The baldie is fled, long live the baldie!
The business (basically a CRM database) passed into better hands in 2012. These materials remain here for cannibalisation and amusement.
The baldie meanwhile has found pastures new: as a singing organ-grinder for your event in the UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands or Spain!
- Cruise & weekend favourites
- in 4 hours without feeling like a stupid tourist.
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- Why FollowTheBaldie?
- Language All our guides are native English speakers and speak the local language fluently.
- Knowledge Our local and subject knowledge is profound and up-to-date.
- Interactivity See someone interesting? We'll interpret. Tired/full of energy? We can adapt the programme.
- Individuality We don't do herd tourism. No silly flags. No headsets.
- Responsibility Unlike most "green" tour businesses, we only use public transport--cheaper and generally more interesting.
Barcelona tours - Gracia, Spain's second city
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Overview
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee. ¡Hail Mary, full of grace! he quoth. And thus, via the order of Shoeless Carmelites and a host of other cunning plot devices which will be fully explained during this walk, did Gracia acquire its name and its shield: an iris, purity incarnate, airborne on a blue sky.
Still viewed by some of its older and less coherent residents as Spain’s second metropolis (after Madrid, of course), Gracia lies at the strategic crossroads of the north-south Roman highway with the riverbed-road connecting the insignificant port of Barcino/Barcelona with the province’s mountain wilds. Thrice in the nineteenth century an independent municipality, it was one of half a dozen villages finally swallowed up by Barcelona in Cánovas' 1897 municipal reforms.
However, in the Town of Gracia you'll still find a strong sense of a separate identity, the result of a number of factors including:
- the comparative lack of immigration from other parts of Spain and the world;
- its traditional role as a focus for intellectual innovation–for example, romantic federalism and workers' movements;
- the maintenance nowadays of strange and anachronistic beliefs--forgotten Protestant sects rub shoulders with jackbooted separatists, trendy anarchists, tree-huggers, stone-worshippers, esperantists and theosophists;
- thriving associations.
Itinerary
Some highlights: Gaudí's first major commission, his other church and his house when he still dressed like a gentleman; Franco and the the monolingual Catalan saint-to-be who helped him win the Civil War; the baker and the beanie saint; the speculative jeweller and the girl who found freedom and love amid the Civil War; other remnants of revolution and republic, cows and cats, palaces and farms, secret tunnels and underground hideaways; for those of a thirsty bent, brief interludes in Catholic-regionalist (with a magnificent little theatre), Trotskyite-internationalist, leery-local and/or various other types of bar.
Details
| Grade | easy |
| Base | Barcelona (Meeting point information here, where relevant - make sure you have the right one!) |
| Location tags | Barcelona, Casa Vicens, Catalonia, Gracia, |
| Theme tags | architecture, gastronomy, history, literature, |
| Your guide(s) | Mr Baldie |
| Walking distance | 3.85 km / 2.39 miles |
| Walking time | 2 hr |
| Total return travel time from base to walk | 0 hr |
| Total time from "hello" to "goodbye" | 2.30 hr |
| Fiestas and markets in places we go through - combine a walk and some partying or shopping! |
Note that there are also events in most places on January 6 (Three Kings), Carnival, Easter, April 23 (St George), June 23 (St John), and September 11 (Catalan regional/national day) |
Photos
Comments
Page URL
You can find all this information, as well as the booking form, at http://oreneta.com/baldie/baldie/spanish-walking-tours/barcelona-walking-tours/barcelona-city-walks/gracia-spains-second-city/Roughly how much will it cost?
N.B. This form and the B2C business have retired. Contacts here.| your group | |
|---|---|
| number of people in your group (kids 0-2 don't count, kids 3-16 = 0.5) |
This is the total size of the group. Unlike other (city) tours, you won't have to share your guide with a couple of dozen strangers. |
Book this tour
- Fill in your details and submit the form below.
- If you just want more info, we'll send you that.
- Otherwise we'll send you full information, a fixed price, and details of how to pay securely. (If you pay via Paypal or Google Checkout, we'll quote and bill you in British pounds. This marginally reduces our admin costs and, barring a sudden collapse of your currency, doesn't hurt you.)
- If after you have paid you change your mind about the day or the walk, or if the weather is really bad, then we'll try out best to offer you another option. Our cancellation and refund policy is here.
[...] Similar phrases using the Caló vocabularly of Iberian Romani dialect are to be found on and in many other houses in the gypsy quarter of Gracia, Barcelona (on a variant of this walk). [...]
[...] to witnesses of the following incursion from this walk on the Collserola hills behind Barcelona to this Gracia walk, near Plaza Lesseps, presumably making use of the 2-mile on-the-way-to-being-a-green-corridor [...]
[...] such as we also find walking up Montserrat and in a great number of other places, including this Gracia walk, this Girona country tour, and on tombs in the great Montjuïc cemetery. (But if you're leaving [...]