Letter from Merill O'Ryan

Merill O'Ryan booked me through the website Toursbylocals.com. She was coming to Barcelona with some friends, and since all of them love eating and drinking they wanted a foody tour that would start with the famous Boqueria market, then it will continue visiting several local tapas bars and bodegas. It was loads of fun, even if we ended up drinking more than eating!

Here is the e-mail she has sent me to my Toursbylocals account:

And this is a great pic she posted on Facebook!
It's us waiting to be served at Pinotxo, one of the best bars in La Boqueria market.

**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

More Toursbylocals feedback!

Some days ago I took the Scheck touring Barcelona and we also went to Montserrat. Christine Scheck had booked me through Toursbylocals, and she left her review and the website. However, she felt it was not enough and she also sent me a private message.

You can now read her e-mail first below:

And here you can read her testimonial on Toursbylocals,together with another review by John Hennessey:

**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

September client testimonials from Toursbylocals!

As I've commented other times, Toursbylocals.com is one of the online tourguide listings where I advertize my Barcelona city tours and I can be booked. After thet tour, clients can post their comments as a testimonial. Here are my last 3 ones:

**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

Tour of the Whole Sale Market

Still another different visit this month: I took the students of the Lycée La Pelissière visiting Mercabarna, the Barcelona whole sale market to learn about how it works.
It was my third time there, but I still learnt new things!
We had first an introduction about the market in front of a model of the encloisure, then we watched a video on it, and we finally walked around the vegetable and fruits area. Really interesting!

**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

Lots of food and drinks this week!

This week has been one of my most epicurean weeks EVER!

It actually started the Friday before with a Tapas Tour for the Swaby, a family composed by the parents and two adult children with the girlfriend of one of them. They had just arrived to Barcelona and thought a Tapas Tour would be a fun way to get introduced to the city on their first evening in town. They were lots of fun to be with, and we laughed a lot! By the way, I picked them up at the Port where they were staying, and as we were leaving it we saw a rainbow over the city!

Then I saw them again on Monday, this time  this time we went on a daytrip to the Penedès Wine Country. We visited 2 cellars there: one organic winery in the middle of the vineyards and then a family-owned traditional cava cellar where we could see them degorging the bottles by hand (now everyone uses machines for that, so it was very unique!). After our 6h daytrip, we had tried 10 different wines and cavas!

With the Swabys t the cava maker's, where one of the underground cellars is called "Marta"! 

(not after me, of course, but after one of their family members...)

Then on Tuesday and Wednesday I went back to my usual sightseeing tours, although funnily enough I kept crossing the Swabys everywhere! Haha, I love this kind of coincidences!

Then I had Mr. Cassidy, that was visiting Barcelona on his own. We first had a Gaudi tour that also included 2 stops somewhere to get a drink (you guessed right: more wine!) and then the next day I took him on a Tapas Tour that we ended with a nice stroll along the Barceloneta waterfront to walk off the food.



And actually, that tour was the second Epicurean Tour of the day! In the morning I showed around Merrill O'Ryan and her friends, and after exploring the Boqueria Market we went to the tapas bars. They were actually more interested in drinking than eating, so we had lots of bier, wine, cava and sangria!

And now... I'm ready for some dieting, if you allow me to!   ; )

**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

Special visit of the temporary exhibit at the Picasso Museum

The Picasso Museum has been displaying a great temporary exhibit since July, in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam about the first years Picasso stayed in Paris.

"Feasting on Picasso" explores how the cultural and social life in Paris quickly influenced his art, introduces us his marchands, friends and lovers and follows the evolution of his style comparing it to the masters of the impressionism such as Van Gogh, Toulouse Lautrec and others, until everything explodes into the emergence of cubism.

I was really happy when I received a call from Sandra from Contempla, one of the top travel agencies in Barcelona, asking me if I could give a special tour of the exhibit for one of their groups. Feasting on Paris had been in my "must-see" list since it was innaugurated, but this season has been so busy I hadn't had the opportunity to go yet.


I had a few hours of free time, so I run to the Picasso Museum to prepare my museum tour: I walked around the rooms taking notes, sat to read the catalogue, and then back home I did some more research on the internet and the books on Picasso I have at home. It was a very productive day!

I gave the museum tour on Friday, and even if the clients had less time for it than it had been planned at first, I manage to give them a nice overview, and I got congratulated for the job. I'm so happy to get this opportunities to share my passion for Picasso with other people! Plus temporary exhibits are a great way to refresh my knowldege and open-up to new points of view about the permanent collection aswell!

**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

Great review for Miriam!

Sometimes when I'm already booked and another client contacts me, I'm able to provide another tourguide to show them around. Míriam is one of the tourguides I use more often, and recently she took an American couple to Girona and for a great lunch in the countryside. Their driver was J. Luís, one of my favorite drivers in town.

Here is the letter they have just sent me (they requested to remain anonymous, and I'm respecting their decision so I won't provide any name this time).

*** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

What is the connection between me and a Cabriolet?

Well, I wished the answer was I owned one of them but... It isn't! (at least by now...)

But what connects me to a Cabriolet is Barcelona and the Internet!
Today I just received a letter from a really nice couple, Carmen & Thierry, who run a cool blog about Cabriolets. Thierry is French, while Carmen is from Barcelona, at they say every year they got lots of friends asking them for tips for their trips to Spain so Thierry decided to create a mini-guide of Barcelona and post it in his blog. The result is a very appealing mix of dream cars and the city!

And then he found me and decided to recomend my tours in his blog aswell, just because he liked my site, blog and videos and thought having a private tourguide can be fun when visiting Barcelona. So he contacted me to let me know and to ask for permission! Can you believe that? That's SO nice of them!

So the least I could do is letting you all know and sharing their blog with you. I hope to enjoy it!
Thank you Thierry and Carmen, I hope I'll get to meet you when you are in Barcelona!


**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.