Our story begins when we, Cristina and Guillermo, met back in 2011. Our passion for travel and food brought us together and our wanderlust only grew stronger as we lost ourselves in conversations about all the places we wanted to visit together.
It wasn’t long until our conversations became a reality… In the summer of 2012 we both quit our jobs, left our shared flats and bought a one-way ticket to Kathmandu, Nepal.
Slowing down
During our first month of traveling, we did things by the book…
But once we arrived in Burma, we decided to try something a little different…
Getting off the beaten track became our priority.
We met a local family in Yangon and stayed with them for a few nights. Although only spending a short time with them, we felt so involved in local life, it served as an awakening for both of us.
We were sad to leave them but we were leaving with our hearts filled with love and a new taste for travel.
It was then that we decided to make the most of this trip…
We wanted to share as many authentic moments with local people, discovering their customs and truly immerse ourselves in each destination.
We hadn’t realized it yet, but we had started to slow travel.
We stopped filling our days with must-sees…
Instead, we slowed down and enjoyed each day as it came.
We used slow means of transport like boats, buses, and bikes, and took in the views along the way.
Looking back on almost a year of traveling, the best experiences we had were when we shared genuine moments with local people, especially when these experiences involved food.
Our journey also opened our eyes to the effects of climate change which, sadly, were visible in every place we visited.
These two learnings put our way of living “back then” into perspective.
Coming home
In 2013, we came back to Barcelona with a new dream…
We wanted to offer authentic and sustainable cooking experiences to travelers from around the world.
We wanted them to discover the Catalan culture, just as we had discovered the cultures of the local people who hosted us during our trip.
Our dream meant making some adjustments to our lifestyle.
We wanted the environment to play an important role in all of the decisions we would make in our personal and professional lives.
So, we started by recycling some old furniture to create a unique chemical-free cooking school in our new home. And we integrated to our kitchen local, sustainable utensils and appliances.
Before we knew it, we were ready for our first cooking guests.
Together, we cooked traditional Catalan and Spanish dishes, using Cristina’s family recipes and fresh local ingredients from our neighborhood market.
Stepping out of the kitchen
We started to take trips to the Catalan countryside to look for small, local organic suppliers…
By the end of 2015, we had already sourced incredible local, seasonal and artisan products: olive oils, fleur de sel (sea salt), wines, herbs, cheeses, meats, vegetables who helped us gain a strong reputation as we were preparing delicious farm to table dishes!
What started out as a need to improve the quality of the produce used in our classes, soon turned into a new passion.
To this day we are constantly looking for new, independent artisan suppliers to work with, and spend at least 1 day per week searching for new projects in the countryside and visiting them.
Plenty of our cooking guests shared our passion for small-scale, quality organic produce. They showed interest in meeting our farmers and makers.
It was then, that we understood that we could offer much more than just authentic cooking classes in Barcelona.
We decided to create a stronger connection between travelers and all those wonderful projects in and around Barcelona.
We started creating new experiences to visit local food artisans, either straight in the countryside such as in our Beyond Montserrat Tour or in our Penedes Wine Tour, or in town such as in our Barcelona Food Tour or Barcelona Gourmet Tour.
Slow and steady
Barcelona Slow Travel has evolved and we now have a selection of more than 10 experiences offered on a private basis, which we all personally design, create and run ourselves up to this day.
Over the years, we have discovered hundreds of projects worth visiting, and in our experiences, we’ll only take you to the finest small-scale boutique artisans of our region, always customizing the experience to your needs and interests.
If you’re interested to experience Barcelona like never before and to get to know some of these amazing projects we have selected for you, contact us now!