I’VE always had this fascination about visiting places with rich culture and history but because I couldn’t afford back then, I didn’t have a choice but to spend all my money to more important things and put my dreams on the side for a couple of years.
But finally, after working so hard, I finally managed to begin my journey bit by bit.
Since I’ve always been more comfortable travelling using our own car, I decided to drive all the way to Barcelona with my family on-board.
Of course, we were very excited while we were on the way there. Even though driving all the way there from where we live took around 7 hours, I didn’t feel bored nor tired while steering the wheel while my family managed to get some sleep.
As we passed by the boarder of France and Spain, my sister suddenly spoke. “Oh, I forgot to take a picture of the sign!” She was referring to the ‘España’ sign which we just passed by, indicating that we were officially on the Spanish soil.
I thought, it was such a waste that we couldn’t take a picture of it since it was our first time visiting the country but we couldn’t do anything about that anymore.
“You should’ve paid more attention.” My mother was shaking her head and my sister proceeded on saying that she was half asleep and didn’t remember about it.
After about 20-30 minutes more, we had to stop at a filling station with two purposes in mind. First was to buy something to eat because we haven’t had breakfast yet and secondly, I had to call the ZBE helpline to ask for the activation of our ZBE LEZ or ZBE (Rondes de Barcelona) Low Emission Zone permit-to-enter.
The LEZ was within the Barcelona ring roads and consisted of 95 km2 where they restrict the entry of the most polluting vehicles to protect the atmosphere, environment and public’s health.
Normally, people who want to visit the city will apply this permit at least 15 banking days before entering Barcelona but since we weren’t aware about this (I did my research but there wasn’t that much article about this.), our trip almost got cancelled.
A couple of days before we departed for Barcelona, I finally stumbled upon this certain article claiming that every car that enters Barcelona must to be registered first and I panicked.
I clicked on the given link of the LEZ registration and quickly filled out application to register our car and sent necessary documents (This is important for them to determine the emission level of our car).
(If you want to register your car for LEZ Barcelona, click here.)
I paid 7 euros for that mere registration and when I finished, there was a message saying that in case my application was approved, I would receive that approval through mail in 15 banking days.
Panic rose within me in an instant. We would be leaving in a couple of days but it said that we needed to wait for the response within 15 banking days!
But I refused to let my panic get the best of me. Of course, there should be another way to get out of this situation, I thougt.
I posted on Tripadvisor and asked what to do in this kind of situation and luckily, someone answered. They said that if we heard about the LEZ registration in the last minute, there was no problem. Just proceed on sending your application online and then call the helpline before entering the country to explain the situation.
That was when I finally felt relieved.
I applied on December 23rd (Friday night) which meant that I had to call on Monday to ask for the approval. But another problem arose.
When I called on December 26th, I only heard the answering machine which was recorded in three languages (Spanish, Catalan & English) saying that their office was close due to the public holiday on that day (Boxing Day).
That was when I panicked again. We were planning to leave the house at 2 am in the morning of December 27th which was by the way, around 12 hours away, but I failed to get the approval.
Of course, we were worried about what would happen since the helpline would only open at 9 am and according to our estimation, we would enter the LEZ zone around 8 am. My parents were very worried, didn’t want to get charged 200 euros for not being registered. Yes, car which weren’t registered first before entering Barcelona would be charged 200 euros.
I had an anxiety attack, thinking about what would we do. Our hotels and tickets for the main attractions were already paid online and just thinking about it being cancelled (they were non-refundable) brought me headache. Of course, I worked hard for that money!
But after clearing our minds from any stress and worry, we decided to proceed with our plans and left France in the wee hours of the morning the next day (December 27th) for Barcelona.
AND fast forward to when we stopped by the filling station. As my family went out to use the toilet and buy some food, I called the given help line number and pressed number 3 (English for tourists) and thankfully, someone answered right away.
I explained the situation and they only asked me for my father’s passport number (he owns the car so I applied under his name) and the plate number of our car. Just like that, they said that our car was approved and could finally enter Barcelona without any problem (no need to buy the sticker as long as your application is approved).
From that moment on, it was as if a heavy feeling got lifted off my shoulder. The feeling of being on a vacation finally hit me.
We ate our snack/breakfast and then hit the road again. We drove for another 45 minutes before we finally reached the city center of Barcelona and another 30 minutes to reach our first destination which was the Sagrada Familia.
It was already past 12 pm and we were hungry again so we searched for a parking nearby and even though the person in charge there couldn’t utter even a single word of English or French (he only speaks Spanish and Catalan, I think), everything went smoothly as he used sign language to communicate with us.
I saw the rate of the parking and I was kinda shock to learn how much expensive it was. We were so hungry and didn’t have the time to look for another one because we might miss our appointment in Sagrada Famila.
Shortly after that, we were in front of Sagrada Familia, admiring its unique and amazing structure. But since our appointment to enter it would be at 1:15 pm, we had our lunch first while waiting for the time.
Later on, we went to the entrance and since we had skip-the-line tickets, everything was fast. We spent around two hours inside and when we exited the building, we walked around a bit, bought some souvenirs and took pictures before we decided to leave that area.
We paid 17.50 euros for the parking for around 3 hours and 30 minutes which was a shock for us. We couldn’t believe how expensive it was compared to France.
When we reached our hotel, we decided to park on the street parking because we didn’t like to park at the private parking nearby which costs 27.50 per night.
Parking in the street parking wasn’t as easy as what we’ve thought because we learned that the green parking zones were only intended for the residents around that area and we could only park on the blue ones but it would be for maximum of 2 hours only. (I read about this on the internet but not about the 2 hours maximum of parking so I talked to one of the locals and he explained the rules about the parking there.)
According to the gentleman I talked to, we could park on the blue parking zones starting at 8 in the evening until 9 in the morning for free and since it was still around 5:30 pm that time, so we decided to wait for thirty minutes in the car (we managed to park at this point on a blue parking zone around 4 minute-walk to our hotel.) and after that, we paid for the remaining two hours for 7 euros. Yes, it was 7 euros because the rate was 3.50 per hour in the street parking.
While walking towards our hotel, pulling our luggage, we were already so tired. When we finally checked in, we just relaxed for about an hour before we went out to eat dinner. At this point, we were confident that everything would finally turn smoothly but we were wrong.
All the restaurants around the area were still close because apparently, they open at 9 pm. Apparently, restaurants in Barcelona open at 9 pm in the winter and 10 pm in summer. We were so hungry that we tried looking for any open restaurants but to no avail.
We decided to get in our car and drive near Sagrada Familia to look for restaurants but we changed our minds because we saw how many vehicles were circulating the area, looking for any available parking spot. We feared that we might not find any parking spot if we leave our parking.
In the end, we didn’t have any choice but to have dinner late at night. (Our family isn’t used of eating dinner at 9 pm because we always eat early.)
THE next day, we went to our next destination which was the L’Aquàrium de Barcelona and just like what we expected, there wasn’t any street parking there. Thankfully, I did my research and found out that the Barcelona Mall was the only place we could park into around that area. Thankfully, there was a lot of available parking spaces because it was still 9:45 am.
We walked for around 2 minutes to reach the Aquarium. We spent around three hours there and when we paid our parking, it was 14.80 euros.
We drove to La Rambla and as usual, there wasn’t that much of street parking spaces so we parked in an underground private parking. After we parked, we were about to exit the premises when we heard the repeating announcement coming from an automated voice recorder, warning all the visitors not to leave any valued stuff in the car. I was like “Why? This is a private parking lot and surely, it is safe, right for us to leave our things inside our car, as long as we lock it, right?”
But that wasn’t the case, apparently. We ended up taking everything that was important including my new Ipad pro 12.9 which wasn’t ideal at all because of the size and weight.
After that, we indulged ourselves in having tacos and burritos for lunch before exploring La Rambla. We spent quite sometime there until dinner time. We bought take out and paid around 18 euros for the parking.
When we arrived near our hotel, we found an available parking spot after around 10 minutes of searching around the area. This time, we had to walk 3 minutes to our hotel.
We went back to our hotel and ate dinner and finally got to rest to prepare for our last day in Barcelona the next day.
THE next morning, we checked out of our hotel and went directly to the Philippine Embassy Barcelona because I wanted to request for a document. Upon arriving there, we couldn’t find any parking spot available aside from the yellow lane parking space so I decided to park there momentarily and pressed the hazard light since I wouldn’t take long for sure.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the document that I wanted to obtain from the Embassy so we left the place right away after that and went straight to Park Güell.
Upon arriving there, we didn’t expect that there wasn’t any private parking around aside from the few numbers of street parking spaces around so we had no choice but to park on the green zone (there was nothing but green zone street parking) just like every other tourist who had their vehicle with them.
Since we only had two-hour maximum of parking, we had no choice but to leave the park after two hours. We couldn’t even explore everything. We paid 7 euros for those two hours.
Police cars were coming and going and we didn’t want to risk getting parking violation ticket in a foreign country. After that, we went back to La Rambla and parked at a private underground parking then ate lunch.
We checked all the shops in La Rambla that we didn’t check before and discovered what was inside La Boqueria food market. After that, we walked by foot to Gothic quarter and explored almost every corner of it. We even stopped by the Christmas village nearby.
We paid around 16 euros for the parking and headed towards our last destination which was to watch the Magic fountain of Montjuic.
Of course, there wasn’t any street parking around again so we parked at a private parking. We walked towards the fountain and waited for thirty minutes before we realized that there wasn’t any show for that night because they were apparently participating in conserving water.
People, including us, were disappointed and annoyed because the security personnel including the police officers who were there were just watching the people piling up without announcing that there wouldn’t be any show for the night.
We thought, how could they just watch people wait there for nothing? Thankfully, some people finally approached one of the policemen and asked why the show hadn’t started yet since it was already past 8 pm.
That was when everyone finally got the news that we were just made to wait for nothing.
Even though we were disappointed, we didn’t have a choice but to leave that place but not before paying around 5 euros for the parking which didn’t even take an hour.
Then, it was time for us to start our journey to go back home. We hit the road going back to France around 8:45 pm.
I couldn’t believe of all the stress we had in this vacation but thankfully, our trip in Barcelona turned out to be as wonderful as we expected it to be. There were advantages of bringing a car but there were advantages as well.
In conclusion, going to Barcelona by car could be a headache with all these regulations that you need to follow before until you arrive there but overall, it is still the best decision to do when you live near Spain. You will save yourself time especially when you will stay in Barcelona for a short period of time.
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