Getting a taxi in Badalona

Badalona is a city in its own right rather than a Barcelona neighbourhood, strung along the coast north of the river. For a taxi the geography is the whole story: the middle of Barcelona is a quarter of an hour away in normal traffic, while the airport terminals are getting on for three times that distance — as far out as Sant Cugat, and the longest run on the coastal side of the city.

The route is the saving grace. A Badalona airport transfer does not cross the city at all: it takes the C-31 and the Ronda Litoral along the water, which bypasses everything that normally slows a transfer down. Allow around 35 minutes outside the peaks, and closer to an hour if the pick-up falls into the morning rush heading south.

Because it is one of the longest runs on this site, it is also the one where booking early matters most. An early-morning flight from here means a pick-up in the small hours, and that is a car I need to have planned rather than found at short notice.

For a pick-up, the Rambla and the seafront are straightforward at any hour. The older streets inland of the Carrer del Mar are narrow and partly pedestrianised, so give me a cross street and I will get as close as a car legally can.