Saturday, December 8, 2012

Thanksgiving in Vermont

We spent our second Thanksgiving in a cosy lake-side cabin in beautiful Vermont with Columbia friends. 
We left New York after work on Wednesday night (both cars laden with food and drink including the all important turkey), arrived after 1am and pretty much fell straight into bed. 
I was very happy to wake up on Thanksgiving morning, pull back the curtains and see the above view out of our window.

Our home for the weekend on Lake Rescue


We felt kind of like nine Europeans pretending to be an American family at Thanksgiving! 
We started the day with a very tasty American pancake breakfast followed by a nice walk round the lake to take in our surroundings and rebuild our appetite for the main event.

 Then it was all hands on deck for a lovely relaxed afternoon of cooking...

 The turkey was very much a group effort!

And then we ate far, far too much food..

Followed by more wine, amazing pumpkin cake and games in front of the fire.

The best thing about Thanksgiving is that when it's over there are still 3 more days before you have to go back to work!

We spent the remainder of our Vermont weekend going on walks, making good use of the canoes that came with the house, visiting the maple syrup producer next door, eating, drinking, playing games and generally relaxing.

Hike up Okemo Mountain with spectacular views at top

Unfortunately we completely misjudged how long it would take and ended up walking down in the dark - which was a little challenging! Thank goodness for Iphones and the torch app!



Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Happy Holidays!

I cannot believe that on this day last year we had just arrived in New York and were heading out for our first NYC dinner.

Wow. What a year it has been!

(view of Manhattan from our plane journey back from Montreal)

Last Thanksgiving we chased the Macy's parade around midtown and then ate pasta from paper plates in our unfurnished apartment! 

This year we hope to be watching the parade on TV from the cosy cabin in the Vermont countryside where we will be spending the holiday with friends. 

Happy Thanksgiving! xx



Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Montreal


We recently had a wonderful, chilly long weekend reunion with our favourite Frenchies in Montreal. 
It was my first time to Canada and I really liked it but also generally felt a bit confused by the combination of North American, British and (in Montreal at least) French influences.


We stayed in a great studio apartment in the Plateau district surrounded by hundreds of restaurants, shops, bars and coffee places that even passed the Dave coffee taste-test.
So of course there was plenty of eating and drinking to be done...

Including one of the best brunches I think I've ever eaten (sorry New York!)

Montreal's most famous bagels (I'm really not enough of a connoisseur to weigh in on the fierce New York vs. Montreal bagel rivalry...)

And Montreal's speciality - Poutine. Which does taste better than it looks. But not that much better...

We even managed to have coffee from our favourite place three times - a surefire way to feel like a local!

Other than that we did a lot of walking and exploring including McGill University, Mont Royal, the Modern Art Museum, the Botanics, Old Montreal, Olympic Park and the old pier. I didn't realise till we got there how much we needed a little break from NYC but it was perfect timing.


Everything was a bit quiet and we got the sense people had started going into hibernation mode. 
I'd love to go back in summer.


Frequent lonely planet/map stops as always!