Catalonia (Cataluña in Spanish) is in the north east of Spain and consists of the provinces of Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona offering everything from the Pyrenees mountains in the north to Barcelona in addition to numerous beach resorts.
Barcelona is by far the best known city in the region and it's where you'll find the greatest concentration of tourists throughout the year.
To the north the Pyrenees mountain range isn't as well known as the Alps but in many ways that makes it a better ski-ing destination as the slopes are much less heavily used.
Salvador Dali, the painter, made this region his home and you'll find the Dali Museum in Figures and Cadaques, where he did a lot of his painting, on the coast.
Catalán rather than Spanish is the language of the region and that's very much in evidence once you get out of the resort towns where you'll find that people will prefer to speak English rather than Spanish (known as Castellano here).
The resorts along the coast are much less developed than those in the south of the country but you'll find the full range of watersports on offer. For touristy resorts, you need to look to the coast south of Girona; those further north are much quieter. South of Barcelona the region becomes much more like the tourist traps in southern Spain, particularly around the Tarragona area which is home to Port Aventura.
The region offers a number of airport options including Barcelona (BCN), Girona (GRO) and Reus (REU).
The line for the high speed train to Paris is under construction at the moment so journies to the north are at a fairly sedate pace by train. International train journies tend to be more expensive than you'd expect and so your best bet to get to France is to take the bus.
Whole Earth Guide
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Whole Earth Guide in Catalonia
Barcelona - the Rambla area
The Rambla area is “the” place to go in Barcelona.
During the day there isn’t a great deal to see in the Rambla itself as it’s basically just a long wide street with an assortment of small kiosks selling newspapers and some souvenirs at one end and on-street restaurants at the other end. In amongst this you’ll find a series of the street-theatre statues of varying degrees of interest. At the mo...
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Last updated 1 Nov 2007
Sitges
Sitges is a very lively resort in the Summer months but is a good deal quieter once you get into Autumn.
Although the majority of the shops are still open, the town has a feeling of closing down for the Winter about it with a number of the more upmarket shops already close up and the much lower number of tourists limit the extent of the promenading pretty much exclusively to the central section...
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Last updated 1 Nov 2007
Salvador Dali in Figures and Cadaques
Salvador Dali was born in Figures and ended his life there.
The town is home to the Salvador Dali museum which is well worth seeing. However, there is little else in the town to commend it and you'd be better moving on to Cadaqués once you've seen the museum.
Cadaqués is a still charming seaside resort. It's quite small and incredibly packed in the Summer season as indeed is the museum in Fi...
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Last updated 1 Nov 2007
Port Aventura, Salou
Although now owned by Universal Studios, Port Aventura hasn’t, yet, had the full American makeover and overall has a much more laid-back feeling about it than the American parks usually do. Woody Woodpecker isn’t nearly so much “in your face” as Micky Mouse is for instance which is a big plus. On the other hand the customer service doesn’t approach American standards which is quite a downer in som...
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Last updated 1 Nov 2007
