Two great sites are back!!!!

What an exciting month has been March!
Two really good sites have just been reopened to the public after years of being closed for refurbishment works. I'd missed them so much!
So taking advantage of a last-minute cancellation, I spend a whole morning exploring them in depth. What a privilege!



First of all, a must-see Gaudí site: The Palau Güell, a private mansion built for his best friend and benefactor Eusebi Güell that is considered a precursor of the masterpieces he'd be building later on.

The visit includes the entrance hall, the basement where the stables were located, the main staircase, the main floor with all the social areas (dinning room, lost-steps room, reception rooms... as well as the impressive central room with its magnificent hyperbolic dome) as well as the back patio, then it continues with the upper floor where the private dormitories where located, and it finishes with the attic (now used for an exhibit on the building restoration process) and the fairy-tailish rooftop where Gaudí was already starting to play with the smokepipe shapes.

Unfortunately, the structure of the building is very delicated and the access is limited to only 185 people at a time and tourguides will not be allowed to skip the entrance lines with small groups (as we are used to have the privilege to do in most other sites). But if you are interested in visiting it with me, we can always meet directly there and I'll be there a bit early to make sure to get the tickets for the right time!



The other wonderful museum that just reopened is the Museu Marès. Frederic Marès was one of the most important Catalan sculptors of the early 19hundreds, and he was also an avid collector. This museum displays his collections: a huge sculpture collection not of his works but mostly of religious christian sculptures from the middle ages upto Marès times, as well as his "collector's cabinet" showing daily life objects from the 17 to the early 19hundreds including all kind of fans, women jewelry, smoking pipes, ceramic, weapons, clocks, toys, toilettery...

While I must say visiting the whole museum listening to the audioguide point by point was quite exhausting (it took me 3h!!), I'd probably recomend only people who are very interested in medieval art visit the street level where the sculpture collection is, and the rest go straight to the upper floors to enjoy the Collector's Cabinet. It can be fun even for kids! Just do it lightly, because it can again be overwhelming at some point!
Anyway, I'm planning to take my grandparents there next week as I'm (so far!) still available on Tuesday. I'm sure they'll love to see all this old stuff

The Balltron group

Allison and Allen Schneeberger organized a cruise trip for some of their best employees at Balltron and I was their guide in Barcelona. I greeted them at the airport on their arrival and took them to visit the Sagrada Família on their first day, then the next day I scorted them to the cruise pier (helping recovering two forgotten passports as well!), and met them back in town after their cruise was over for some more touring and a fun lunch before taking them back to the airport.

Here is a piece of the letter Allison has just sent me (the rest contains personal info and has not been included in this post):

Dear Marta

Thank you so very much for making our time in Barcelona such a memorable one. Everybody had a great time..... their expectations were exceeded. Thank you for being such a great guide and host during our time in Barcelona. I can see why others had recommended you so highly.

I had probably never had such a varied group, and it was really fun showing them around. I hope I'll be seeing them again someday in Barcelona!

One more post in PromptGuides

I continue to collaborate with the PromptGuides.com travel blog.
Here is a screen shot of my new article, on how to order coffee in Barcelona.

To read the rest, click here.

Letter from Ron Gentile

Three weeks ago I gave a tour to Ron Gentile and two other couples.
Ron and his wife Betty wanted to have a private minivan tour, and used a very popular cruise travel forum, http://boards.cruisecritic.com, to find some other people to share it with them. They were very different couples, but despite having communicated online only and not having met in person before the tour, it was a successful experience!
Here is the letter he just sent me:

Dear Marta,
Not sure how to post a comment on your BLOG as I am internet challenged so I thought I'd send an E-mail for you to post. We gave Marta a little extra challenge as we three couples were staying in three different hotels. We were the first pick up and she was right on time, 15 minutes early in fact. I'd like to say thank for your extra effort to pick up our friends staying at the Hotel on the Rambla as the street was closed Sunday, April 17th for a parade. You didn't even give it a thought to jump out of the van and run on foot to their hotel and grab them, that's means a lot. For others who are readfing this post, Marta is one of the better guides we used in Europe. She is personal able, knowledgeable and is very clear in speaking English, I only wish people in Los Angeles could speak as while as she. We toured all the Gaudi sites except the Familia which was closed to tours because of Palm Sunday. Everything was just great, tours well timed and we learned a lot. The tour information was provided at just the right pace so we could understand and digest it all. I could tell she is very good and experienced at being a guide. After the tour she escorted us to our ship and dropped us off right at the cruise ship terminal. Our tour was a half day and fit our schedule to a tee, we saw what we wanted and even a little more.
FYI: I have posted to tripadvisor to have you added to their list of Guides for Barcelona, as I believe in letting others know how good you are.

Thank you again for making our trip to Barcelona a trip to remember,

Ron J. Gentile