Barcelona-Ship Tour vs Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus

[googalini]

My family and I are debating between doing a ship's tour in Barcelona, which seems very bare bones and costs about 2x as much as a hop-on hop-off bus I have read about called Bus Turistic, which offers multiple routes all for one price. It is also my understanding there there are other similar companies. I would love to hear from those who have experienced Bus Turistic or another like it as to things such as ease of getting to it, process of buying tix, info given about sites, whether the bus has audioguides and/or a live guide, etc?

 

Thanks for your help.

[sddsddean]

http://www.viator.com/tours/Barcelona/Barcelona-Hop-On-Hop-Off-Bus-Turistic/d562-2512BBUS

 

This gives you an idea of where the bus goes. If you get the blue port shuttle bus from the ship to the Colom monument (€2 single, €3 return), it drops you right beside one of the stops and a person will be there in a red jacket to sell you tickets. Its €20/person for a day and headphones are included. If you are just there for a day, don't worry about doing the green route...concentrate on the red and blue. You will get on the blue route at the Colom monument. It took us about 5 hours to do all 3 routes without getting off (except to chenge routes) so allow a fair bit of time. The buses don't start until about 9am, but you want to get in the queue a bit earlier!

 

Simon

[janchor]

We used the HOHO bus at the end of May! You can buy your tickets on the bus, they give you headphones and you just plug them in at your seat and choose your language. Information is quite good. If it is raining however, you cannot sit upstairs and you can barely see out downstairs so keep that in mind. Sometimes it looks like a long line at the stops but the busses run often and we never waited very long. It was a great way to get an overview and see some of the major sites. We had never been to Barcelona before and it worked for us.