Happy New Year to all of our friends and family! We didn’t get around to doing Christmas cards this year, and even if we had, it would have cost us a fortune to send them all from Switzerland so we’ll consider this our e-holiday-greeting to our loved ones. Pilgrims This holiday season started for us with a “Friendsgiving” celebration with a few of the friends we’ve gotten to know during our time here. It included friends from the UK, Washington D.C., China and Egypt by way of the UK – appropriately, all of us pilgrims of one sort or another. Aside from our DC friends, it was the first Thanksgiving most of our guests had celebrated, so although neither Jim nor I would typically go out of our way to have traditional American Thanksgiving fare, we figured there was no time like the present to expose our friends to the insipid Thanksgiving culinary traditions. In all seriousness, the food was good as was the company – although next year I think we’ll opt for Thai.
It was with some trepidation that we planned our fall break road trip through Northwest Italy for a few reasons: We can hardly get in the car to drive to the grocery store without being asked three times “how long until we get there??????” (Always said in a plaintive and whiney tone – usually by Jim, but we ply him with snacks and he normally calms down.) This trip was set to span 8 days, with three stops, anywhere from 3 to six hours of driving between each leg. Unlike in the US, we do not have a car equipped with a DVD player so it is basically our kids’ version of cruel and unusual punishment. I mean, we are driving through the Alps, but what does that have on the “Monster Truck Movie.” (If you haven’t seen it, consider yourself lucky.) We were warned, numerous times, by our colleagues that driving in Italy is crazy. Although, we took that with a grain of salt because Switzerland is one of the most orderly and controlled driving cities in the world, so by comparis