Bicycles are not very visible in Barcelona, as most prefer a moto (motorcycle). It seems as though everyone in Barcelona owns a moto. As you make your way through the streets of the city, be wary of speeding businessmen and grandmas on motos. To change your status from the hunted to the hunter, visit one of Barcelona's many rental shops.

LAUGHTER rang out around the table in the tiny, crowded bodega as we drank sangria and told our new friends how surprised we were to find the streets of Barcelona virtually deserted when we came out at 10pm.

“In Barcelona no-one comes out until midnight,” the girls said before being stunned by tales of 11pm closing times in London. Several hours later after a frenetic round of bar hopping the girls apologised for leaving us at 4am: “We have to go home early because we have an exam the next day.”

As we stumbled bleary-eyed back to our hotel, the Ramblas was still buzzing with activity as people chatted on the streets, sat at bars or wandered to the waterfront past street cleaners hosing down Barcelona’s most famous street in readiness for another day.

It is indicative of Barcelona that a single street — the Ramblas — captures the flavour of the Spain’s second biggest city. La Rambla is a magnificent mile-long boulevard that cuts through the heart of the old city to the spectacular waterfront. A day in Barcelona is not complete for locals and visitors alike without a visit to the city’s pumping main artery.

The tree-lined haven for pedestrians is littered with open-air cafes, shops, restaurants and kiosks selling everything from flowers and magazines to birds, tropical fish and rabbits. Or you can sit and watch street artists, portrait painters, dancers and human statues or listen to buskers at Barcelona’s largest free theatre.

At the top of the Ramblas as you walk towards the harbour is the Placa de Catalunya, a large open area with gardens, a fountain, statues and home to several buskers. As you walk down the Ramblas one of the first things you’ll see is the Font de Canaletes where legend says that if you take a drink from the fountain you will return to Barcelona.

On either side of the Ramblas are lines of bird cages and stall holders doing a brisk trade in selling a multitude of varieties. Further along are row upon row of brilliantly coloured flower stalls that stay open until the early hours of the morning.

On the right is a high, arched wrought-iron gate that leads to a cavernous market, known locally as the “Boqueria”. Inside you are hit by a sudden burst of noise and colour as vendors try to sell their piles of fresh fruit and vegetables, large chunks of cheese and slabs of fresh fish. Even if you can resist the large punnets of strawberries the colour and vibrancy make the market well worth a look.

Moving down the Ramblas the buildings change from shiny, opulent banks and shops to moderniste-decorated buildings with mosaics and stained glass. One eye-catching building, built in the 1890’s, is decorated with Chinese designs and umbrellas and has a green dragon coming out of the wall and overhanging the street.

The final stretch of the Ramblas takes you past the pavement artists, jewellry sellers, a clothes market on weekends and Barcelona’s red light district before ending at a statue of Christopher Colombus pointing out to sea and a spectacular harbour complex. Take a small lift to the top of the statue for stunning views of the coast, the Ramblas and the city stretching towards the hills.

Barcelona’s dingy, seedy harbour front was transformed for the 1992 Olympics and is now a collection of chic restaurants, bars and a marina. Some of the tapas prices can be expensive, but it is a beautiful spot to eat in the sun and watch the Spanish at play. If you follow the harbour around there are strips of beach that front onto the Mediterranean and Villa Olympic, the site of the Olympic village, which is dripping with trendy, expensive bars and restaurants.

Diving off the Ramblas down any of the numerous small, side streets takes into the old Gothic quarter (Barri Gotic) or the seedier Barri Xines. The Gothic quarter is a narrow maze of cobblestoned streets, plazas bathed in sun, medieval buildings, churches, bars, restaurants, and cheap hostels. It’s easy to spend days just wandering the jumble of lanes and alleys.

The quarter is centred around the spacious Placa de Sant Jaume where you can see two of Barcelona’s most important buildings, the restored town hall and the Palau de la Generalitat, the traditional home of the Catalan Government. Behind the Generalitat is the La Seu Cathedral, one of the most spectacular Gothic buildings in the city. Building on this stunning cathedral began in 1298 and was finished in 1448. The grandeur of the exterior is echoed inside by stained glass, paintings and an amazing airiness. The cathedral is dedicated to Santa Eulalia who was martyred by the Romans and her tomb rests in a crypt beneath a high alter. Along the sides are 29 smaller chapels with alters lit by candles.

It can be easy to miss the narrow archway on the Ramblas that leads to the 19th century Placa Reial, an Italian-style square studded with iron lamps decorated by a young Gaudi with high archways and a fountain in the middle. On Sunday there is a coin and stamp market where old men crowd around and get involved in serious bargaining for notes, coins and stamps from around the world.

Barcelona is packed with museums and art gallerys, but probably the most popular is the Museu Picasso at c/Montcada. Housed in two beautiful medieval mansions, it is an important collection of his work. Although it doesn’t have any of his more well known works it is a unique opportunity to see Picasso’s development from his paintings as a young boy to the major works in his later years.

By night the quiet lanes of the Gothic quarter turn into a seething mass of people moving from bar to bar. There are numerous bars around Barcelona to suit all tastes — from old wooden bars serving small jugs of wine straight from wooden barrels to old Spanish men or students to designer bars and nightclubs. Some of the best include La Palma, c/Palma de Sant Just, El Portalon, c/Banys Nous 20. Just remember to BYO energy and be prepared to party hard and late.

Restaurants and cafes seem to be on almost every street in Barcelona and if you’re prepared to hunt around there are plenty of good, cheap ones scattered around the Ramblas. During the day most restaurants serve good value set meals of three or four courses and a glass of wine. If you want to snack your way through the day and night try the various tapas bars scattered around and off the Ramblas and Port Vell. Most of them have their own specialities and a good way is to try two or three at between 200 and 400 ptas each and move on to another place.

A must on any visit to Barcelona is the magnificent rice-based seafood paella. A huge dish of mussels, lobsters, prawn, scallops and squid on a bed of rice all washed down with a bottle or two of wine. This traditional meal has become a favourite with tourists so it’s worth hunting around for the best value. The best we found was at Restaurante Maristany on Passig Joan de Borbo.

Whether it’s the superb food, hectic nightlife, beauty of the Gothic quarter or just a weekend escape from the London gloom, Barcelona is a city that will drag you back time and time again.

The local hedonists flop around in the winter sun as the Spice Girls blast from speakers in the main square. Bubbling below, the strains of piped classical music sift through the city’s metro system. In any other European city this may seem bizarre, but in Barcelona this fusion of modern pop and classical tradition is nothing unusual, for this is one of the most outrageously modern cities in Europe.

Barcelona is a city where the 20th century rules. Visitors don’t come to sift through ancient ruins. They come to experience the city that civic planners from all over Europe flock to as the ultimate example of modern European living. They come to enjoy the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a city where tradition is dismissed as easily as the concept of sleep on streets dominated by the insomniac youth.

The best place to take the pulse of the city is on La Rambla. This expansive, palm fringed boulevard spreads its claws all the way from the port right up to the city’s main square, Placa de Catalunya, and beyond. To try and conjure up the atmosphere imagine the Edinburgh Festival performed by hyperactive London buskers every day of the year. All along its length, curious onlookers ogled men Latino-dancing with wax dummies, painted prancers pretending to be statues, beaming jugglers and even one slightly unusual soul perched up in a tree trying admirably to imitate a squirrel.

Turning away from the non-stop action at street level I caught sight of the sinuous legs of a woman, no ordinary woman though, as she is made entirely of wax and riding a horse that appeared to have vaulted through the second floor of a building only to become embedded halfway through.

“What?” “Crazy.” “I can’t believe it” are phrases many visitors utter in their first couple of days in the city. On my first night I found myself in a shopping mall surrounded by crowds of people. Nothing unusual in that, but it was 4am and the shops had mutated into sweaty, grinding clubs stuffed full of inebriated Spaniards and I was pitching out of an artificial bunker on a rooftop golf course. Barcelona is truly a weird city, where after a few days nothing surprises.

Fittingly Barcelona’s main tourist attractions are shrines to the absurd. The region’s most renowned artists include Joan Miro, Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso.

They are all 20th century innovators, whose startling work you’ll find challenging your sense throughout the city. Miro’s “Woman and Bird” statue is a must for those with even a passing interest in art, and its phallic outline makes an indelible mark on the city.

Barcelona’s most famous artistic son, though, was undoubtedly Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi spent most of his working life churning out an array of eclectic architecture based around the Modernista school of Catalan art. In the Placa Reial stand the lamp-posts that were his first contribution to the city, but his most famous work is the Sagrada Familia, a stunning, unfinished, free-form cathedral that overshadows the impressive Gothic cathedral which the city was once more famed for.

Gaudi’s temple was inspired by the craggy peaks of the nearby mountain of Monserrat and follows his belief that art must echo nature and refuse to be confined to straight lines. Whether you think it’s ugly or a work of genius you can easily spend a couple of hours trying to take it in. Gaudi was crushed by a tram before he could oversee the completion of his masterpiece, but work continues, despite objections from some citizens who reckon it is a decadent waste of money.

One building that was completed on schedule was the Olympic Stadium on Montjuic. The 1992 Barcelona Olympics marked the city’s coming of age on the world stage. The Olympic venues, scrawling over the hillside, are impressively modern with concrete columns mirroring the Olympic architecture of Athens. But, this being Barcelona, they look more like industrial smoke stacks. You can catch a funicular up the hillside and wander around the Olympic stadium and the aquatic centre, as well as visiting the older castle that towers atop Montjuic offering spectacular views of the city.

The Olympics may be fading into distant memory, but sport is still high on the agenda for the locals. The citizens of Barcelona reel in horror if you call them Spanish — they believe they have a right to self-government in the separate country of Catalonia — and nowhere is this nationalism more fervently displayed than in FC Barcelona’s massive 120,000 capacity soccer stadium. If you are in town on a match day the £20 ticket price for the “generales” seats is worth it just to watch the fanatical fans alone. If you can’t make it to a game then you can still visit the museum at the Nou Camp stadium.

Given its love of the modern, it’s no surprise the city is easy to get around. Aimless wandering is a gripping pursuit on La Rambla, but for more outlying areas the metro is a great way to get around with ten journey tickets for £3.50. Barcelona’s metro is also one of the cleanest and most efficient in Europe, borrowing the best parts of other cities’ efforts and welding them together.

If you are looking for a relaxing European break then don’t go to Barcelona. If you want to descend into the nether world of one of Europe’s most modern, but simultaneously bizarre cities, then head for the Catalan capital. You may not get much sleep and your mind will constantly be assaulted from all directions, but it’s guaranteed that you’ll constantly be surprised by a Western European city where nothing is ever quite as it seems.