Streetwise Barcelona Map - Laminated City Center Street Map of Barcelona, Spain Map – Folded Map, January 1, 2012

Have purchase maps like this in the past, including ROME, and loved them. But this one of Barcelona was disappointing. You could not see the whole city map on one side, and when you flipped it over to see the rest, it was a section or two to the left or right, not above/below where you were tracking an area. It was very hard, if not impossible, to get your bearings in this city with this map. You usually need a good map when you are a visitor, and are not someone familiar with an area, so simplicity and ease of use is imperative. Like their other maps, the quality of the paper/laminate is very good.

Best maps for tourists: laminated, idiot-proof re-folding, slips into a pocket, don't need to unfold the whole thing to use it, has separate metro map, index AND locates the metro stops ON THE REGULAR MAP (alone worth the price...otherwise it's impossible to know how to navigate a strange city).Does everything a map needs to do and it's almost impossible to damage (though I did not try to set it on fire).I own these for every city I've had to navigate INCLUDING the cities that I have lived in (even when I've lived in a place for years, I still prefer to use these maps on a regular basis over all the others).

If Streetwise makes a map for any city I plan to visit, I buy it.**They are accurate and much more handy than others that fold to nothing but unfurl like a sail and scream tourist.They give a general view that the small maps in the what's happening this week guides don't show. And they give enough detail that you figure out where you are when you get lost..Next to the Eyewitness guides, they are the best way to plan for and pack on a trip.**If I didn't think it would be cheating, I could cut and paste this review for Streetwise Maps for Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Madrid, and Rome.

We used this map on a recent 5 day stay in Barcelona. It met most of our needs including the identification of places of interest and the metro routes and stops that we needed to get around town. The map covers most of the areas of interest except for the most northern and western parts of the city. It is a reasonable compromise because covering a larger area would make the map more difficult to read. In fact for someone with aging eyes like mine a magnifying glass would have made reading street names a lot easier especially when lighting is not good.I recommend this map to everyone who needs a map to get around Barcelona. It is far more practical than the typical paper map that must be folded and unfolded many times and soon wears out.

I recommend this map, especially to first time visitors of Barcelona who might not want to or be able to use their phones for guidance. We were glad we brought this with us, as others in our group had to buy an entire guide book to get a map while trying to find their around on the first day. The winding streets around the Gothic Quarter are especially hard to navigate without a map. We also used this map to locate the closest metro stops to our destination, as we rode the subway daily to get around. This map is easy to carry around and use. Sometimes we would consult the map to identify the general location. Then using a free wifi connection we would identify an exact "google" route from metro stop to destination on the phone, taking a screen shot to preserve for later use. This method made it easier to figure out which way to walk after emerging from a metro stop.

Overall, great map. Nice and durable, good lamination. The mini metro map was great, as well as notations of rail lines, funicular lines, etc. Index to the streets was well done and very appreciated. My one complaint is that the map did not actually cover all of Barcelona. I'm not talking about "metro Barcelona," the towns comprising the around the city limits (but yet not actually Barcelona). I'm talking about the actual outer circles of Barcelona proper; the map excluded them, which was a problem for me at times.

We bought several different maps for our trip to Barcelona, but this is the one we used over and over again. In fact, Streetwise has become our go-to map source for every overseas trip. We've found them accurate and extremely easy to use. Because they fold up, they're easy to carry. But they're sturdier than other maps, so folding and unfolding doesn't cause damage. And they're laminated - on both sides - so they stand up to all kinds of weather. We made our way all around Barcelona with no problems just using our Streetwise map.

Too awkward to use, plus the displayed map area is too broad. The detachable map in the back of Rick Steves' Barcelona Pocket Guide was much easier to use and covered completely the walk-about parts of Barcelona.