ALASTAIR + LALEINIA

We're at the end of the first year, so we only had one long weekend left for some traveling. We decided it was finally time to check out Frankfurt. So we booked flights to Luxembourg, cause it was cheaper and Frankfurt isn't far at all. We're just crossing off countries one weekend at a time! Once again, we picked up our rental car and drove to see a bit of Luxembourg before going to Frankfurt. Alastair's family lived there for a time, so it was fun to place the location to the memory. Like, in Luxembourg, we went to these old tunnels where Alastair's family went. Emre was pretty scared, he thought there were going to be dragons. So he had Alastair hold him the whole time. We walked around a bit while Alastair bid online for next year's classes. The next day was spent touring Frankfurt via bikes. After spending some time finding a parking spot, we walked to a corner store and grabbed some stroopwafels. We love those things! We rented the bik...

I've had a marathon on my new years resolutions, goals, bucket list, all sorts for many years. There was one time when I was semi close, in California I was training a little and ended up throwing my back out really bad playing football, which stopped any and all running for a long time. Well, five weeks ago I had been running for around a week and was enjoying it so I looked online for marathons and signed up for the one in Geneva! I trained relatively well given the short amount of time I had before the race. I made sure to get some runs in during our trips to Malta, Mallorca, and Cinque Terre/Switzerland. I ran hundreds of kilometers and did my longest training run of 32km about two weeks before the race. I loved checking the data after each run on my apps, really fun. Running has become kind of addicting. I'm really enjoying getting fit, pushing myself to go further and faster every time. I'm really motivated to minimize the effects of aging! My progress with p...

In case we have never documented this before, the way that we usually travel is by doing a search on Google Flights and then picking whichever place is cheapest that seems interesting. That is how we decided on Malta! We ended up going for three full nights and three full days, meaning we arrived back home in Barcelona at about 4am! Not knowing much about Malta, and not making much of an effort to research beforehand, we originally were not planning on hiring a car, but changed our mind a day or two before leaving which turned out to be a great idea! Malta is tiny, but without a car, it would be really big! And in between towns there are very few footpaths, which would have been a nightmare with Emre! We roughly split up our days between the islands, day one on Malta, day two Comino, and day three Gozo. It was fun to take boats between the islands - to Comino on a tiny fast boat, and to Gozo on a large Ferry with the car tagging along. Basically, all three islands are...

As much as we've traveled since we arrived at school, we really haven't done much in Spain at all. Well, we took advantage of some great weather to visit Montserrat in a Saturday. Montserrat is not far at all from Barcelona, about one hour max on the train. That is if you get it right! Our journey there was eventful, and it ended up taking closer to three hours to get there! First, we got to the train station in Barcelona and had to sprint down the stairs to get on the train before the doors closed. Well, just as I (Alastair) jumped through the doors, they closed with Lain and Emre on the outside. An awkward look out the window ensued, and the train left the station. No biggie, I thought, it'll put us back a bit but I'll sort this out. I grabbed my phone to call Lain to plan and no answer. Lain's phone was in my backpack! I sat on the train hoping that they would just sit and wait at the platform for me to get back. Well, after a frantic dash through the Cataluny...

Really excited to say that I'm going to intern with Bain & Company in London for the summer! The reason I left Google and came to grad school was so that I could become a consultant and I'm over the moon that I've got the opportunity to do so. I've been back and forth to London three times since the start of the year, for each of the interview rounds and now for the offeree weekend. It hasn't set me up to knock midterms out of the park but I shouldn't complain! It was also a great opportunity to spend time with Hollie before and after each of the interviews. I'm really looking forward to getting started, but excited for the spring in Barcelona!

We took a quick break in our trip to get back to Barcelona for an internship interview. That gave us some time to wash our clothes and repack and for Alastair to catch a cold. Boo! Oh well, it happens. It was better that Alastair caught the cold then, instead of a few weeks later when he had his Bain interview.  Our trip consisted of a lot of chilling in our Airbnb! It was actually a really cute space and it was next to a cereal cafe. We brought our chromecast to watch shows. That's where I got Emre really into the Powerpuff Girls. We went to McDonald's for lunch and he got a Buttercup toy. I told him all about the Powerpuff Girls and that they were superheros and he was intrigued. So we watched it, it was fun! It's funny how he doesn't know Batman, Spiderman, or any of those kind of characters, but he knows Mojo-jojo, Buttercup, Blossom, and Bubbles. It's more entertaining anyways!  It rained a lot while we were there, except for one day, and we made the...

It's nice visiting Rome, but it was more of a "Barcelona appreciation day" for us. Rome is like a dirtier version of Barcelona, but that's just our opinion. However, I did enjoy our stay in Perugia. The Italian countryside is where it's at, not so much the bigger cities. Sure, you get the ruins and the history in Rome, but Italy is much more enjoyable in the quiet little towns. It just feels more authentic! So I found my place- Lake Como is my jam! I absolutely loved it! The only thing I knew about the place was that George Clooney had a multi-million dollar home alongside the lake. I would if I had the money, it is gorgeous! We stayed in a not so fancy airbnb, which was pretty cold. We just bought our food at the market, mainly bread and snacks, nothing fancy.  Alastair wanted to get to a point where we could hike, but Google maps couldn't get us to that point. We ended up driving a little less than an hour away, to a small town at the edge of th...

While we were planning our trip, I wanted to make sure that we were in Prague and Krakow for Christmas because they had some of the best Christmas markets. We spent Christmas morning driving to Krakow and arrived late afternoon. We were very tired, so once we arrived to our airbnb, we took a nap. It was really sweet, because the hosts weren't able to greet us but they did have traditional cakes in the fridge. We decided to get out and try to find food. We figured that a lot of restaurants and stores would be closed since it was Christmas, but we still were determined to find food. Before we left, we did make plain noodles with sausage, it was all we had, we thought that was going to be our Christmas dinner. We walked past a corner store and asked what time they would close, which was around 10 pm. Hope! We decided to walk a little more and get to the Old Town, to see if the Christmas market was open. As we were walking, we found another market and asked what time they cl...