Riding a Bicycle in Barcelona

So Barcelona is a bike friendly place. The local bike share program is extremely popular. It's called Bicing, and you can only use it if you live locally. It's free for 15 minutes, and you check them in and out using your account. If you keep a bike for longer than 15 mins, it gets more and more expensive. Basically they want you to use them for short trips. The bikes are hilarious, a smaller front wheel, monkey bars, all kinds of funny looking. But you see them everywhere, and everyone rides them. There are huge banks of them all over the place. It's a successful system, apparently.

For those people who don't live in Barcelona, there are about a million and one bike rental places. Most rent nice big cruiser style bikes that are bomb proof, in bright colors. We heard about a place called Green Bikes Barcelona and decided to see if we couldn't stash our fully loaded bikes with them and take a pair of their city bikes out. We had hoped to go on a tour with Steel Donkey, but they didn't have anything scheduled that day. These guys seemed fun, too. But Green Bikes was open and ready for us.

oh Barcelona

Green Bikes felt familiar. Very Bicycle Kitchen. And the guy at the counter was from Mar Vista, CA. Ha ha. They were kind enough to hang on to our bikes and we rented a couple of theirs - but they were fresh out of normal. So we had our first goofy folding bike experience. All I can say is wow.

Eventually we headed back towards the beach

look at those sexy steeds

Hey, Barcelona has bike infrastructure. We had a great time cruising around. We first tried to go to the Picasso Museum, but it was Monday and closed. We didn't make it up to Guell Park, which is another place I wanted to go. There is so much more that needs to be seen of this city by me. So much more. And next time, we'll get a bike right away. It was quick and easy and the bikes had excellent, fully-integrated super locking systems. We didn't worry at all, which is what we would have done had we brought our own bikes all over the city. Barcelona by bike is the way to go.

At the end of the day, we went back to Placa Reial for one more Campari laranja, then we ate at a Sidreria (check) and stuffed ourselves on tapas one last time. The cider was good. We made it to our night ferry - last one for a while - and snuggled up in our sleeping bags, on the floor in the seating area. We are getting pretty good at this.

Our next chapter will be tiny island life and house sitting for a couple of months. Back to work, back to caring for someone else's home, end of this tour...