Special Gaudí tours for the Kerlin

The Kerlin family are Gaudí lovers. Specially Kevin, the father, are passionated about the architect's works, and for their trip to Barcelona they asked me to show them his early works and other sites outside the city center. The itinerary was customized inch by inch to include all the sites they wanted to see!

My driver collected them at the airport, and I joined them at the entrance of the city: at the gate of the gardens of Palau Reial, where we wanted to see a fountain and a pergola designed by a very young Gaudí.

De Gaudí: Minor works

Not far, we also stopped at the famous Dragon Gate of the Güell Pavilions.

Next we drove to Casa Vicenç, in the Gràcia District.

De Gaudí: Minor works

Then continued to Torre Bellesguard, where I was also able to show them a viaduct (sort of a bridge) that has been recently restored.

De Gaudí: Minor works

We then visited the Park Güell - not at all a minor work, of course, but you do need some transportation means to get there, and since we were on the minivan we agreed it was convenient to include it in our tour. To their request, we changed a bit my usual itinerary so they could get to the Hill of the Three Crosses at the very top of the park and we also had some time to visit the Gaudí House-Museum.

So far we had covered all the Gaudí sites we had planned for the day, but before I left them at their hotel we still had some time to stop at the Hospital de Sant Pau by Domènech i Muntaner, the AGBAR tower by Jean Nouvel and the Fish sculpture by Frank Gehry.

Two days later, we were ready to meet again for our next Gaudí adventure, but this time we went out of town: Montserrat and the Colònia Güell.

Since the Kerlin do a lot of research to prepare their vacations and know exactly every single thing they want to see, we prepared a very complete but packed itinerary and we agreed that we'd have to strictly stick to the timings if we wanted to cover it all. I must admit I wasn't very confident we'd be able to make it but... we did! They were very good respecting our schedule because they had very clear goals, and we made it in a way that everything felt fun and not that rushed.

So first of all, we departed the hotel ponctually at 8.45 and arrived to the foot of Montserrat just on time to take the cablecar. Mission 1 completed!
Then we run to the Black Madonna shrine before it closed for morning mass (we really only had to speed up until we crossed the church side door: once inside we relaxed... Mission 2 completed! Good job!

And by the way, on the way to the Shrine we were able to see the Crucifix that some specialists claim it was made by Michaellangelo himself! (guess what, the Kerlin are also Michaellangelo's lovers!)



Now we had to move on quickly to the Funicular of St. Joan, were we arrived 5min before the second funicular of the day departed. It took us up the hill: hour plan was walking down back to the Monastery to enjoy the mountain views. I love this excursion, and it takes only some 45-50min (make sure to wear good walking shoes, though!).

After the hike, we headed to the Museum. Of course, Kevin had a list of pieces he wanted to see! We covered them all except for one Picasso and one Dalí that had been sent to a show somewhere else, but I got to show them other interesting pieces that they didn't expect to see there.

12.30 and we were totally on our schedule. We entered the church, found 4 seats and waited for the choir to sing. We also used this rest-time to discuss a bit more about Montserrat, Gaudí and many other things.

De Montserrat

After the choir, time for lunch! Food isn't specially great in the mountain, but we were fine with the simple dishes sold at the cantine. Our next mission was getting the first Funicular de la Santa Cova of the afternoon (funiculars close for lunchbreak). Gaudí was quite young when we was asked to participate in the construction of the Path of the Cross on the way to the Holy Cave, and he was in charge of one of the Misteries of Glory: the Resurrection. We of course made the funicular, and got to Gaudí's mistery in only 8min. Then they preferred skipping the Cave so we had some time for souvenir shopping before leaving the mountain. We got back to the Funicular and manage to get the one before the one we had planned: that earned us 20extra minutes for shopping. Yeah!

And by 14.55 the driver was picking us up to take us to the Colònia Güell. 5min ahead of schedule! Impressive! So on the way to the Colònia we even had the time to stop over the Walden-7 building, that Kevin was interested in seeing aswell.



We all loved the Crypt made by Gaudí in la Colònia Güell. We spent some 30min visiting, then returned to Barcelona. What a complete day it had been!