Hello

Sunday, 1st June 2014

After a hearty breakfast - our small group (14) of travellers met up in one of the small rooms at the ground floor of the hotel. Our tour leader, Ms Veronica - she preferred to be called just as Vero - introduced herself first, before asking the rest to make a brief introduction of themselves. Vero grew up in Venezuela, studied Social Psychology in the USA and had worked with Hispanic kids and women as a social worker. She has now returned to Barcelona where her mother lives and decided to do tourism. This being her first outing as a tour leader, she was naturally quite nervous.

Other fellow travellers was a father-daughter couple from England, Michelle and Dave.. We had met single traveller Malcolm and Ian and Anna the day before. All 3 of them came from UK. David and Margaret also came from UK - David was an engineer who built highways in Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire etc and Margaret taught English as a second language. John is an English gentleman with a Phd in palaentology/geology - according to him he studied worms that are fossilized in the rocks. There is also another John - another English gentleman who is a retired IT specialist in financial services and Bryan - another solo traveller from UK who is retired from a career in graphic art.. Apart from us the only other non-English travellers was an Australian couple, Daryl and Robert - both are travelling for a few more weeks in Europe after this 2 weeks with us.

We learnt that everyone in the group have travelled a lot and Malcolm for one have travelled 33 times on Explore UK.  That's a great endorsement for the tour company!

Vero briefed the group on the general itinerary, on what to expect during the tour and some of the options we can choose during the few free days we will have along the way. 

 Vero, Michelle, Dave, Robert, Daryl and Malcolm

John the palaentologist, Margaret, David, Anna and Ian

(missing from these pictures is John the IT specialist and Bryan)