Bikes in Barcelona, a cheap and cheerful way to see the sights!!
March 28th, 2007
I’ve been living in Barcelona for 1 year and a half now, and one of the things that I really forget about my own country, is the public transport situation.
In my city (Rome) you have to spend so much time waiting for transport (buses, trains, trams whatever!), but it’s almost impossible to think about travelling by bike - it’s too dangerous, there are no bike-lanes, no-one uses it as a normal method of transport and that means you never see any bikes in the streets, and probably the cars wouldn’t see you coming.
On the contrary, in Barcelona many people usually use the bike to move around the city centre.
There are enough bikes–lanes in the city centre, and also on the main roads such as Gran Via de Las Cortes Catalanes, Paseig Juan de Borbó, Calle Consell de Cent, Calle Diputacio etc.
You can get everywhere very quickly, you don’t need to wait around and if you know more or less the city you can get out of the pedestrians’ way and get to your destination faster!
You have to be careful though as the way is full of obstacles - people who just cross in front of your path blinded by the many shops and gorgeous buildings, or an old woman carrying her groceries and walking the dog (on a very very long leash!!) Oh well, that’s life! Still, I much prefer cycling around in the open air than travelling underground.
Anyway if you respect the rules of road you and your bicycle can have a very good time on the streets of Barcelona!
The Barcelona Council is now giving residents the possibility to use cheap bikes combined with the other public transports. It’s a new service, called BICING, which started on 22nd of March. I really find it extremely useful, because it solves some of the more logistical problems of cycling around the city, like, where to lock your bike up for example.
Apart from this, there are also various companies providing bike rentals to passers by.
This is certainly a good opportunity to enjoy Barcelona, especially as the summer is nearly upon us!!
/Laura
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 2:49 pm and is filed under General Barcelona, Other, Things to do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
