Barcelon tour, Spain Guided Barcelona Tours, Costa Brava, barcalona, woody allen, penelope cruz, javier bardem, Catalunya, Costa Brava, Gerona,medieval Villages

Discover medieval villages & trails, friendly locals, hidden coves, fine food & wine, Pyrenees valleys, art + Mediterranean spirit with our savvy guides! In Barcelona, Gaudi's unique architecture, style, great food and wine inspired Picasso, Dali, Spain and maybe you too!

Explore castles, Barcelona and Roman Temples
Learn about Spanish art, wines & gourmet cheeses
Fun options: Med sailing, sea kayak, yoga, helicopters, or golf

When?....year-round departures for your private group -

2010 ULTRA-SMALL GROUP TOURS: (first 14 persons only)

April 3 - 9-sold out! May 2 - 8 6+ spots

June 12 -18 sold out! July 4 - 10 6+ spots Aug. 2 - 8 6+ spots

Sept. 21 - 27 Oct. 18 - 24

Imagine admiring Pyrénées peeks looming on the horizon. Volcanic flats stretch out ahead, leading to unbelievably pastoral fields. Along the way stand villages shaped by the hands of Roman architects, medieval craftsmen and surrealist artists. The local dialect and traces of the thriving culture—a dizzying mix of French and Spanish—poke through everywhere after years of dictatorial oppression. Dinner is tapas or a barbecue paired with a perfect vintage before settling in to a unique auberge or a palatial hotel. A mustachioed Spaniard makes clocks melt. This is no dream. It just feels like one. Welcome to Spain's Catalonia, where the unexpected happens every day.

We meet in Barcelona, one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Few places can rival the medieval atmosphere of the Gothic Quarter’s narrow alleys or the elegance and distinction of the Moderniste Eixample’s boulevards. Artists such as Miró, Picasso and Dalí have links to this fashionable city, which has a strong Catalan identity. We start our exploration in the old city, made up of the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter) and the Ribera and Raval districts. This is a perfect introduction to the city as the narrow, winding streets give us a glimpse into the different periods of Barcelona’s history: traces of the Roman wall seen between Gothic buildings, remains of the Jewish quarter, and evidence of the industrial expansion of the 19th century.

From the Gothic Quarter we walk to La Rambla, Barcelona’s famous tree-lined street. Filled with cafes, market stalls and street performers, it serves as the emotional hub of Barcelona. We’ll make a stop at La Boquería, Barcelona’s bustling covered market that overflows with local fruits and vegetables. Our guide will take us to a favorite tapas bar for an introduction to this essential aspect of Spanish life, before continuing on to Eixample, an elegant area of the city that houses much of the city’s modernist architecture, including Gaudí’s Casa Batlló and the floral Casa Lleó Morera. A leisurely walk takes us back to the hotel, where we have a chance to relax before our welcome dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants.

This morning we immerse ourselves in the architecture of Antonio Gaudí, whose gothic and traditional Spanish architectural style evolved into his very own distinct sculptural mode that has left an indelible mark on the city of Barcelona. On a morning stroll, we first stop to explore the curving stone façade of Casa Milà, and walk up to the rooftop for a panoramic view of the city. Our next visit is La Sagrada Familia (Temple of the Holy Family), a large Roman Catholic basilica and Gaudí’s masterpiece that was left unfinished when he died unexpectedly in 1926. From here we head to Parc Güell, named after the architect’s main patron. This beautiful park is filled with mosaics, undulating benches and a modernist grotto, and it’s a perfect place to end our morning.

After lunch we leave Barcelona for Northern Catalonia. Although only a short drive away, this area has an entirely different culture and atmosphere than the cosmopolitan city of Barcelona. Bound by the green, rolling hills of the Ampurdan and the Alberes mountain range, the countryside is dotted with charming gray and pink stone masías (farmhouses) and small towns with arcaded squares and wide promenades. Our home for the next two nights is Vic, which sits on a 1,600-foot plateau at the confluence of two rivers and is known for its fine leatherwork. Our four-star parador hotel is located in one of the most beautiful spots of the region and features the traditional feel of a Catalan farmhouse with its well looked-after garden, bedrooms with terraces and a magnificent swimming pool. Before dinner we explore the town’s wide Plaça Major, and perhaps have a drink in one of the many bars and cafés within the Gothic arcades that surround the square.

After breakfast, we head to Ripoll, one of the highlights of Catalonia. Known as the birthplace of Catalonian culture, the town was an important center of religious study during the Middle Ages, and features an important 9th century Benedictine monastery built in the Romanesque style.

We stop next in Santa Pau, a spectacular walled medieval village built out of volcanic rock in the heart of the Garrotxa Volcanic Park, Europe’s largest region of (extinct) volcanoes. Exploring this area is experiencing the sensation of stepping back in time as mountain villages, medieval castles, abbeys and churches steeped in history, perch on the edges of the sculptural rock with fortified walls and stone cobbled roads.

After a relaxing lunch in town, we visit a local potter’s workshop for a demonstration of the colorful local ceramics. Our afternoon walk takes us through craggy peaks, oak and beech forests full of wild boar and deer, interspersed by meadows of wild flowers and herbs and dotted with small stone villages. The walk is finished off by a lovely horse-drawn carriage ride through Fageda d’en Jorda, an unusual beech tree forest that grows over a large lava cast which was a result of an eruption from nearby Croscat volcano.

Combining many of the best elements of France and Spain, Catalan cuisine is wholesome and served in hearty portions. Tonight we enjoy local specialties, including habas a la catalana (a spicy broad-bean stew), zarzuela de mariscos (“operetta” of seafood), butifarra (Catalan pork sausage), and crema catalana (crème brulee).

This morning we visit the ancient walled town of Girona. Delightfully hidden, except to the locals, this village is full of narrow, medieval streets, cool churches and rows of houses leaning over the banks of the river. Girona was once a Moorish stronghold, and it reputedly withstood three invasions by Napoleon’s troops, giving it the moniker “City of a Thousand Sieges.” We start our exploration in the Old Quarter, which sits directly across from the River Onyar and provides a charming view of the orange-colored waterfront houses reflected in the river. Our walk then takes us past the 17th century Gothic cathedral and amazingly well-preserved Arab baths, built by Moorish craftsmen in the 12th century, and finally along the Passeig Arquaeològic, where we get an astounding view of the cathedral's 11th-century Charlemagne Tower.

After stopping for lunch and a taste of pa amb tomàquet, a Catalan specialty of grilled bread covered in olive oil, garlic and fresh tomato, we head to our luxurious coastal hotel to swim in the pool, relax on the beach and explore the nearby villas and seaside mansions. If you still have the energy, join our guide for an afternoon walk along the coastal trails for your first glimpse of the Costa Brava.

We begin the morning by traveling past rose-colored stone houses and ramparts to the restored medieval town of Pals, whose old quarter has been declared a Historic Artistic Site. We walk through the winding cobblestone streets to explore the Gothic church, the clock tower of the old castle, and the curtain walls and houses, which all date from the 10th century. From here a lovely countryside walk past streams and red poppies with views of hills crowned with small castles and watchtowers takes us to the town of Peratallada. One of the most important places in the region for medieval architecture, the town of Peratallada (“carved rock”) earned its name from the great moat carved out of rock surrounding the village. After our walk through town, we stop in at one of the small restaurants and enjoy a typical Catalonian lunch of white beans and escalivada—roasted vegetables marinated and served in a salad with salty anchovies and toasted bread.

After lunch, we head toward Figueres, Salvador Dalí’s hometown. Figueres is home to the Dalí museum, which the artist personally conceptualized, designed, decorated and painted. Along the way, we’ll take in the coastline of the Costa Brava, and see for ourselves how Dalí’s surreal paintings actually reflect this dramatic landscape. The museum houses the single largest and most diverse collection of works by Salvador Dalí and is a work of art in itself.

Today we spend our entire day exploring the lovely coastal villages that dot the Costa Brava, taking in the breathtaking seaviews, cliffs and coves that we encounter along our walks. We begin in Cap Roig, a panoramic promontory that features a lovely botanical garden carved out of the rock and overlooking the Mediterranean. From here we start our coastal walk above sandy white beaches, marveling at the luminous blue of the sea contrasting with red-brown headlands and cliffs and noting how the umbrella pine trees grow up to the edges of secluded calas (coves). Our first stop along the coast is Calella. Built on a gentle slope, this former fishing village is an attractive jumble of red-tiled roofs with a simple white church tower rising up from the old center.

Tucked into a crescent shaped bay is the small village of Llafranc. Overlooking Llafranc is Cap Sant Sebastia, on top of which sits a 19th century lighthouse that has been converted into a hotel and fine restaurant, our destination for lunch. Enjoy grilled local fish so fresh that it was caught just that morning. Savor a cup of cremat (a mixture of rum and coffee), a very typical sailor’s drink in Costa Brava, while enjoying outstanding views of the entire coast stretched out below. Bon Profit!

After our full day along the coast, we return to our hotel with time to relax before enjoying our farewell dinner.

Today we offer a a.m. airport shuttle to Barcelona to arrive by 12noon. Extend your visit in this charming city to do more exploring or as a convenient base for excursions to Montserrat, the wineries of Alt Denedès and the popular beach resort of Sitges.

Want to know more now?... Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, Spain’s easternmost and most eccentric province. This is perfect for travelers who like Italy or France or those coming to Europe for the first time. Few regions so compact have so many personalities—a mixture of southern French, Italian and Greek influences. We walk medieval villages, Mediterranean coast, fertile farmlands in the shadow of the Pyrénées, on cosmopolitan streets and even on trails surrounded by ancient volcanoes.

We love to meet locals with character.... winemakers, chefs, fishermen, birdsellers, farmers and artists. On this guided trip you will not just see the best of the tregion but you will experience and enjoy it.... Sample Spanish wines, dance a local jig, the sardana, take a dip in the sea and learn about the outlandish Gaudí architecture that’s the pride of Barcelona. Lunch on fresh bread, juicy red tomatoes and possibly the world’s best olives. But save room for a dinner of fresh fish, grilled veggies or golden Catalan noodles under a pink pile of scallop-edged cockles. If you have an appetite for cultural fun, you’ll treasure the time you spend with us in this diverse region of Spain.

: Balance due 50 days before your trip: 1995 € / person / double occupancy

Contact us for info => ctorres@magicalspain.com

Enjoy well-deserved Privileges & Benefits for Discerning Travelers with the USA's Spanish Travel & Event Gurus in Spain since 1998. This escorted trip can be run on demand for 4+ persons as a private trip or join our 2010 ultra-small group escorted trips.

Barcelona is Spain's gateway to European culture. In so far as culture means innovative architecture and modern art, prized pedestrian-friendly boulevards and earlier hours, such thinking is right on the money. It was in Barcelona in the 1890s that Picasso found the artistic vanguard that propelled him to Paris and world renown. And this is where Gaudí spun Art Nouveau into his own quirky architectural idiom. Today the term avant-garde still applies: to Barcelona's fusion cuisine, design-accented boutique hotels, fun-loving fashion houses and even a delicious assortment of innovative chocolatiers, all of whom cut their teeth in the Catalan capital before taking on the rest of Spain.

..... between Cantallops and Llançà — two names that were barely dots on our map of Catalonia in northeastern Spain — the lush mountain greenery turned quickly to farmland rolling out for miles around us and filled with sunflowers and bales of hay.

We were traveling from the interior mountains of this Spanish autonomous region to the Mediterranean. Again and again, rising up in the near distance, came fantastic, if dusty, terra-cotta-colored medieval hamlets and equally ancient churches and farmhouses. On the streets everywhere the lingua franca was Catalan, not Spanish, and amid all the tourists that descend from France and elsewhere, a local pride seemed to pervade the scene, against a backdrop that fell away suddenly, breathtakingly, into the sea.

In Llançà we stopped at Platja Grifeu, one of the village’s perfect beaches, with clear tropical-looking water to swim in. At the beachside restaurant, I ordered a tortilla española, the ubiquitous potato omelet of Spain. It was, improbably, the best tortilla I had ever tasted. I savored it, facing the sea and the local families sunning themselves, in this tiny village about 10 miles from the French-Spanish border on a road that looked like nothing more than a scribble on the map.

By some small miracle — and preservation efforts that have helped to control development in Catalonia — the Costa Brava has maintained an authenticity and a refreshing resistance to change that keeps this stretch of the Mediterranean radically different from the southern coasts of Spain. Fishing villages still feel like fishing villages, medieval mountain towns are still hushed at siesta, and artists still paint on the streets of Cadaqués. Tourists can mingle with residents, in the high season when a mini-United Nations cacophony of conversation fills the streets, and in the late spring and early fall, when visitors are fewer and more local.

Hoping to avoid the typical overcrowded, overdeveloped and sometimes hyper glitzy European beach scene, my partner, Ian, and I drove from village to village in Costa Brava last summer, searching for authentic spots, medieval towns and the water famous for its lustrous aquamarine hue. It was an opportunity for immersion in Catalan language, culture and art. (Catalonia is one of 17 autonomous regions in Spain, but the language is spoken by about 10 million people on the Mediterranean and dominates the Costa Brava.) I took along George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia” and read it from luxurious beach to luxurious beach feeling, somewhat guiltily, quite the opposite of a Marxist.

Spanish got us everywhere, but the tourists we encountered spoke a language soup of Catalan, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch. This European mélange seemed buoyed by a collective joy in the picturesque — from the exquisite Mediterranean coves around the medieval village of Begur, to the ancient ruins in St. Martí d’Empúries, to the Greek-style white-washed houses of Cadaqués. Tourists and natives alike also wander the streets of inland and seaside villages with lyrical names (Pals, Peratallada, Peralada and Calella de Palafrugell) and sleep in tiny hotels run by proprietors who want to know your name.

About an hour and 40 minutes from the Barcelona airport, Begur, built on a hill, is a small maze of lanes dotted with excellent fish restaurants, ancient towers and cozy bars, all scattered beneath a dominating fortress where women and children once ran for safety from 17th-century pirates. Within a 10-minute drive, there are eight official beaches (and many more unmarked coves), almost all of which are linked by a mix of paved and unpaved walking routes, leading to shorelines of rock, pebbles, smooth brown sand, and even volcanic black, almost Hawaii-like, sand.

Each of our three mornings in Begur, we switched from cove to cove, leaving the beach at the height of the day to check out nearby villages.

In tiny, touristy Pals we met Dalwa Donofre, a Mozambique-born, Lisbon-raised artist selling massive collages with themes that connected back to the sea. Ms. Donofre’s work was a clear notch above that sold in most of the kitschy shops that lined the sun-dappled streets. In Peratallada, a well-preserved central square filled with cafes made the village feel more alive than some sleepier neighboring towns. But as lovely as the light was in the villages, the siren-call of the shoreline always made us anxious to get back to the sea.

“I like September best,” explained Oscar Górriz, the proprietor of Sa Rascassa, a five-room pension and restaurant on a minuscule cove called Aiguafreda — reachable by car, of course, but also by foot along a seaside path from the tiny white-washed village called Sa Tuna. “The hotel is booked solid all summer, and, come fall, the pace is slower, the tourists are more relaxed; we’re more relaxed.”

Outside, in Mr. Górriz’s courtyard, two French tourists lounged under broad white umbrellas, swishing their feet on the loose pebble floor of the terrace. We ordered the fresh local fish — dorade — simple, grilled and served with sautéed garlic and a slice of lemon. A second dish of fresh, home-made tagliatelle pasta was tossed with vine-ripened cherry tomatoes and homemade ricotta. Cracked olives arrived on the table first, large and juicy, hailing from somewhere farther down the Catalan coast, along with a glass of crisp, cold Catalan white wine, the glass sweating in my hand.

Mr. Górriz told us how happy he was that Catalonia had largely managed to prevent the gargantuan building schemes that have blighted the southern coasts of Spain — “Concrete from Valencia to Malaga,” he said, shaking his head at the sprawling hotels and housing blocks that have gone up on the Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol.

Back in Begur we ran into Ophelie Rouira on the footpath between the coves that marked the black sand beach of Fonda and the larger harbor of Aiguablava where a clutch of fishing families still live year-round. Ophelie invited us to her tiny one-room fishing house. Flowers spilled over rooftops, in riotous shades of violet; a brilliant blue wall framed the outside of the fisherwoman’s house across the narrow cobbled lane. Her neighbor stepped outside to say hello before sitting down to lunch; the family has been fishing and selling its wares locally since as far back as anyone could remember.

Like Mr. Górriz, Ms. Rouira said that she would just as well skip the high season. “I love June, September, October — I swim until Nov. 1,” she said, pulling out an early 20th-century photograph of the beach coves where her house is nestled and pointing out just how little has been added to the landscape in the last 100 years.

It seemed like it would be impossible to top friendly Begur; but we knew there was more to explore. We drove up the coast, past the Greek ruins at St. Marti d’Empúries and on past Roses where El Bulli, the restaurant of Spain’s star chef Ferran Adrià, was sold out through the end of the year. Turning off the highway from Roses we drove into the Cap de Creus nature preserve, a moonscape of scrub brush and hardy mountain trees clinging to a mountain striped with hiking trails. The highway twists and turns, clinging to the hillside until, finally, gleaming Cadaqués comes into view.

Cadaqués is best known for art. Salvador Dalí, most famously, spent part of his childhood in the village, and in nearby Port Lligat (about 30 minutes by foot from downtown) tourists wait hours to peer inside the home he shared later in life with his wife, Gala. The list of artists’ ghosts haunting this small town is a who’s who of 20th-century painters: Pablo Picasso spent time here, as did Max Ernst, Matisse and Man Ray. The footprints of their work are literally everywhere (in 2004 the town put up small markers at locations that have appeared in a work of Dalí’s). But as interesting as it is to walk in their footsteps, it is all the more engaging to see the living artists still working, creating and exhibiting there.

One sunny afternoon, as half the world enjoyed the beach and the other half imbibed the red-wine spritzer known as tinto de verano on various terraces across town, 42-year-old Pere Bellès discussed his own joint exhibit “Dels Fragments al Conjunt” (Fragments Together) at the Galeria Marges-U, a space run by the artists Gustavo Carbó Berthold and his wife, Nobuko Kihira.

Mr. Bellès is wiry and bronzed, with curly brown hair streaked by the sun and paint from his studio. His hands and clothes were similarly dotted with white. On the walls were Mr. Bellès paintings and lithographs, one a set of cuneiform-like black squares imprinted on ivory paper — an alphabet, he explained, based on his impressions of ancient Mesopotamian art. Large canvases were perfectly sliced into 2-by-4 inch blocks of color. On the floor, sculptures from the artist Albert Udaeta, made of iron, could be pulled apart and put back together like a grownup’s version of children’s building blocks. “It’s like how the right wine marries with what you eat,” explained Mr. Carbó, on why he exhibited Mr. Bellès’s work with that of Mr. Udaeta.

Mr. Bellès, who is Catalan, lives in Cadaqués all year long. “It’s a magnificent space for creative people,” he said. “You have the mountains and the sea; you have tranquillity. But if you want to go out, you can. I like the march, the rhythm of the year. In summer there are many tourists and friends who come to town — we can eat, chat.” It’s also a means for an international community to see his work — exposure that small-town artists would otherwise not have. “But in autumn, when it is quieter, the light is best for working, and in the winter the roiling sea is fantastic.”

Just down the hill from Galeria Marges-U, 35-year-old Gemma Ridameya runs a very different type of gallery, filled with wearable creations hewn from silver and rock. Ms. Ridameya has lived in Cadaqués for nine years. In the summer she works a seven-day week in her store, and in the winter she dances (contact improvisation) and creates her next collection. Sea-smoothed beach pebbles are embedded in silver for rings and necklaces; ropes of silver are wound around and around in curlicues that become rings and earrings; volcanic rock is strung from silver wire. The shop is never empty. She too meanders between languages — Catalan, Spanish, English. Locals come in and ask her to create wedding bands or to set stones into wearable art; tourists purchase rings, earrings, necklaces. In Ms. Ridameya’s own ears, the earrings were tarnished from dips in the sea.

Ian and I spent days winding around the old city’s narrow corners, down the uneven cobblestone alleyways into one artist atelier after another. One afternoon we stumbled upon a shop run by the Peruvian born-Rocio Ruiz Mendizabal, who sells silks and wool shawls and other clothing, as well as the ceramics of other Barcelona-based artists. Ms. Ruiz, who lives in Germany during the winter, rents out a room above the store to tourists, all white-washed walls and 18th-century sloping ceilings. Two nights later we ran into her on our way to dinner. She invited us up to her rooftop.

The view was bewitching: Cadaqués glowed with lights below us, the stars meeting the sea; boats looked like bathtub toys bobbling far away, but sound traveling across the water collapsed the distance between us. We talked for a long time, sipping cava and nibbling on snacks that miraculously appeared from the Mediterranean restaurant downstairs.

“The landscape of Cadaqués has always been the same,” Elsa Gummà told us our first morning there. Ms. Gummà’s family is practically Cadaqués royalty — her grandfather invented Servetinal, a stomach-pain medication, in the early 20th century, and with its success bought the small hill on the far side of the bay that, in the 1960s, became Hotel Rocamar, the largest of Cadaqués’s hotels. Ms. Gummà was sitting behind us at breakfast, like any other hotel guest, gently nudging her small sons to finish their food. She was surfer-girl tan, small and athletic, with blond streaks in her brown curly hair. Trained as a journalist, she lives year-round outside Barcelona. She said she came to Cadaqués every summer as a child.

“Now I come back every year for the air,” she said. “It’s too bad you couldn’t meet my grandfather. When he was first here, there was nothing here. Just painters and the rocks.”

Sandy and salty from the sea, we reluctantly left Cadaqués and drove north on the narrow N-260, keeping bathing-suits at the ready, and jumping out of the car every chance we could to swim in ever-less-populated coves as we neared the French border. We marveled at the crazy, breathtaking zigzagging road that pulled us through the mountains and hugged the coast as we neared Port Bou, the last town in Spain.

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