Parc del Castell de l'Oreneta

Forget the manicured lawns and the Instagram-filtered perfection of the city center. If you want to see where the real Barcelona—the one with dirt under its fingernails and a mortgage in Sarrià—spends its Sunday mornings, you head uphill. Parc del Castell de l'Oreneta isn't a park in the way most tourists understand the word. It’s a seventeen-hectare sprawl of Mediterranean forest, a rugged, vertical landscape of holm oaks and pines that feels more like a piece of the Collserola mountainside that decided to slide down into the city.

The arrival is a bit of a climb. You leave the polished, quiet streets of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and ascend into a place that feels unvarnished. This was once the private playground of the wealthy, formed by the union of two grand estates, Can Bonavista and the Castell de l'Oreneta. The castle itself is a ghost, a skeletal ruin destroyed during the chaos of the Civil War in 1936. It sits there now, a jagged reminder of a darker time, slowly being reclaimed by the ivy and the dust. It’s not a 'must-see' monument; it’s a mood.

But the real reason people trek up here, the heart of the whole operation, is the Tren de l'Oreneta. This isn't some plastic, battery-operated amusement park ride. This is a serious, grease-stained labor of love run by the Centre d'Estudis Modelisme Ferroviari de Barcelona. On Sundays and holidays, the air fills with the smell of burning coal and the sharp hiss of steam. These are genuine miniature locomotives, some of them steam-powered, pulling carriages full of wide-eyed kids and equally obsessed adults along a 636-meter track. You sit on top of the cars, knees tucked in, as the train rattles through tunnels, over bridges, and past the thick undergrowth. It’s a sensory hit of pure nostalgia—the clatter of the rails, the heat of the engine, the soot in the air. It’s one of the best things to do in Sarrià if you have even a flicker of a soul left.

Beyond the tracks, the park maintains a slightly wild, chaotic energy. There are pony rides for the kids—a classic, if somewhat dusty, Sunday ritual—and playgrounds that look like they’ve seen a thousand scraped knees. The paths are gravel and steep, winding their way up to viewpoints that offer a panoramic middle finger to the crowded beaches below. From the Mirador, you can see the whole of Barcelona laid out like a map, from the Sagrada Família to the sea, without the elbow-to-elbow jostling of Park Güell.

The crowd here is almost entirely local. It’s grandfathers in flat caps, young families with double-wide strollers navigating the inclines, and joggers who look like they eat hills for breakfast. There’s a cafeteria that serves the kind of honest, unpretentious snacks you need after a hike—cold beer, basic sandwiches, and the sound of children screaming with joy in the background. It’s loud, it’s dusty, and it’s perfectly human.

Is Parc del Castell de l'Oreneta worth it? If you’re looking for marble statues and fountains, no. Go back to the Ciutadella. But if you want to breathe air that smells like pine resin and coal smoke, if you want to see a side of Barcelona that doesn't care if you like it or not, then yes. It’s a place of simple, visceral pleasures. Just wear decent shoes, bring some water, and for God’s sake, get there early if you want a seat on the steam train. The queue for the 10:30 AM departure waits for no one.