Culture and Music summer nights

Summer is a superactive time for the culture and arts sphere, in Barcelona.

I know, I should have announce the Grec Festival when it started in June, but... You know, I don't need to give you bad excuses such as "high season, too busy, no time...".
So let's repair the mistake right now...




Grec Scenic Arts festival. Theater, Music, Dance and more!

And more for music lovers! The Mas Y Mas Festival! Techno, Flamenco, Jazz, Classical, Groove... Check out their website to see their program of live concerts (double click on the pictures below, they're more understandable than their Catalan texts...).

Strange symbols in web repaired!

Some years ago, I created my website Http://www.foreverbarcelona.com myself using Microsoft Word. Little by little I've learnt new tricks and I've added new resources, but I'm not a webmaster at all and I don't know much about computer languages.

So one of my big problems was that often accents, apostrophes and other signs were viewed as: ������. It wasn't pretty and it made reading my website more difficult and tiring. But I didn't know how to solve it...

And yesterday I came up with the solution!!!! I opened a file and went:

Tools > Options > General > Web Options > Codification > Unicode (UTF-8)
(it had been saved as "Occidental" or "European")

And it worked!!!!
I spent two afternoons saving it in Unicode and replacing all the weird symbols by understandable characters, but it was worth.

Now I can announce that my website doesn't have ������ anymore, and I hope to solve soon some other minor details I encountered during the process.

I spent a great day with Domenico and Giulia, from Kiss the World

As I anounced in a previous post, the owners of Kiss From The World contacted me to help them in their Barcelona project.

I met this adorable couple at their hotel in the Raval district, and we spent the day interviewing interesting local characters like the owner of a spadrille store, the most famous barman at the Boqueria market, a local cheese seller, a Barcelona artist and the owner of Maigot, a cute local-tourist bar on the way to the Park Güell.

We had a lot of fun together, so I decided to go with them to Sagrada Familia where they had to record the other part of their project, the "fun" part, where they say hi from in front of an emblematic local site and send a kiss to the world.

They were really lovely, and I can't wait to see the result of their work, that is schedule to be online around September after they come back from their summer trips where they'll keep working for their project.

Stay tuned for more!

News at the Sagrada Familia!!!!

The other day, while on a tour, I crossed Jordi Faulí, one of the main architects in the Sagrada Familia, and he confirmed me they plan to have the interior of the church ready by July 2010. Well, they are really working to fullfill their promise, as today when I entered the naves area I looked up and... they had started removing some of the scaffolding and platforms that hid the new vaults at the transcept, at the side of the Nativity Façade. Here is my pic!

The vaults I'm talking about are those made of flat brick (orange color) and venitian glass (gold and green touches). To me, that I'm going there almost every day, it is so exciting to see how the building grows!

The Game of the Angel, a success in its English translation!

The English translation of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's continuation of the popular "Shadow of the Winds" has been finally released and in few weeks it reached the top list of America's best sellers.

If you were thrilled by the misterious story that took you into the streets of the Barcelona of the 18 hundreds, now you'll be able to discover how the story continues.
Don't miss it!

And if you are coming to Barcelona, you'll be able to visit with me some of the areas where the characters moved: Plaça Reial, Montcada street...
A novel like this is a fun way to start "tunning into" your next trip to town!

Hard to change travellers cheques...

Hi!
Yesterday I was on a tour and my clients asked to help them changing travellers cheques. We tried 4 different banks before we found one that accepted changing them!

It looks like most people aren't using them much and they cause them too much trouble, that's why banks don't want to change them anymore.

So beware, travellers cheques aren't a good idea if you are coming to Barcelona.
Anyway, here is the bank who changed them (for a commission, of course):

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Tour de France in Barcelona

The famous bike race Tour de France will be leaving its country for a day to visit Barcelona. If you are in town and want to check out this great sport event (or if you want to avoid it so it doesn't interfere with your touring), go to the Barcelona City Council website to see the itinerary on July 9th. The caravan is expected to arrive around 3pm, and the cyclers around 5pm.

Yellow panels will be handed out to the public in order to create the world's largest Yellow Wave. How fun to participate on it!

And the next day, the Tour will be leaving Barcelona: 9am departs the caravan, 11pm the first cyclers. Again, check out the itinerary here.