ALASTAIR + LALEINIA

Luckily, Grandad's visit overlapped with a four-day weekend! We decided to rent a car and go to the south of France where Connor served his mission. The trip started off with a problem - getting the cheapest car possible also meant getting a car that didn't fit us all! We rented a Fiat 500 which turned out to be a convertible, which would have been great if the weather cooperated. Anyways, we were going to meet up with Connor's girlfriend Alexanne, and then were going to convoy for the rest of the weekend. We ended up having to put Connor on the bus to meet us in Perpignan, and then we ended up just parking the car at Alexanne's place and all going in her parents' car. We had a really nice lunch with her family before taking off! We spent two nights at an airbnb outside of Aix-en-Provence in a town called Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. I think it was literally someone's place that they live in and just move out for nights that someone rents it! We didn...

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!

Here it is, our Christmas adventure wrapped into one little video. Enjoy!

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...

Before planning this leg of the trip, our plans to Morocco fell through. I was so sad that we couldn't be riding camels in the Sahara desert like three wise men. So I wanted to make sure that our new Christmas plans would make up for our loss! I researched all the top Christmas markets in Europe and we hit almost all the best spots. Prague was the top of the list! So we left Slovakia, not much to say about it we pretty much slept there for the night and visited a castle. It was windy and cold while visiting the castle. But at least we stopped to say we've been. Country counted! Once entering Czechia, there were lots of billboards painted like the Czechian flag. It was cool at first, but it never ended. Every few yards, there was another one. A bit overkill! On our drive, I interview prepped Alastair. I went through the list of questions and then made up my own. It was fun! We got to our Airbnb, a cute apartment with lots of charm! We also went to the grocery st...

I don't really know much about Vienna, but a few years ago I went to Innsbruck in Austria and it was amazing, so I had high hopes for Vienna. Given that we were going at Christmas time, we were really excited to see the Christmas Markets which we'd read about online. As we were walking around the city, we ended up seeing loads of them, spread all over the place. At the first one, we ate some really really good food. Lain and Emre had some kind of mac and cheese thing, and I don't even remember what I had now, I just remembered that it was great. As we walked around the city we admired the architecture, and Emre loved to see the horses and carts that seem to be all over the place. After walking around for hours, we were only moderately impressed with the markets. As we were walking around aimlessly we decided to head for a really tall Church spire. As we got closer and closer, we started to see what all the fuss was about, we had just found Vienna's best Ch...

I was really excited about the Hungary part of our trip. My grandad was born in Hungary and left for England when he was a young man. As far as I know he never went back. I visited over a decade ago but got really sick thanks to a curry on British airways, and so I didn't see much outside my hotel bathroom. Anyways, we flew in to Budapest and picked up our rental car in time for lunch. Lain found a place on Google maps which was so amazing she said she almost cried. The food was so heavy and filling and tasty, wow I can almost taste it again as I write this. I had some beef stew thing with dumplings which looked like pasta. Lain had a chicken Kiev thing which was also amazing. I'd love to go back, but I didn't have change to leave a good tip, so we had to eat somewhere else for dinner! After a short nap in our Airbnb, we looked out the window to see that it was snowing - time for ice skating! From the tiny amount of research that I did, it appears that Budapest has th...