The Rough Guide to Barcelona 8 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

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Catalunya, outside El Corte Inglés (from 10.30am, every day that the park is
open; €2.50, reimbursed with park admission ticket).
Drinks and meals inside the park are pricey. Immediately outside the upper
funicular station and park there’s another restaurant, which is packed with
families on Sundays. It’s not that great, though it does have outdoor terrace seats.
The best choice for a sandwich or simple meal is the Marisa, an inexpensive
bar-restaurant on the road toVallvidrera just below the Tibidabo car park. It’s a
three-minute walk from the upper funicular station and has a little concrete
patio to the side with sweeping views.
Torre de Collserola and Vallvidrera
Follow the road from the Tibidabo car park and it’s only a few minutes’ walk to
Norman Foster’s Torre de Collserola (Wed–Sun 11am–2.30pm & 3.30–7pm;
July–Sept until 8pm; €5; T934 069 354, W , a
soaring communications tower high above the tree line, with a glass lift that
whisks you up ten floors (115m) for yet more stunning views – 70km, they
claim, on a good day.
Afterwards, you could just head back to Tibidabo for the funicular-and-tram
ride back to the city, but to complete a circular tour it’s more interesting to
follow the cobbled path near the tower’s car park, which brings you out on the
pine-clad edges of Vallvidrera, a wealthy suburban village perched on the flank
of the Collserola hills – a twenty-minute walk all told from Tibidabo. There’s
another funicular station here (6am–midnight every 6–10min), connecting to
Peu del Funicular, an FGC station on the Sabadell and Terrassa line from Plaça
de Catalunya.
Vallvidrera’s main square isn’t obvious – if you turn left out of the funicular
station and walk down the steep steps, Plaça deVallvidrera is the traffic roundabout
at the bottom.There are a couple of local bar-restaurants on its fringes, the most
striking being Can Josean (closedTues) with a simple bar at the front and a dining
room at the rear, with views out over the city from the back tables.
Parc de Collserola
The Parc de Collserola, encompassing Tibidabo (its highest peak), is one of
Barcelona’s best-kept secrets.While many make the ascent to the amusement
park and church, few realize that beyond stretches an area of peaks and wooded
valleys roughly 17km by 18km, threaded by rivers, roads and paths.You can, in
fact, walk into the park fromTibidabo and theTorre de Collserola, but it’s better
to start from the park’s information centre, across to the east, above Vallvidrera,
where hiking-trail leaflets and other information are available.
The Centre d’Informació (daily 10am–3pm; T932 803 552, Wwww
) lies in oak and pinewoods, an easy, signposted ten-minute
stepped walk up through the trees from the FGC Baixada deVallvidrera station
(Sabadell and Terrassa line from Pl. de Catalunya; 15min).There’s an exhibition
here on the park’s history, flora and fauna, while the staff hand out English-
language leaflets detailing the various walks you can make from the centre,
ranging from a fifteen-minute stroll to theVallvidrera dam to a couple of hours
THE NORTHERN SUBURBS
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Torre de Collserola and Vallvidrera • Parc de Collserola