The Best of 2015

2015 has been a great year for us and while we're sad to see it go, we're so excited for all that next year has in store. One of the best things about having a blog is that we can look back on the year and see what we were up to....here are a few of our favorite moments from the past year:

At the start of 2015, we were still in Cortina....(that seems like a loooong time ago!). We kicked off the year with a weekend in Vienna which was uncharted territory for us at the time and we loved the city. But by far our favorite thing there was the schnitzel at Figlmuller. If you are ever in Vienna, definitely check it out - we still talk about it a year later!

We also took trips to Bassano del Grappa, Florence and Venice, but one of our most adventurous trips was the night we spent in an igloo! Ryan's season had ended in February and we had a few weeks to explore, so one day we drove to Val Senales where we parked the car and then skied to the Bella Vista Mountain Rifugio where the igloo was located. I remember it was snowing and gray and windy and we were completely lost until we came across a man who was able to show us where the rifugio was (on the top of the glacier). Literally no one was out skiing that day and he was the only person we saw. We recovered by playing backgammon by the fire and then had a long soak in the outdoor hot tub. At night we ate dinner in the rifugio and drank Montenegro with snow in it - rifugios never have ice - and then we went out and slept in the igloo for the night! It wasn't as cold as we thought it would be and we slept inside really warm sleeping bags. We actually didn't sleep that well but the whole experience was wild and we would highly recommend it.

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And then the traveling got really serious and we took off on our "tour of Italy". After living in Cortina for four years, we definitely had Northern Italy down, but we felt like we hadn't seen the rest of the country and we wanted to explore that too. So we spent four weeks in Cinque Terre...

....then continued on to Rome for three days where we got invited on a food tour and spent a day in Orvieto....

...then off to Bari, where we fell in love with the food and the ceramics and which was also our base for exploring Matera, Alberobello and Castellana Grotte...

....on to Sorrento for five days where we lounged in Marina Grande, took a tour of a local farm, visited Capri and went to Pompeii.

We passed through Naples too, and had the best pizza of our lives at L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele....

....and then we were on the ferry to Sicily, where we spent 10 days seaside, in Sciacca, a tiny fishing village on the southern coast. It was truly the trip of a lifetime and we both feel so fortunate that we were able to take that month to explore. It's something that we'll remember forever and always look back fondly on, and was really the highlight of 2015.

The other highlight was finding out that we're expecting our first baby in February!

We found out at the start of the summer and luckily I was feeling well, so we still took a few trips - to Lake Placid, Maine, Massachusetts to visit family, NYC and of course, our annual adventure trip.

At the end of August we moved to Scotland for a new hockey season after four years in Cortina, which was a big move for us, but one that has worked out well. We've loved exploring a new place and have found Scotland a friendly and wonderful place to live (and to have a baby!). Our travel is slowing down now that the baby is coming in a few weeks but we did get to Fort Williams and Loch Ness, Oban, the many fishing villages of Fife and we've taken tons of day trips in Edinburgh.

2015 has been such a wonderful year for us, so thank you for following along and HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone!!