One of Gaudi’s masterpieces & the biggest monument of Barcelona- Sagrada Familia is a magnificent creation that you must see if you’re visiting Barcelona. If you do a search of the top places to visit in Barcelona, the first thing that comes on every result is ‘Sagrada Familia’ and it is for a reason!

I visited Barcelona for 3 days (effectively 2.5 days) out of which I kept one day for city tour. The best way to roam around the city is by hop-on-hop-off bus service. I purchased online tickets for 1 day hop-on-hop-off bus tour for two persons beforehand via http://www.viator.com which cost me around 80 euro in total (40 euro per person). It was the best decision I took to explore Barcelona city. The buses are named ‘Bus Touristic’ which depart from the central station on Placa De Catalunya (it’s the hub of Barcelona city from where all the buses operates). The hop-on-hop-off buses operate in two routes- blue line & red line. Blue line covers the east to north part of the city- touching more than 12 tourist spots and red line covers the west to south part of the city- touching again more than 14 tourist spots. The buses stop in each designated spot. Anyone having the pass can (we had 1 day pass/ticket) get off to any stop & explore the place. They can get on to another bus of the same route anytime. Usually buses come to each stop in 10-15 mins intervals. So, don’t have to wait long once you’re done visiting a certain place.

We went to Sagrada Familia by getting on to the blue line buses. The best part about these buses are that you’re given headphones through which you can listen audio commentary. Whenever you’re coming near to any spot, you know the history of the place via the audio commentary which makes the experience even more meaningful. Once we came near to Sagrada Familia, we were hearing via the audio that this is Gaudi’s (the most famous architect of Barcelona) best creation. So, we were expecting something good. But once the bus parked in front of the place, we looked on our left and was awestruck by our first sight of this magnificent structure. It was massive in stature. We looked so tiny in front of it that it was intimidating. You could buy entry ticket & go inside of it. But the queue was very big & per person it costs 50 euro. Given the time in hand, we opted not to go inside rather enjoy the view from outside and take some pictures. Then again we hoped on our bus & traveled around next destinations. One can switch the lines by changing buses. We covered all the spots of Barcelona using both blue & red line buses. The tip is- have the city map in your hand from the bus assistance, check out the routes & visit the spots you wish to visit.