Barcelona’s Park Güell

Gaudí’s creations for Park Güell are one of the icons of Barcelona (his Sagrada Família being another). The park was originally intended as a residential garden city in the English style, but only one showhouse was ever built, and the venture failed.

Although you can walk to the park from the Lesseps Metro station (and it’s well signposted), the walk is pretty boring, along busy city streets and then slogging uphill through a side street. A better way (in my opinion) is to go to the Vallarca Metro station. After a short walk along a street, you turn into a pedestrian street that climbs steeply up towards the upper reaches of the Park. Thankfully, the municipality has thought to put in escalators to take the effort out of walking uphill. The other advantage of this route is that you don’t have to fight your way into the Park through the crowds that throng the main entrance.