Vacation from my vacation

Well after a nice two week break in NYC and all this talk about getting back to reality you'd think I would have to face the consequences of the ESADE MBA life.

HA! You underestimate my powers of procrastination and responsibility avoidance during vacation times.

After flying in from NYC and landing in Barcelona at 9am, I embarked upon an ambitious journey to join 20+ of my ESADE classmates on a skiing/snowboarding trip to Andorra. Met up with my classmates at 1:30pm to pick up the rental car and headed out to Andorra.

If you have a microscope handy, the principality of Andorra is the tiny green dot right on the border of Spain and France. The 4.5 hour drive up there was fairly uneventful until we got to about 30 km from Pas de la Casa in Andorra. Turns out that the area had been blanketed in snow and our econo-family-minivan was ill equipped to handle the layer of snow and ice. Upon reaching a fairly steep hill our car became like a hamster in a hamster wheel, just stuck in one position as the wheels spun wildly in the snow. The minivan was seemingly running on nature's treadmill.

Defeated, we went down the road a bit to find a man selling chains out of wooden shed. Contrary to his plebian surroundings, the man was a capitalistic genius. Actually, he was doing probably what anyone with a morsel of business acumen would do. Charge 500x for something that is in high demand. In our case, snow chains. So we walked away with 100 Euro chains that we hoped were lined with 24k gold and baby seal fur but were really made of plastic, metal and pure greed. Can you tell we are still bitter about those chains?

In any case, we made it safely up to Pas de la Casa and made our way to our apartment/cabin. The cabin was reminiscent of the cabins I've stayed in while at Mammoth and Big Bear; rustic but serviceable. After we unpacked our bags we headed out for some dinner and checked out the town a bit. The entire principality of Andorra is a tax haven so most of the towns surrounding the ski resorts are littered with airport duty free style shops hawking the best and latest in perfume, tobacco and liquor. It's the perfect place to get lung cancer and cirrhosis while smelling Chanel No.5 fresh.

Thursday started off bright and early at 830am and here's where I'm gonna just shortcut my blog post by posting pictures. By the way all the pictures are from Sunday because the weather for the first two days was snow mixed with snow mixed with clouds and wind.

The area where we snowboarded/skied (to be shortened hereafter as skiboarding) consisted of 5 mountains that you could traverse. We really only made it to two mountains but that was more than enough to fill 3 days of skiboarding.

A couple of pictures of the mountains and the runs.

Have to include a picture of my trusty board.

They had this ice hotel/bar that was being built. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

For some reason I was expecting more than this. Maybe it was because when I think ice hotel I think of the ice hotel in Die Another Day but then again that was a movie and this is real life. It's the same letdown I got when I realized that being a slightly overweight dorky teenager would not automatically result in comical hijinks and winning the affection of the cheerleader/prom queen while the star quarterback looked on in contempt, as suggested by some movies.

I'm not quite sure how these igloos work in terms of sheltering people from the cold. When I was in the igloo it was still damn cold and it's not like those furs on the ice are gonna magically warm your butt. I guess it's providing shelter from the wind outside but that's really about it.

On the first night after snowboarding we splurged and had fondue and it was spectacular. Cheese fondue and oil fondue really hit the spot after a full day of skiboarding. Being lactose intolerant, the cheese fondue resulted in some unfortunate side effects but I wasn't gonna let something like that stop me from gorging on bread and melted hot cheese. The other meals we had were typical lunch/dinner fare and not worthy of highlighting. Pizzas, burgers, wraps, soup, etc.

So after three days of snowboarding my entire body is still recovering. I now know of muscles I never thought I had and they are letting me know they exist by the aches and pains they provide. The trip was absolutely phenomenal and I can't wait to go snowboarding again in Europe. Once again a successful ESADE outing organized by the students. Plus, I got this super cool picture of me snowboarding.

I'm so glad I have this picture because usually I'm never actually standing up on my board or look like I'm in control. Usually there's a lot more arm flailing and my body in various stages of hitting the snow.