2015

Happy New Year! Did everyone have a nice holiday? Ryan's mother came for Christmas which was lots of fun - we skied and shopped and ate and spent a day in Venice. And she brought us lots of things from the US that we can't find here....like candy canes and Ziplock bags that don't cost $5 for 10 bags.

When I was thinking about what we were going to do this year, I re-read my first post from 2014 which said that we were going to learn verbs, make canederli and figure out what the best Italian cheese is. Well, here you go:

Some of our favorite verbs are sciare (to ski - which there is not a lot of going on in this mountain town because there is no snow), giocare (to play - Ryan has played about a million games in the past few weeks, some bad but mostly good), mangiare (to eat - because, obviously) and viaggiare (to travel - because that's a goal for 2015).

I made canederli for an article in Italia Magazine (which won't come out until February in the US - but I can tell you that it turned out very well).

And there are too many delicious Italian cheeses to pick just one, but my favorite is Stravecchio, which we ate a lot of in the past two weeks.

So! What's up for this year...

We're starting a new interview series with other expats living in Italy (coming up later this week). We're going to try (again) to make homemade gnocchi because that didn't get done on the 2014 list. We're exploring Venice more thoroughly and we're going to master the perfect antipasti platter. And we're planning a very exciting, very long road trip for April and would welcome any suggestions on any Italian places to see or Italian things to do (or eat. or drink.)

In the meantime though, here are a few pictures from the past two weeks:

 We've been having some gorgeous weather lately which is bad for skiing but perfect for long walks and sitting out in the sun.

Although, we did manage to ski one day...

We did a little window shopping...

...and made fresh pasta

But Cortina is HUGELY busy in the week between Christmas and New Years...

...so we escaped to Venice for a day and a night, where we wandered around enjoying the beautiful views, tried new wine bars and ate lots of fresh seafood.

Then, suddenly it was New Year's Eve! We celebrated the end of a great year with a delicious dinner at the Hotel Menardi here in Cortina, complete with sausage and lentils after midnight (the Italians believe that lentils bring prosperity for the new year). Cheers to 2015!