A week with Harvard seniors

Last summer I was contacted by Maribel and Phil from Maribel's Guides, one of the best travel sites and tour agency to help you planning and organizing your trip to Spain. They had a group of seniors from Harvard who were coming to Barcelona and they were looking for a local tourguide to help planning all their culture-focussed activities as well as some restaurant reservations.

And after an intense scheduling and booking process, the group finally arrived on March 18th. I met them at the airport (Maribel and Phil were also there), and our ride to their hotel in the city center was our first contact: I started loving them already - and I must say they started loving me aswell!


Our first two days were devoted to exploring Barcelona: the Boqueria Food Market, the Cathedral, the roman ruins of the Museum of History of the City plus the Picasso Museum in the afternoon made for a very complete saturday tour; while Park Güell, Sagrada Família, Casa Batlló and Casa Milà/Pedrera (both appartment buildings inside!) were covered on Sunday.
On Monday we went to Girona for the day: Arab Baths, Cathedral, Jewish Section and an amazing Catalan lunch at one of my favorite restaurants there, Cal Ros.

Tuesday was a free day (many wanted to do the Jewish Section and the Miró Foundation, that couldn't be included in our city itineraries for lack of time). Then Wednesday we headed to Tarragona. We walked along their impressive Roman Walls, passed the forum ruins, visited the Cathedral (despite the restoration works going on inside, they loved it even more than Girona!), and had lunch in Les Voltes, a restaurant located inside some of the Roman Circus Vaults. I love this setting! And after lunch there was still some time to see some more circus ruins and visit the Amphitheater. It was a beautiful day!

But sadly everything has an end! Although they would have loved to keep me for the rest of their trip (they were continuing to Bilbao next), I'm only licensed to give tours in Catalonia so I had to stay and on Thursday I took them back to the airport. Once there Judy, one of the group responsibles, gave me an envelop with a (very generous) tip and a note, that I want to share with you:

Barcelona with kids

The Shield walking down the hills of Montserrat

This winter I've had several families with kids, and there are two of them that I'll remember with all my love.

First was the Shield family, with 2 beautiful daughters: Natalya and Daniela. Their parents, Chris and Carol, booked me to take them on a daytrip to Montserrat. She is a musician and wanted to hear the choir, and he's a geologist and was fascinated about the mountain's geological origins. We took the St. Joan funicular, then strolled down following and easy (but sometimes steep) path down the mountain enjoying the views, the strange shapes of the mountains (we saw the Monkey, the Elephant, the Parrot...), smelling the local herbs such as rosmary and thime, finding interesting pebbles and rocks... And then of course we did the Escolania Choir.
It was a fun day! So fun... that the girls kept asking to have me again, and two days later we arranged another tour, this time to visit the Sagrada Família church. They are so lovely!

Joshua and the Giants

The other family I love being with was the Cohen. Peter, Janice and their kids Julia and Joshua are a delightful family who hired me for 2 mornings. On our first day together however Julia was undisposed, so her father stayed with her, and Janice and Joshua came with me exploring the Old Town. We missed the others, but had fun altogether. On our way to the Gothic Quarter we hit an exhibit on Giants (traditional cardboard sculptures used in Catalonia for festival parades) and we loved them. We also took the elevator to the roof of the Cathedral - Joshua was pleased to see I could take him into a church without it feeling like another boring church! ; )
And we finished our morning eating some delicious hot chocolate with churros.

Hot Chocolate with churros

Happily, the next day Julia was feeling better and everyone joined our second morning tour, where we did the Boqueria Market and the Gaudí sites (again, the Sagrada Família didn't look at all like any other church Joshua had been into, and it was even his favorite place in town!).

Innaguration days!

As locals say... when the local elections approach, plenty of things are innaugurated. And that's what's happened last week, when two main brand new sites have just been open.

The first one I want to talk about is Las Arenas shopping mall, former bullfight ring that after 3 decades of beeing closed is finally starting a new life and it's called to become a very popular shopping and food hub that will definitely be appreciated by the visitors of the Montjuïc Hill aswell as the participants to the many trade fairs organized in Fira Barcelona. There will also be a wonderful gim with a spa (to be open in May) and also the Museum of Rock, that will definitely become a must for teens and modern music lovers.
By the way, contemporary architecture lovers will be pleased to know the building was refurbished following a project by Richard Rogers. Do you want to learn more? Take one of my contemporary architecture tours!


The other big site is the brand new Museum of Sciences (also called Blue Museum, because it's hosted inside the triangular blue building at the Forum by Herzog & De Meuron - again, good news for contemporary architecture lovers!). This new museum is the result of the renovation of the former Museum of Zoology and Museum of Geology that used to occupied buildings from the 1888 World Fair in the Ciutadella Park. Now their collections and presentations have been modernised and they are going to become a new pilgrimage point for any visitor interested in sciences aswell as for many families with kids.

I'm planning to visit both of them as soon as possible, so stay tunned for more posts on them!

My first real post for PromptGuides

Hi again!

So after my interview has been published, now my first post in the Promptguides TravelBlog is up!
It's on Calçots, the delicious green onions we devour this time of the year.
Some of the information had already been posted in this blog, but some interesting facts are new.
Check the Blog link above to read it!

And still another blog where I've collaborated

As I've mentioned in previous articles, I advertize in several online guide listings such as Toursbylocals.com.
Now they have just launched a blog, and I have been selected to be their first guide to collaborate with a post with my suggestions on the 5 top things to do in Barcelona.

A recomended site!

Would you like to see how much as Barcelona changed during this last century?
Don't miss this curious: http://www.fotosdebarcelona.com/ where you'll find pictures comparing what it's now and what it used to be.

I've been interviewed!

I'm thrilled to announce that I've started collaborating with PromptGuides.com and soon you'll be able to read my blog posts on Barcelona food, sites and more. And just to start with, they've interviewed me to introduce me to their readers!
You can read the interview here.

A children afternoon

My brother leaves in Andorra, so I don't get to spend much time with my nephew but this week the kid has a school holyday and he's in town. My mom and I decided to take him to Cosmocaixa, the Science Museum and he had an awesome time there!

We had heard there was a temporary exhibit on dinosaure skeletons, and since he LOVES dinosaures, we thought it'd be fun. And yes, the exhibit was a success (we did it twice!), but he also enjoyed so much all the interactive science experiments. Well, not that he's old enough to really understand what they were about (he's only 6yo), but there were loads of buttons to push and things to move! And you know how kids are! ; )

And the biggest surprise was the Flooded Forrest: they have reproduced the Amazonian Forrest environment so you can see it first from outside (huge piranhas!), but then you enter the backside of the glass cage and it becomes a subdued-light terrarium with more fish, and snakes, and spiders and then... you get out to the Forrest Garden. My nephew got so excited! He really felt like he was in a real forrest with all those plants and the birds moving around us. It also started "raining" on the marshland (we didn't get wet, though), and we could feel the warm temperature and the moist in the air. That was SO cool!

So if you are visiting Barcelona with kids, Cosmocaixa is definitely a great place to go for an afternoon. Take either a taxi, or from Plaça Catalunya the FFCC train to Avinguda Tibidabo, then from there the196 bus takes you to the door.

Also, if you are planning to join any of their additional activities such as the Planetarium or the TocaToca, make sure to book them online as they always sell out (yes, even Mon-Fri afternoon in low season!).

And one more thing! The easiest way to visit the Museum is taking the elevator or the scalators to the -5 floor, and from there go back up (as the best part is in the very bottom floor).