Switzerland Chalandamarz We were woken up early Wednesday morning by gentle singing followed by very loud cow bells ringing - Chalandamarz is here! Chalandamarz means March 1st in Rumantsch (chalanda = first of the month, marz = self-explanatory). Rumantsch is the language spoken in Switzerland's Grisons canton, "Graubünden" in German.
Switzerland And Now for Something Completely Different Tomorrow is our last day on the lift ticket so we figured we should try something really wild and crazy - skiing! The last time I skied I was the epitome of style in a pink and blue all-in-one suit with a matching headband. Conor can't even remember
Switzerland Sledding and Other Fun [Ed. note: This is a guest post from our good friend Claudia who came to visit because she didn't believe us that it could really get this cold somewhere in the civilized world. Unfortunately (or rather fortunately) by the time she arrived the temperatures had considerably warmed up.
Switzerland Baby, It's Cold Out There All of Europe is in a cold-spell these days so this isn't too special, especially since everyone expects cold and snow up here in the mountains of Switzerland. But it's still a bit disconcerting when you check the weather report and see these numbers (on the
Switzerland Buna Saira from Zuoz Sunrise in the Engadin is supposedly at 7:51 but the sun doesn't actually hit the valley floor until around 9am. So early mornings are rather dark around these parts. Luckily we don't have to get out of bed until, well, until we feel like it
Italy Chiantishire Life Life in Chianti in January is very quiet. There are hardly any tourists, many shops and restaurants close and when a cold wind like today whistles through the vineyards everyone is happy to stay home in front of chimney. Of course, if you have a dog to take care of
Italy Oh, hello... You're still here? How lovely to see you. Thanks for not abandoning us yet even after this rather long dry spell here on Paws on the Road. But it's a new year and new posts are just waiting to be put up so let's
Spain Roarrrrrr We're back in Barcelona and because it's been a while we decided to check out the zoo last weekend. Our nephews are members so they're on a first name basis with most of the animals but they still enjoyed introducing us to the pygmy
United States Leaving Of course we knew this day would come but we didn't think it'd be this hard to leave. There's so much we still wanted to see and we only finished about half of our to-do list. (Not for lack of trying...) Christmas is very
United States A Very Merry Thanksgiving Even though our visa doesn't allow us to stay on until Christmas, we got to enjoy the next best thing here: Thanksgiving. Sally and Racey invited us to their lovely home in Connecticut together with 20 other lucky ducks (mostly family) to eat turkey, pies and more side
United States We Will Miss This Town Endspurt is German for 'final spurt' as in "We're almost entering our Endspurt in New York City". A very sad thought but looking at the pictures and thinking about all the lovely people we saw and the wonderful food we ate and the marathon-theater-going
United States Is That a Cupcake or Are You Just Happy to See Me? The rage in New York is currently the cupcake. The trend is huge heaps of frosting in bright colors and packaging with more material than you could possibly recycle in a week. We have visited the numerous cupcake hangouts and distilled the best places for a New York tourist to
United States The Marathon Today was the New York Marathon, the 42km race that runs through all five boroughs, closes some major New York streets and brings about $350 million in "economic activity". That's a lot of activity... There were some pretty crazy characters running the race from a bride
United States Fall Lasted a Week A week ago the weather was 24° C and walking about the city in a T-shirt for October was a strange yet pleasant event. We embraced it, by taking the opportunity to visit The Brooklyn Botanical garden, it's free on Tuesdays. This week the weather cooled and the
United States The Week in Review Fall has very much moved in. The trees are doing their best Indian summer work, our heating is running full time and pumpkins are on every corner.
United States Snapshots One of the many tributes to Steve Jobs sprinkled around the city. These optical illusions are on a fence in Soho. (Thanks for the tip Gordo!)
United States Autumn in New York Actually the title of this post should probably be Summer in New York instead because it was absolutely gorgeous outside today. Sunshine, blue skies, temperatures in the high 70s (around 27C)... Definitely not what we expected here in October. We went to Central Park with Mauricio and Andrea for a
United States Something Strange is Afoot at Chelsea Market... It was a clever enough idea: have a bunch of mildly attractive 20-30 somethings walk around with a box of your product, pretending that they just bought it. Hopefully make a bunch of other 20-30 somethings insanely jealous so they'll go out and buy the same product. In
United States Last Sunday Fernando and family came for a visit over the weekend and those few hours that we didn't spend eating or drinking, we whiled away at FAO Schwartz. For the kids, of course. Since it was Sunday, they had a few extra demonstrations of games and toys going on
United States What We Did This Week If you're not a big fan of 'reading' then this is going to be your favourite post yet. The picture to word ratio is going to be out of this WORLD! So let's start: Our apartment is close to St. John the divine, a
United States So Much to Do, So Little Time... They're not kidding when they call New York the city that never sleeps. There is something going on ALL THE TIME! To avoid going crazy trying to do it all or moping about opportunities missed, we just keep telling ourselves that you can't dance at two
United States Walk the Line We haven't done too many touristy things yet (tomorrow, really, for sure!) but we did make it down to the Highline the other day just in time for sunset. The highline is a park built on an old elevated train line originally used to get freight trains off
United States The City That Never Sleeps "A few months in NYC" has been on our travel list for so long that it feels almost surreal that we're really here now. Thanks to Yiko we now call a 5th floor walk-up in Morningside Heights our home, at least until December. It's
Venezuela A Farewell Lunch in Style On our last weekend in Caracas we went to lunch at Recoveco, a restaurant high up on the avila, the mountain range that divides Caracas from the sea. We'd heard about it from Luis because the chef is a friend of his. (After lunch we learned that he
Venezuela Things to Love About Caracas Lest you think everything in Venezuela is bleak these days... There are still gorgeous flowers in the garden: Tortas de fresas from Danubio are still delicious: The view from the Avila is still spectacular: The Cota Mil is still closed for cars on Sunday morning: And gas is still cheaper
