Ditching the Tour Bus: How I Negotiated My Way to Real Barcelona

By Community Member · MSC Bellissima (MSC Cruises)

I almost paid $89 for a generic Barcelona tour until I learned the art of negotiating shore excursions—and discovered the city on my own terms.

The email came through before we even left port in Civitavecchia. MSC Cruises had helpfully pre-populated my account with "recommended" shore excursions for our week-long Mediterranean cruise on the Bellissima, and Barcelona's offerings were already flagged in bright blue. There was the Sagrada Familia and Park Güell combo at $149 per person, the Gothic Quarter walking tour at $89, and the Spanish wine and tapas experience at $125. My husband Marco looked at the prices and nearly spit out his morning espresso at the MSC café on Deck 5. "We could spend that on actual wine and tapas," he muttered, scrolling through the options on his phone while we watched the ship pull away from the dock. I'd done this dance before on a couple of Caribbean cruises, but I'd never really thought strategically about it. This time felt different. We had three full days in Barcelona—a port stop I'd been dreaming about since booking the cruise last year—and I wasn't about to spend a chunk of our vacation budget on a generic bus tour with forty other cruise passengers. The real turning point came when I ran into Janet from Delaware in the Bellissima's main atrium the afternoon before we docked. She was a…