Today is St. George's Day!

One of my favorite days in the year!
Here is my rose and book for you!


More on this tradition in this older post.

Great to have them back!

When a building I like needs restauration and it gets covered with scaffolding, I know I won't be seeing its familiar beauty for some months... even years!
But when the works are finally over, it's such a pleasure to have them back and clean and repaired!

This week I had to nice surprises: the works inside of the Església de Santa Maria del Pi, which had been totally covered with scaffolding blocking the view of its gorgeous rosewindow, and the front of Santa Maria del Mar, have been finally completed and they are both back to their normal scaffolding-free appearances!

It's great to have them back!
Would you like to discover them with me? Check out my Medieval Barcelona walking tours!

Nature is powerful

Wow, this is the first year in all my 10 years as a tourguide where the power of nature gets to affect travellers in a big way here in Barcelona.

The first time was the storm snow I reported last month. It started during a tour with the Stein, and then I got a group cancelling their FC Barcelona Tour and their Helicopter rides. Too bad!

Now, it's the Iceland vulcano ash cloud. And funnily, it has affected me in several different ways:

--- Yesterday I had a tour with the Sullivan, who didn't know if their flight would be finally departing this morning. Hopefully it did!

--- Then I got a call from Seldon Young, for whom I organized a whole 10-day program for his YPO group in 2007, who after this became a good friend and has recomended me to so many people since. He was travelling in Europe and got stuck here with some other friends, and he asked me to show them the city. We had a wonderful 6h tour today.

--- Tomorrow I'm having the Bennett for another 6h tour. Looks like they finally managed to fly from Philadelphia. Great! As we have a beautiful program with them tomorrow including all their favorites, some contemporary architecture, and some cheese and tapas!

--- Finally I have another group, bussiness people, who couldn't make it and will be post-poning their trip.

I'm glad no big harm has been done and things are working well. So far, the Barcelona airport is reopened and they are working to get things back to normal!

Gayle Sullivan posted a review on our tour today!

Hello again!

Today I just had a tour with Gayle Sullivan, her husband and friends (5 in total+me). It were 6h on a minivan tour that allowed us to see so many things!
Even if two of her friends had some walking issues, I managed to show them even the Park Güell (skipping the stairs as much as possible!). They were delighted... and I was even more, to see them happy!
Also, when we got to the Sagrada Familia Church a local festival was taking place and we were able to see "castellers" (Human Castles). Quite hard to see otherwise, but so exciting!
And to my surprise, just a few hours later I see she has already posted a review on Ourexplorer.com, where she booked me. I'm so thankful and proud of contributing to add a piece of joy to someone new everyday!

Click here to read the review!

More on Official Tourguides

Following the previous post on official tourguides, I just submitted a whole article to Tripadvisor on what must someone accomplish to be a fully licensed Barcelona tourguide and how to recognize guides who give tours without the necessary accreditations.

You can read it here.