Ahh... vacation!

Believe it or not, for the more than eight years that I've lived in Europe, I've never really ever taken a proper two or three week holiday. I've almost always smacked a week of holiday on the beginning or end of a business trip (often with Wilbert). That's been nice (and especially economical), but this year we decided to do the "European Thang" and have a proper two-week holiday. We're sitting on a long layover in Charles de Gaulle's Air France Lounge on our way to Biarritz in France, where a car is waiting to whisk us away to San Sebastian in The Basque Country, where I spent one year going to school and learning the Basque language in 1990-91. It will be the first time I've spend such a long time there on vacation, but more importantly it will be the first time that Wilbert has gone with me, and I'm really looking forward to that. When you travel with someone who's never been somewhere you've already been, it almost forces you to see it with new eyes, so that will be fun.

We got a cushy deal at San Sebastian's finest hotel, the Maria Cristina, partially because I'm a platinum member of Starwood Preferred Guest (the world's best frequent guest program!), and partially because I'm renting out the entire hotel for four days next month for a company meeting. :-) So we'll be getting a Junior Suite with a balcony overlooking ocean and sea. It's Aste Nagusia/Semana Grande/The Big Week (the Basque Country means by definition linguistic complexity), so we'll be enjoying the many musical performances, nightly fireworks competition, and generally jolliness in the streets for the next week.

This holiday couldn't have come at a better time. I'm loving my job but reaching burn-out because of the huge proejcts we've bitten off as a team this summer. It's normally our busiest time of year already, but we've complicated it further by choosing to do a major rebranding of the company as a whole, all of which has to be ready for our fall events. I just feel lucky to be working with a good crew of professional, cool people who will take care of everything just fine while I'm gone.

So the timing of this holiday is both good and bad. Guess I'll really get to see what my staff is made of while I'm gone. I think they're up for the job! Besides, it's not every day you get to spend 12 days in the junior suite of a five-star hotel and eat at a restaurant with three Michelin stars (Arzak)!