Happy New Year!

Hey, remember me?

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. I could recite the excuses I’ve been using on myself, but that would be both irrelevant and boring. Suffice it to say that I’m resolved to blog more this year.

I hope you had a lovely start to 2023. Mark and I spent it in Zurich, sort of accidentally. We’d booked a flight from the Midwest, where we’d been seeing our kids and granddaughter for Christmas, and we were supposed to connect through Zurich. A couple of months ago, though, the airline changed its schedule, and we ended up with a day’s layover in Zurich. And that day happened to be New Year’s Eve. Worse things have happened!

Mark found us a lovely little hotel in the center of the city, and we grabbed a cab from the airport to it as soon as we got through Customs. God love the people at this establishment, because the staff had our room ready at 9:30 in the morning. Naps ensued, followed by a city tour and more naps. Jet lag is real, people!

We had dinner at a lovely little Italian restaurant across the cobbled street from our hotel. And at the appropriate time, we wandered down to the river, stood on the bridge with thousands of our best friends, and watched fireworks displays all around. The crowning glory was the municipality’s fireworks display, which was launched out over Lake Zurich. It was spectacular, and we toasted midnight with cups of Glühwein, the hot spiced wine favored in both the German-speaking world and the Morris/Tullos household. On our way back to our hotel, we danced a bit to the tunes the DJs were spinning and just generally acted like goofy tourists out on the town. And of course I spoke Spanish to everyone who spoke German to me, because apparently several neurons in my brain are convinced that there’s only one foreign language in the world. Mark teases me about it, but he did it this morning as well. Perhaps the condition is contagious.

Anyway, that’s the report from New Year’s Eve. We’re now back in our apartment in Spain. I unpacked the can of black eyed peas that we schlepped across the Atlantic, so that we will have good luck this year. (I think we deserve extra for all of that hauling, but we will have to see if that comes to pass.) I wish you good luck and much joy this year as well.