Pedralbes is where Barcelona keeps its calm — uptown, leafy, built on a Gothic cloister and a Gaudí dragon and not much hurry. Three and a half kilometres in the morning, mostly uphill but gently, from the wrought-iron gate to the quietest arcades in the city.
Start at the Pavellons de la Finca Güell, Gaudí's first job for Eusebi Güell, where an iron dragon with glass eyes still guards the old estate gate. Slip into the Jardins del Palau Reial de Pedralbes next door — formal beds, a hidden Gaudí fountain in the bamboo — then climb the Avinguda de Pedralbes past the villas and embassies of the city's quietest streets.
The Reial Monestir de Santa Maria de Pedralbes is the reason to come: Queen Elisenda's fourteenth-century monastery, with a three-storey Gothic cloister that holds silence better than any church. It's shut on Mondays; any other morning, the arcades are nearly yours. Drop down through the old village lanes to Reina Elisenda, named for the queen herself, and the FGC train back into the centre.
