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.

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!

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!).

Letter from the Jones

Last week I spent two days with the Jones, a wonderful family with two teenage kids.
On our first day we had a city tour mostly focussed on Gaudí's works, and then the next day we went to Montserrat.
It was fun! We took the cablecar to get to the monastery and got there early enough to visit the Shrine of the Black Madonna just before they closed it for masstime (and so, we skept all the superlong lines that form later). Then Mike and one of the kids decided to take the Funicular de Sant Joan and then walk down (it's easy walk and there are great views!), and instead, Judy and the other son stayed with me in the monastery area and we visited an exhibit on the mountain with a slide show, strolled along a short Via Crucis path that took us a bit into the nature and the forrest, and then went to the farmers market.
We finally met with the other and bought some "coca", a traditional sugared bread that all locals buy when they come to Montserrat and sat at the cafe to eat it with some drinks.
I then called the driver to pick us up, and on the way back to Barcelona we stopped at the Santa Cecília Monastery, and in several vantage points to admire the curious shapes of the rocks of Montserrat.

I just received a letter from them that I wanted to share:

Marta,

I wanted to send you a note and thank you for your serevice! We had a great time in Barcelona and really enjoyed your city.

Mike Jones and family

The Ellis daytrip to the Wine Country.

The Ellis family booked me for a few tours in Barcelona. In our last day we had planned to go to the Penedès Wine country and Montserrat. At first I had suggested we visited the Codorniu cellar, the largest in the world, because of its spectacularity. But after spending a few days with them I got to know them better and when I saw they were so much into food and wine and they had been to some emblematic French cellars already, I decided they'd appreciate something else.

So I changed bookings and got a private tour of the Gramona cellars, a local family-owned winery that has won many international prizes.
We were received there by their Communications person, who showed us personally their old cellar. That day there were people working in the old building (most of the day, the staff is working in their modern venue at the vinyards), so we were lucky to see a lady glueing labels by hand, another lady checking the machine that wraps the cork, and we even had a demostration of how they degorge the botels by hand. That was so unique! In most cellars degorging is done by machines who freeze the neck of the bottle to remove the sediments. Only very skilled workers are able to do it manually!
See my video! (oh, I'm so glad to have this video well recorded... the other time I saw it done, I didn't realize my camera was lopsided!)



After the tour of the cellar, we were taken to the vinyards to see the baby grapes: they won't be ready to be harvested until August. But the views where great! Lori said it was the first time she was taken to the vinyards when visiting a cellar!

And back to the cellar, we had a wonderful wine tasting. The Ellis had asked for a real tasting, not the average tourist one, so we got to try 3 different cavas, plus the bottle that had been degorged in front of us (it's amazing how agressive the bubbles are at that moment: it's truelly dramatic for the wine! it seems it needs a few days to reach its perfect point), and 3 wines (2 that were included in the tasting, plus a special Ice Wine for dessert that was the cellar's gift.

I'm not used to drinking much, so I was starting to (as the Ellis said) "riding the snake". But we headed soon for lunch at a great local restaurant where we were the only foreigners and had a beautiful meal before going to Montserrat.

After such an intense morning, there wasn't much time left to wander in the Monastery, but we still made it to ride the cablecar up, visit the Virgin shrine, lit up a candle for her and enjoy the place with almost no tourists around (most tour groups leave the mountain after the Choir sings, and at that time we were enjoying our wine so we missed both Choir and crowds, which was fine for the Ellis).

We decided next time they come (to see the progress of the Sagrada Familia church), we'll visit some other cellar, then drop them in Montserrat for the night (as they enjoy places when they get empty) and the next they I'll pick them up for some other tour out-of-the-beaten-track. Maybe the Cardona salt mines, who knows?

The natural landscape around Montserrat in danger!

Private corporations are planning to build a huge industrial area in Collbató, a countryside village at the food of the Montserrat Mountain. That would destroy forever the beautiful natural landscape around it where vineyards, olive and almond trees grow.

You can help stopping it by signing in in the Save Montserrat website or making a donation. More than 76,000 people have already joined!

Training trip to Montserrat

Now that the season is ending and there are less tours, it is the moment for continuous training.

The Guides Training Center of BGB has organized a trip to Montserrat to discover the villages of the range.

Esteve, our specialist tourguide, has given us plenty of useful information and good ideas.

It was a rainy day, but we were lucky: the next day it snowed in Montserrat!

Here you'll find some pics of our trip:

Training trip to the villages around Montserrat

New video! The Montserrat Boys Choir singing the Virolai!

One of the most important attractions of a daytrip to Montserrat is hearing their Escolania Choir. Every day during the school year except for Saturdays they sing for the visitors the Salve Regina and the Anthem of the Virgin of Montserrat, the Virolai.

Here you have a video I recorded today. Sorry about the image quality, the shaking and the heads popping out, but what really matters is the sound, which is good.