Alright, finals are next week and I still need to write this post, so let's get this over with. Somehow this blog is turning into a mini-job for me. Get ready for the longest post I've done or just do what you usually do and quickly scroll down to look at the pretty pictures.
At the start of the year, ESADE Program Management decided to give us May 13-May14 off so that our entire class could head over to France to participate in the MBAT. Well, turns out HEC decided to charge 360 euros for accommodation and registration fee so most of ESADE ended up not going. We still had a 4 day weekend so about 12 of us decided "ROADTRIP!!!". Actually, ze Germans organized and planned the whole thing. The rest of us just paid to tag along.
Anyways, it was 560 km to
Hendaye, France where our apartments were. I don't remember much about the drive over besides the wonderful singing by our German driver Mr. HL. We stopped in Pamplona for dinner but didn't have much time to really check out the city.
I was not able to take the bull by the horns when we were trying to find a restaurant and once we found a place it was like a bull in a china shop as we hungrily scarfed down food. There we go 2 bull cliches. Those cliches don't even work in this context but maybe that's just a cock and bull story. OHH that's 3!!
I congratulate you readers who have actually kept reading after that last paragraph. So we made it into Hendaye pretty late and promptly crashed into our beds.
I woke up in the morning to find that food was bought and breakfast was already prepared. Thank you to my wonderful apartment-mates.
View from the apartment. The other apartment was on the 3rd floor and had a much better view. The weather wasn't conducive for laying around on the beach so we all headed over to
San Sebastian, Spain. San Sebastian is well known amongst foodies for having a ridiculously high concentration of Michelin starred restaurants. How many did we eat at? None. We're poor MBA students. I can't afford 50 euro molecular gastronomic foam.
The rocky Atlantic coast. Perfect for shipwrecking and muse singing.
Apparently there was a triathlon going on. Capt. Obvious says that this is the swimming portion.
The old city of San Sebastian. What's an old city without a church?
Our motley crew walking around the city.
Being that we're in the Basque country we had to have some
pintxos. Well, our overeagerness to eat the whole thing resulted in me not taking any pictures of the actual pintxos. I can tell you that it looked and tasted wonderful. The day ended with a couple of drinks at the apartment and some needed rest. Oh yeah, I think we visited the casino that was attached to our hotel but things get a bit hazy. Let's move on to the next day.
Woke up to a marvelous day. Sunshine and nary a cloud in the sky. The beach was gigantic. Seriously, the thing was like 200 yards wide.
Sand everywhere. It's like a desert. Reminds me of what the SO likes to say when she's thirsty. "Thirsty. Throat parched. It's like being in a desert." This is usually remedied by a single sip of water. Especially irritating endearing when she says this in the middle of the night and I have to walk down from the bedroom to the kitchen to get her a cup of water. Love you too.
Testing the waters. Surprisingly warm. Okay it wasn't warm just not freezing.
At the far end of the beach was this little area. I took a nap here for about 30 minutes and "basque-d" in the sunlight. Feel free to quit reading.
We then headed over to
St. Jean de Luz, France. Quaint, little French coastal town.
The weather was nice so the outdoor terraces were packed.
Basque beer. Unsurprisingly, tasted just like normal beer.
Our day was not over so we headed to
Biarritz, France. It's kinda like the Atlantic coast version of Cannes.
We had dinner at this restaurant in Biarritz and the live music was pretty decent.
Nightscape of Biarritz. The well lit building is the Casino and during the summer time the area out front is teeming with tourists like so..
The rest of the night was some more hanging out at the apartment socializing over some drinks. I believe this was also the night that I managed to fall asleep at the casino and on a stool at the apartment with a drink in my hand. Classy.
Saturday was our surf day. The weather was fairly promising by the afternoon and the waves were good. SW, LR and I took surf lessons while JB and GV went out on their own. Given the conditions, I think we did awesome.
After surfing, SW, GV, LR and I headed over to check out the Spanish side and the town of Hondarribia. Guess what's the main draw at that city.
Why, yes. It's a walled city.
The city looked almost Swiss in its style and architecture.
Medieval history is strong in this city.
This castle turned out to be a 4 star
hotel operated by Paradores.
You can see where the cannonballs left a mark on the wall. How cool is that?
It's a freaking castle....
....with weapons....
and a creepy looking well. I'm about to pass out from history overload. I'm pretty sure all the above areas were restricted to hotel guests only but oh well. This is your second opportunity to quit reading.
View from the back of the hotel.
Inner courtyard area.
So being that this was our last night, we decided to go all out for dinner.
We ended up at what we affectionately called "Grandma's House"
or to be precise Ramon Roteta. The food was really good though. We were still in Hondarribia but it made me realize how crap Barcelona food is. It's not that it's bad it's just really flavorless. There's only two flavors we get here. Salty or oily. Pretty much it.
Got a quick picture of some dessert before it got destroyed by everyone.
So the next morning it was time to bid adieu to our lovely apartment and beautiful city and it was back on the road.
Going through Navarra.
Roman aqueduct we saw. Still pales in comparison to the one in Segovia though.
Did we end up in Mexico? No, we stopped by this tiny city for lunch because we were super hungry and the next town was like 100km away. Place reminded me of From Dusk till Dawn but without Salma Hayek. Not quite sure if that's a good or bad thing considering she was a vampire and killed all the humans.
Place is looking more and more like Mexico.
I was pretty sure once we entered the place the waiters and waitresses suddenly lock the doors behind us and turn into vampires but never happened. All we got was greasy truckstop food. Almost as deadly.
So after 6 hours of driving we were finally back in Barcelona and back home.
Fast forward two weeks and I'm looking ahead to another wonderful finals week. I don't even want to complain about it because it's just something that needs to be done. What does sadden me is that these are the last two weeks that our entire class will be together. After that people will be on exchanges and some will have completed their 12 month program. Just won't be the same. I guess I'll save the whole retrospective view about the past 9 months till after finals. Until then, it'll be radio silence folks while I crank through everything we've learned over the last 10 weeks in 1.5 weeks. Hope my brain can handle it.
