3 of the Best Cities in Spain for Kids

It’s hard to go wrong planning family travels in Spain. Its lively, vivacious cities and towns charm all ages, and the Spanish are especially welcoming to children. But three cities stand out in particular for families.

Barcelona

While the fantastic spires and pinnacles of the Basílica de la Sagrada Família are certainly worth seeing, first introduce your children to the fantastic visions of Antoni Gaudí at his Park Güell, high on a hillside overlooking Barcelona. Here they can play among his colorful mosaic stairways, grottos, fountains, bridges and outdoor sculptures, and you can even have a picnic among the gardens.

After the park and the Basilica, which you’ll want to tour, visit two surrealistic houses that complete the quartet of Gaudí works making up the UNESCO World Heritage site: Casa Milà and Casa Batlló. The facades of each of these looks like no other building your kids have seen, with swirling ironwork and almost no straight lines. Walk around the wavy rooftop of Casa Mila to see the strangely shaped chimneys with their mosaic decoration.

Barcelona isn’t all about sightseeing, as beaches begin right in the city; along with shallow water for swimming, the long Bogatell Beach offers windsurfing, kitesurfing and kayaking.

Seville

Right in the center of this colorful city is the dazzling Alcazar, which your kids may mistake for a sultan’s palace out of a Disney film. Soaring halls and salons are decorated in intricate designs inspired by the centuries of Islamic rule in Seville and Southern Spain. Once your kids have seen the eye-boggling palace itself, explore the gardens to find the musical waterfall and places where parts of Game of Thrones and Star Wars were filmed.

Spend a lazy afternoon in the Maria Luisa Park, navigating a rented boat around the canal and under the bridges of the impressive Plaza de España, a colorful plaza surrounded by balconies of a Neo-Moorish building. Rent a family-sized pedal cart to tour the park’s lanes, gardens and forests, where kids can climb on giant tree roots and play on an artificial waterfall.

Valencia

At the center of  Valencia, an expansive green park holds three top-notch places to go with kids. Known as the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Sciences), this complex of cutting-edge modern architecture contains the Oceanografic, one of Europe’s biggest aquariums. Environments replicate the world’s major ecosystems, and kids can get close to dolphins, sharks, colorful tropical fish and other species including penguins and crocodiles. Have lunch in the underwater restaurant.

In the nearby BioPark, animals live in open spaces replicating their natural environments. Kids can see elephants, gorillas, lions, giraffes and smaller species in a natural setting without bars and cages. At the Principe Felipe Science Museum, interactive experiences introduce kids to the major fields of science and the universe.