Barcelona, Spain

Day 1

• Sagrada Família

  The basilica costs €26 and the ticket with the towers €36: climbing is a ten-euro supplement, and it is worth it only if you know the lift takes you up but part of the way down is on foot, on narrow stairs. Under-30s pay €24, under-11s go in free, and the guided visit costs four euros more. The audio guide app is included in the price: the audio guides sold outside the entrance are pointless. Entry is by time slot, and the hour matters because the windows are designed to work with the light: the warm tones are on the east side and catch the morning, the cool ones on the west and come alive in the afternoon.

• Gothic Quarter and Cathedral

  The medieval core is walked early in the morning or after 8pm, because in the middle of the day the narrow lanes turn into single file. The cathedral has the cloister with its thirteen white geese, one for each year of St Eulalia's life by tradition, and a roof terrace reached separately. One detail that changes what you are looking at: the Barri Gòtic is largely a 20th-century reconstruction, reworked around the 1929 exposition to give the city the medieval quarter visitors expected to find.

• Casa Batlló and Passeig de Gràcia

  The facades are free and lit at night: Passeig de Gràcia is walked in twenty minutes, and Casa Batlló, Casa Amatller and Casa Lleó Morera all sit on the same block, what Barcelona calls the Illa de la Discòrdia, because three different architects built side by side there. Going inside, by contrast, is among the most expensive things in the city, with timed tickets. If the budget stands one interior only: the Batlló for the roof and the blue light well, La Pedrera for the terrace of chimneys.

Day 2

• Museu Picasso

  The museum has a free slot that shifts with the season, and it is the reason to plan it properly: from 29 September to 29 March entry is free on Thursdays from 4 to 7pm, while from 31 March to 27 September the free window moves to Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 7 to 9pm. It is also free on the first Sunday of the month, but booking is compulsory. The collection is almost all early Picasso: anyone looking for mature cubism leaves disappointed, anyone wanting to understand how he got there does not.

• Park Güell

  The ticket costs €18, entry is by time slot and there is half an hour of grace from the time printed on it: past that, the right of entry is lost and has to be bought again. Once you leave, there is no re-entry. Children under 6 do not pay but still need a ticket. The thing that wrecks the most plans: the 7-9.30am and 8-10pm bands are no longer the trick for getting in free at sunset. They are reserved for residents and Passi Verd holders, and tourist visits are not allowed in those hours.

• Pa amb tomàquet

  It is not a side dish but the base: toasted bread is rubbed with a ripe tomato cut in half, then garlic, oil and salt. In many places it arrives at the table without your ordering it and appears on the bill per person: that is normal and not a scam, but worth knowing before the total surprises you. Where it is genuinely done, the tomato and the bread arrive separately and you make it yourself.

Day 1

• Bunkers del Carmel✦ hidden gem

  Entry is free and there is no ticket office, but it is no longer open at any hour: the archaeological site of the anti-aircraft battery closes at night, 9am-7.30pm in summer and 9am-5.30pm in winter, after the city put up gates because of the evening crowds and the residents' sleep. In winter that means it shuts before sunset. The outer path along the fence, by contrast, stays walkable at all times. You get there by bus plus a climb on foot, and there is no water and no shade up there.

• Mercat de Sant Antoni✦ hidden gem

  It is a neighbourhood market working for the people who live there, not a food stop: you buy fish, vegetables and cured meat at the counter, and the comparison with the Boqueria shows immediately in the price and in the fact that almost nobody here sells eight-euro cups of fruit. The building, a huge cross-shaped iron hall, also houses the book and collectors' market. It is a shop-hours place and above all a morning one: by the afternoon most of the counters have shut.

• Hospital de Sant Pau✦ hidden gem

  It costs €18 until 2pm and €17 after: one of the few monuments where the afternoon is cheaper than the morning. It opens every day 9.30am-6.30pm from April to October and 9.30am-5pm from November to March, last access half an hour before, and the only closing day of the year is 25 December. It is free on 23 April, 24 September and during the Night of the Museums. It is two minutes by metro from the Sagrada Família (L5, Sant Pau-Dos de Maig): the two modernista masterpieces fit into the same afternoon. The lockers are 37 centimetres square and larger bags will not go in.

Day 2

• Calçots✦ hidden gem

  These are a cold-season onion: you find them from November to April, and outside that window, if they appear on a menu, they are frozen. They are roasted over the flame until the outside is black, pulled out by the green end and dipped in romesco sauce, which is almond, tomato and pepper. You eat them with your hands and the paper bib the place hands you: it is a messy meal, and a calçotada is a trip out of town more than a dinner downtown.

• Fideuà✦ hidden gem

  It is the same idea as paella but with pasta instead of rice: short, thin fideus, toasted before the stock goes in, which end up standing upright at the end of cooking. It is served with allioli on the side, not stirred in. As with paella, the sign of a serious place is that it is ordered for two people minimum and the wait is twenty minutes or more: if it arrives in five, it was already made.

Day 1

• Pa amb tomàquet

  It is not a side dish but the base: toasted bread is rubbed with a ripe tomato cut in half, then garlic, oil and salt. In many places it arrives at the table without your ordering it and appears on the bill per person: that is normal and not a scam, but worth knowing before the total surprises you. Where it is genuinely done, the tomato and the bread arrive separately and you make it yourself.

• Calçots✦ hidden gem

  These are a cold-season onion: you find them from November to April, and outside that window, if they appear on a menu, they are frozen. They are roasted over the flame until the outside is black, pulled out by the green end and dipped in romesco sauce, which is almond, tomato and pepper. You eat them with your hands and the paper bib the place hands you: it is a messy meal, and a calçotada is a trip out of town more than a dinner downtown.

Day 2

• Fideuà✦ hidden gem

  It is the same idea as paella but with pasta instead of rice: short, thin fideus, toasted before the stock goes in, which end up standing upright at the end of cooking. It is served with allioli on the side, not stirred in. As with paella, the sign of a serious place is that it is ordered for two people minimum and the wait is twenty minutes or more: if it arrives in five, it was already made.

• Mercat de Sant Antoni✦ hidden gem

  It is a neighbourhood market working for the people who live there, not a food stop: you buy fish, vegetables and cured meat at the counter, and the comparison with the Boqueria shows immediately in the price and in the fact that almost nobody here sells eight-euro cups of fruit. The building, a huge cross-shaped iron hall, also houses the book and collectors' market. It is a shop-hours place and above all a morning one: by the afternoon most of the counters have shut.