Thank you from the Strauss

Myra, Larry and Ben booked me for a whole day touring Barcelona. We had to post-pone the tour a couple of weeks because Myra hurt her foot and couldn't travel, but we finally met two days ago.
Here is the email they sent me right on the next day:

Dear Marta,

We want to thank you for a wonderful day in Barcelona. We all enjoyed the tour and having you with us made our first visit to Barcelona very special. We would also like to extend a thank you to Jose Luis for his good driving and great patience. We will gladly and enthusiastically pass your name and website to anyone we know who is visiting Barcelona. If you are ever in the Miami area in the winter or the Boston area during spring, summer or fall, please let us know.

Sincerely,

Myra, Larry & Ben

I need to say Myra was using crutches and a wheelchair, so Jose Luis help was very appreciated.

Letter from a teacher from Belgium

Some days ago I showed Barcelona to a group of students from Belgium. We had a Gaudí Tour, and another of the Old Town. The kids were studying to be builders, so they specially appreciated everything I told them about Gaudí's construction and engineering techniques.
Here is the letter their teacher Sabrina has just sent me:

Dear Marta,

I wanna thank you for your guided tours around Barcelona.
They were very interesting. I asked the boys to give an evaluation (for the whole trip),
and they liked the trip very much, also your guided tours. They remember very well all the interesting things.
I hope we were also a "good public" for you.

Thanks again,
Sabrina

Of course, they were a good public! It's always fun to work with young people!

Old Shops Tour for Sales Students

Last week I gave a special tour of Old Shops and Venues for a group of Sales students of the Projecte Bellvís of the City Council of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat. I took them visiting very special stores, many of them more than 100 years old, and we learnt about their history, and how they have managed to survive for so long in the bussiness world while still keeping their original look and flavour. It was lots of fun!

In this picture you can see us in front of Els Quatre Gats, a cafè where the bohemian artists used to meet in the early 19 hundreds. It wasn't originally planned to be included in our tour, but I took them there because Africa, one of the people responsible for the group, asked me to. And I always love to adapt to my clients requests! : )

More about this itinerary here.

Third great feedback in less than a week!

Wow, these days I'm breaking my own good-feeback record!

Jim and Gene, the owners of the travel agency Cork & Tee specialising in golf and gourmet vacations, use my services whenever they have clients coming to Barcelona.
Recently they had a VIP group for whom I did different services, one of them a city tour. Here is what Jim just wrote to me:

I spoke with Helen Wright two days ago from the yacht. Without asking her about Barcelona, she said their tour with you was WONDERFUL! I'm quite sure it will be a highlight of their wonderful trip. We are so very pleased to be working with you!

It was written I'd give them a tour!

Sometimes you get this feeling something had to happen... That's the case of my tour for Dee Ann Arp and her group! It's a bit complex, so I'll try to sum up:

- Dee Ann contacts me through one of the sites I advertize in, Ourexplorer.com. She needs a tour for a day, and I'm available, so she can book me now (through that site, because that is the way Ourexplorer works).
- Last minute, Dee Ann's group have to change the date and I'm not available anymore for her, so I cannot give her the tour.
- I recomend her other colleagues at Ourexplorer, but in the end she finds someone else outside of Ourexplorer to give her the tour on the day she needs.
- She doesn't know, but she has contacted Jose, a good friend and colleague of mine that I often recomend (but this time I hadn't, because he is not in Ourexplorer).
- Two days before her tour, the group decides to have a museum tour on the day before the city tour they have booked with my friend Jose.
- Jose is not available, but he calls me to substitute him, and I'm available that day, so I accept.
- I give the museum tour to Dee Ann and her group, and only at the end we realized I was the tourguide she had previously contacted at Ourexplorer!
Unfortunately the next day I was already booked (that's why I had had to refuse her Ourexplorer booking), but they had their city tour arranged by Jose.

Amazing, isn't it?
Well, here is the letter I just got from her:

Hi Marta,
Thank you for our tour. I knew you would be great. You were the best guide ever. It became our mutual agreement which we repeated over and over to each other "WE WANT MARTA!" You spoiled us. If you ever come to America, you can stay at any of our homes. We are spread out over Texas. We all have extra bedrooms and would welcome you. Thanks again!

Dee Ann Arp

Feedback from Craig Ross

Craig Ross booked me to show him and his group the city for a whole day. We had time to see everything! Here is the letter he has sent me:

Marta,

I just wanted to send you a brief note to thank you for the wonderful full day tour of Barcelona. Everyone in our group had a great time. We all had a hard time deciding what venue we enjoyed most...Guell Park, Familia Sangrada, the market on La Rambla (one of my favorites....so colorful).

I would be happy to recommend your services to anyone visiting Barcelona.

Craig

Unexpected things during the Moore's tour

Interesting and unusual tour we had with Jim Moore and his friends yesterday.
We started like any other city tour, with the Passeig de Gràcia and Gaudí's appartment buildings Casa Batlló and Casa Milà / Pedrera, and then continued to the Sagrada Familia church. There the first surprise of the tour was awaiting us: they were celebrating the festival of the district and several teams of castellers, the catalan human towers, were performing. I told them about this special tradition and how like they had been to see it, as it isn't hard to hit one of these shows. Here is a picture:

Next, we continued to the Old Town, where we had an encounter with a group of pickpockets. Fortunately enough, I immediately realized those Romanian Gypsy girls had just stopped behind our group and we moved away from them, but we could still see the pick-pockets operating, trying to steal from a young couple of tourists that we alerted, and then finally managing to steal a wallet from another lady...
I hate so much to see this kind of things, it really disturbs me. But I know the only way we can fight them is making visitors aware of them, and that's why I'm writing that in my post: so you know it happens. Please don't consider your back pocket a safe place for your wallet and keep always your bag IN FRONT of you and not in your back. Make things difficult for pick-pockets and have a safe holyday!

I was so angry and could see the gypsies had spotted us telling other people, so I decided to move on. We left the Cathedral and continued to the charming squares of the Gothic Quarter. I showed them the Plaça del Rei, and the Roman Temple and when we got to Plaça Sant Jaume... there was a demostration going on! Oh My... But well, they were moving away from the square so I finally managed to tell them about the site and since it was the end of the tour I recomended them a great tapas place for lunch.

That had been an unusual tour!