The Barcelona Christmas Tour, a night-time double-decker bus ride for discovering the city’s Christmas decorated and lit-up nooks and crannies, has been so successful that it is now offering even more places and extending its period of service to 3 January.

And that’s because shortly after 27 November, when the bus tour started its service, practically all available Barcelona Christmas Tours, two a night on Thursdays and Fridays up to 27 December, had been booked up.

That prompted Barcelona City Council, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) and Turisme de Barcelona to allocate, as from Thursday, 10 December, a second vehicle to the tour, to double its number of places, which can now be booked through the usual channels.

For the same reason, instead of ending the service on the last weekend of December, further tours have been planned for the first weekend of January 2021: Saturday 2 and Sunday 3.

The Barcelona Christmas Tour takes a special route covering the city’s most iconic streets, avenues and buildings specially decorated and lit-up for the festivities, including Plaça Catalunya, Via Laietana, Passeig de Gràcia, Passeig Colom and the Cathedral.

This is a bus tour for enjoying the city’s newly lit up streets, from the comfort of a tourist bus’s upper deck, and for discovering Catalan Christmas traditions, which are explained in Catalan and Spanish by the guides on board during the 90-minute journey.

The tours set off twice an evening, the first at 6 pm and the second at 7.45 pm, on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (except for 24, 25 and 31 December and 1 January), from the Barcelona Bus Turístic bus stop at Plaça de Catalunya (Besòs-facing side, opposite the El Corte Inglés).

As with all other forms of public transport, the Barcelona Christmas Tour is subject to hygiene and infection-prevention rules to stop the spread of COVID-19: it will be mandatory for passengers to wear face masks and clean their hands, using the hydro-alcoholic gel available at the setting-off stop, before they board and leave the bus.