ON YER BIKE

Ever see a mermaid on a bicycle?

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to getting around Barcelona, there is the Metro (underground), and the buses with the super cold air condition, trains , a couple of cable cars and three funicular. If you like being taken for a ride there are the taxis, and for the tree-hugging fitness freaks there is El Bicing.

 

El Bicing’s fleet of red and white bicycles first hit the carrers and ramblas in 2007, when there were just 750 vehicle and 50 El Bicing stations; today there are 6000 bikes and 420 locations.

A €30 annual subscription buys you a Bicing card which allows you to take a bicycle from the rack. You can ride it for half an hour without additional charge, and it is 50 cents per 30 minutes for up to two hours, after which the bicycle turns into a pumpkin.  Well not really, but you do get stung with a penalty charge and if you do that too often you will be banned and sent to languish in the pit of naughty bike-hoggers.

The racks freeze up between midnight and 5 am, to prevent drunks from trying to ride them home, two up with a mate on the handlebars, presumably.

But here’s the controversial bit. Unlike London’s "Boris Bikes" which are available to anyone with a credit card, El Bicing is only available to Barcelona residents; visitors still have to go to the tourist rental companies, who argued, successfully, that it would be unfair for a state run enterprise to put them out of business. I get that, but it also seems sort of sad that visitors are not able to access what is become a new Barcelona icon. 

 

Of course you can always choose to look like a complete twat and rent a Segway. 

Semi-relevant anecdote: I was once nearly knocked over by London Mayor Boris Johnson, who, with limbs akimbo, was cycling  down Charing Cross Road in a most terrifying manner.

TAKEN FOR A RIDE

TAXI!   It is no surprise that a survey by Hotels.com voted the iconic London black cab the best taxis in the world, but it perhaps might have raised the occasional eyebrow that Barcelona’s swarming black and yellow cabs failed to make it into the Top Ten Taxis chart.

Their ready availability and relative affordability has made them a realistic option for getting around the city. 

However with the local and tourist economies tightening some drivers are resorting to sharp practice. Unlike London cabbies, Barcelona’s taxi drivers are not required to possess an expert knowledge of the city’s geography in order to ply their trade and regularly become “lost” with the meter spinning as they repeatedly stop ask for directions.

Visitors are now often treated to the scenic route between any two given points as a matter of course. 

One recent American arrival in the office remarked on how many similar looking cathedrals Barcelona has, having been driven past la Sagrada Familia a number of times from different directions, in a marathon drive that managed to stretch what should have been a simple a ten minute drive to over half an hour.

Relative newcomers with a reasonably good knowledge of the layout of the city and its main routes, but who speak little Spanish and look like tourists, reckon that when you take a ride in a cab you will be “taken for a ride” between about 30% to 50% of the time

As a basic rule, if there is no sat nav system in the cab, don’t get in it, unless you really want to spend a quarter of an hour driving round in circles. If possible and seek out those drivers who have a sat nav screen on the back of their front seat headrests that allow you to monitor your route.

By and large I now avoid the taxi’s and much prefer to use the excellent public transport system.