed tickets to see the inside. They also have airport-type security scanners. It was very crowded here, as many folks can only view from the outside and want to see it. We have to park about a 10-minute walk away, and due to the crowds some of the walkways to get there are one-way, some go up to the basilica and others go back down.

This basilica, designed by Antoni Gaudi, can be seen from everywhere in the city and is the symbol of Barcelona for many. It is still unfinished, with construction continuing today (it started in 1882!), using Gaudi’s original design plans. While a recent announcement said completion was expected in 2026, we were told it is targeted for 2033. The skies are still cloudy and gray when we get there.







I learned that the other Disney group had done Sagrada Familia before lunch, during the cloudy overcast drizzle, while we were at Park Guell. You may be thinking, they Iucked out having this indoor tour while it was drizzling, but that isn’t the case. We definitely won the lottery on tour order today, because just as we were getting ready to go through the security line, the sun finally started to break through the clouds.



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