Last Post!

Phrase of the week: “We have to do the blog.”
Observation of the week: We don’t have enough time to do the blog. Although it was a great idea, we unfortunately ran out of time and let the blog slip. Sorry!

Our last 3-4 weeks here have been busy, but fantastic. We spent a long weekend in Paris in early March, and Tim liked it just as much as I hoped he would. Even though it was cold and raining the majority of the time, it was perfect weather exactly when we needed it to be. Tim got the speed tour of Paris – Musee d’Orsay, Eifel Tower, Rodin Museum, Luxembourg Gardens, the Louvre and Versailles. We stayed on the left bank on Rue Dauphine, perfect location. We ate street crepes everyday because everything else was so expensive, but a lot of great food as well.

After Paris, we flew back to Barcelona for Tim’s final week of class. Here are Tim’s final impressions of his classes:

• Creative Problem Solving: Our teacher must have liked our ideas, because we got an A on our final presentation. I had the opportunity to role play the part of a 20 year old heroin addict in front of the class – maybe I should be an actor…


• Sports Marketing: The class did turn out to be pretty interesting and I can confirm that I will use nothing that I learned for my job at Dell.


• Consumer Behavior: This class was taught by a great professor. I think I was the first person that completed the final. Although I haven’t received the grade back yet, I will be surprised if it’s less than an A+.


• Management of Cultural and Creative Industries: I still don’t know the point of this class, but our final presentation was pretty good given the fact that I missed our 2 team meetings, attended a wine conference with Alicia and our friend, Myles, the morning of the presentation, and presented my section after 2 hours of drinking. Actually, I think I did better than usual given the impressed grin on my teacher’s face while I was discussing innovative advertising techniques to the class.


• The Impact of Culture on Business: I ended up enjoying this class. I didn’t enjoy the 2500 word final paper, but I couldn’t think of a reasonable excuse why I deserved to be exempt. Oh well, it’s finished.

One of the things that Tim really wanted to do while in Barcelona was see a famous DJ. While walking around the city, a promotional poster said that Erick Morillo would be performing at Pacha that weekend. After a couple emails were sent out, Bart and his friend, Richard F, came through and got us on the VIP list. The music was great and it turned out to be fun night on the town, especially because we had a table and didn’t have to deal with the massive “general admission” crowds . . .

Karen, Alicia’s step-mother, arrived around March 15 for a week. We took it easy and enjoyed the city with her – she discovered her new favorite restaurant, El Quatre Gats (4 cats), the first place to sell Picasso’s work when he was a teenager. We were also able to finally visit Sitges with her, a little beach town about 30 minutes south of Barcelona. Loved, loved, loved it – had great paella at a restaurant on the beach and walked around the town. Hotel Romantic is a fantastic hotel to get a drink at and/or stay if anyone ever goes.

Our friends Kristin and Jen arrived around March 21. We had so much fun with them, did a few repeat trips including Sitges, played lots of Uno in our favorite wine bar, and walked probably every street in the city at least 3 times.

We leave on March 31 for Thailand for 2 weeks, one overnight stay in London for our connecting flight back to NY, and finally back to the states on April 17. We hope everyone enjoyed reading the blog as much as we’ve enjoyed writing it. Can’t wait to see everyone in a few weeks!

Alicia & Tim