Tag Archives: spain

I finally get it.

The best time to travel around Europe is November!

All the great-weather tourists have long disappeared, and it’s a month until the Christmas/New year tourists will be back en masse. Yep – November is the perfect time of year for leisurely strolls along European streets and visiting (empty!) cathedrals, palaces and museums. Of course, the weather’s not super fine like in summer, but then Europe – especially southern Europe – doesn’t have a harsh northern climate anyway, so it’s perfectly doable.

Of course, you have to expect some rain, and you need to put a coat on… Big deal. A small price to pay for avoiding throngs of folks everywhere getting in your face, for not having to stand forever in endless lines, and not needing to get out of the way of pictures being taken by a zillion other tourists.

A.B. and I were lucky on this quick trip to Europe: We managed two hours walking gondoliering around Venice and a whole day strolling around Barcelona.

Read on: Two hours in Venice and an evening in Barcelona…

Two mega-cars from Scuderia (a Challenge and a GT3) + a completely empty Aragon race track in Alcaniz, Spain + a fog thicker than school-dinner semolina = tragedy.

You drive in an exquisite bit of motorsport kit, but the pedal stays a good way off the metal. Visibility is down to silly meters, and you’re trying to get some decent speed up. Rather, you’d want to. But you’re not as silly as those meters… So, like I say… a tragedy.

Read on: visibility superciliously silly…

Privyet everyone – from Moscow!

This last fortnight has been non-stop darting about the globe for me. But now I’m back in pleasantly sunny Moscow and the pace has eased off just a little… which has given me some time to put fingers to keyboard and come up with this short summary of the previous two weeks.

In all, six cities were taken in: Washington, D.C., London, Munich, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Barcelona. Six hotels, six flights. Three conferences, seven speeches, dozens of interviews, and loads of very interesting meetings.

The last event was our European Partner Conference in Barcelona – at the stylish and hard-partying W Hotel on the shore of the warm Med with its nice long beach (must say, I’d never experienced the beach in Barca even though I’ve been here an untold number of times). We managed to take a dip in the sea and chill on the beach only after dusk as we had no time during the day. The beach was still in full tourist mode at night though, so the atmosphere was nice and vibrant. Advice: if ever in Barca, don’t miss out the beach.

Party city + party beach = Barca

More: Three curious items…