Urban experiences, two hours to learn something in your own city.

A Saturday without leaving the city

Not every weekend calls for a car and a suitcase. Sometimes the best plan is three metro stops away: a class where you cook your own paella, a vermouth tasting in the back room of a bar, three hours with your hands in the clay on a potter's wheel, a visit to the stage of an opera house when there is no performance. These are plans of one to three hours, booked a few days ahead, that fit into an afternoon. With two of them and a dinner you have a whole Saturday.

Here we gather the ones we have checked in Barcelona and Madrid. Each has its own sheet with the business that runs it, the price it publishes, the days and times, the language, the minimum age and the page where you book. When a business does not publish a detail, we say so rather than guess.

What counts as an urban experience

It has to be something you do, not just something you look at, and it has to be bookable as an individual or as a small group. Five families qualify:

• Cooking and tastings. Paella and tapas classes, dessert courses, tastings of wine, vermouth, coffee, chocolate and cheese, and brewery visits with a tasting at the end.
• Workshops. Wheel-thrown pottery, jewellery, sewing, perfume. You leave with a piece or, as with lost-wax jewellery, with a date to collect it.
• Show with a table. Flamenco with dinner at a tablao, in sessions that start in the early evening.
• Behind the scenes. Theatres, stadiums and factories that show what the public does not see: the stage machinery, the wardrobe, the loom.
• Water and play. A sailing boat at sunset, a paddle surf class, an escape room with a story.

Barcelona: from La Rambla to Gràcia

In Barcelona the plans cluster by neighbourhood, and it pays to take advantage of that. On La Rambla and in the Born is the cooking: Barcelona Cooking's paella class with dinner, the Museu de la Xocolata cookie workshop for children from age 6, and the wine and cheese tastings at Vila Viniteca. Sant Antoni is for drinking: the tasting of six beers at the Fàbrica Moritz and the vermouth you bottle yourself at Las Vermudas. Gràcia is the neighbourhood of workshops, with the wheel at La Torratxa and the lost-wax ring at Barcelona Jewelry Studio.

What Madrid does not have is the sea. In Barcelona, a shared sailing boat leaves Port Olímpic at sunset, and in the Barceloneta there is paddle surf first thing. And at night, the Tablao Cordobés serves dinner before the flamenco in three daily sessions.

To link them up: sailing and rice in the Barceloneta for a couple, escape room, beer and vermouth for a group of friends, chocolate cookies and flamenco with children, Palau, tapas and chocolate for a rainy day and a ring you make yourself and Park Güell for a day in Gràcia.

Madrid: Las Letras, Lavapiés and Plaza de Oriente

In Madrid the centre concentrates the cooking and the shows, and the workshops are spread across neighbourhoods with a metro stop at the door. In the Barrio de las Letras, Cooking Point runs the paella class that starts with shopping at the Antón Martín market, and El Puente Gallery the silver clay jewellery workshop. In Chueca you can blend a made-to-measure perfume; in Lavapiés, La Fisna opens a wine tasting for six to eight on Wednesdays.

What Madrid has in abundance is visits to the inside of places. The Teatro Real technical tour shows the stage machinery every morning, and the Real Fábrica de Tapices opens its workshops with the looms running for €6. At night, the Corral de la Morería serves dinner and flamenco every evening.

The plans already put together: Teatro Real, the Palace and cocido, paella, a boat and free Prado with children, escape room, tasting and prawns for friends, tapestries, Prado and tripe for a grey day and a silver jewel and flamenco as a couple.

How to choose and book

Look at the date before the price. Many of these activities are not daily. Nomad's coffee tasting in Barcelona is one Friday a month; the silver workshop in Madrid has three dates until the end of the year; La Fisna's tasting is on Wednesdays only. Start with whatever has the fewest dates and build the rest around it.

Check the language. Several cooking classes and workshops are given in English. It is no problem for following the recipe, but it is worth knowing before you book.

Look at the age. Tastings with alcohol are for over-18s. Workshops with tools or an oven do not always publish a minimum age: ask. For going with children, the sheets mark those that accept them, such as the cookie workshop from age 6 or the Teatro Real technical tour from 10.

Group by neighbourhood. Two plans in the same neighbourhood link on foot; two at opposite ends cost you an hour on the metro.

Cooking classes include food. Do not book a restaurant straight afterwards: you end up sitting down to what you have cooked.

What it costs

There is everything. Seeing the looms at the Real Fábrica de Tapices costs €6, and the visit to the La Caníbal brewery in Madrid, €10 with a pint. A tasting or a chocolate workshop runs from €16 to €50; a pottery or jewellery workshop, from €43 to €110; cooking classes with a meal, around €85, and the perfume workshop in Madrid, €118. Tablaos combine dinner and show: in Barcelona, from €72 with tapas; in Madrid, the menu from €49.95 plus the ticket.