My branding class is on break right now, so I thought I'd catch up with the blog a bit. Last weekend, while most of the class was at the MBA tournament at HEC Paris, I went to Iceland. I've always wanted to go and sort of imagined it as a souped up Switzerland; lots of rugged mountains and gushing streams, but with the added bonus of natural hot springs dotting the landscape. Well...not quite. Turns out that Iceland is rocky, sparse, and windswept. The island is huge, but most of the surface is craggy lava flows, so it's not that lush. However, I still had a great time and got to see a place that's truly unique in the world.
Immediately after landing I headed straight to the Blue Lagoon. That place is amazing. It's far out on a windswept lava flow in the middle of a rocky peninsula jutting into the Atlantic. The winds was blowing in gales, kicking up a spray of rain that stung your face like a cold slap. However, the facilities were great and once you sunk into the warm, milky blue waters you could escape the cold. I soaked for about an hour, then grabbed a snack and headed to Reykjavik.
The real fun begins outside of the city though. I went of two tours; a small, off road tour that followed the southern coast then detoured for some hiking in the mountains and the tourist trap golden circle tour. The first one was good, but I wasn't a fan of the downtime spent driving out to the country. Iceland is really huge, so it took a good two to three hours to reach our trail head. However, I did get to hike around some amazing waterfalls and take in some great views. The best was a hike up a narrow canyon, where the walls rose 100 ft above my head and closed in to a narrow gap. We hiked into the gap to find a spectacular waterfall hidden away in the crags.
The next day was the golden circle tour, which is sort of the typical tourist route on a big tour bus. I've never been a tour bus kind of guy, but I didn't want to rent a car, so this was really the only option. Parts of the tour were nice. I got to see some huge waterfalls, lakes, and geysers, as well as a volcanic cone. Unfortunately, there was a lot of time spent on the bus and the tour ate up around 10 hours.
My final full day in Iceland I just relaxed and meandered around Reykjavik. It was a nice break, but soon I had to get back to the reality of the Oxford MBA.
This past week has been especially hard. I've got five assignments due this week, and my head is about to explode. The good news is that I'm now done with three and only have two to go, so it should be downhill from here.
In other news, my fiance and I celebrated our second anniversary. We've been apart for a while now, but hopefully we'll be married and settled in a house by this time next year. I can't wait to graduate and start our life together.
I've also finished reading The Google Story. It was a good book, but it really points out how idiosyncratic Google is. I think many entrepreneurs believe that you can just wake up one day and be a Larry Page or Sergey Brin (if you want to go old school, Bill Gates). However, these really are exceptionally bright guys in the unique environment of Silicon Valley/Stanford who solved a fundamental problem of a massively growing market. Not only that, they were able to sign a very unusual venture capital deal that gave them effective control of the company while bringing in Eric Schmidt, a fantastic CEO. It takes a truly exceptional organization to take the wind out of Microsoft and I look forward to seeing how Google develops over time.
For now, back to class.
