Welcome home

We recently took advantage of the US Thanksgiving holiday to fly home (to my original home town, that is) and visit friends and family. We’ll be spending Christmas week this year in Paris and the Czech Republic, but the past four days in Canada felt almost like being home for the holidays. (Ironically, as we cleared US customs at the Canadian airport before flying back to New York City, the immigration officer greeted me in Spanish, laughed about being unable to fake a New York accent, and then handed me back my passport, saying, “Welcome home.”)

The trip to Canada was busy from start to finish and I think we’re only now starting to make a dent in our accumulated sleep deficit, but it was well worth it. We got a Christmas teaser with an afternoon visit to Lake Louise in Banff -- seven feet of snow along an icy, picturesque lake (with a small avalanche before our very eyes) was a fine welcome to the month of December. I spent as much time as possible with my family and friends, and managed to ingest an impressive number of perogies over the weekend. On Saturday morning, Zdenek and I ran a liberating 14 miles through Fish Creek Park in an attempt to shake off the previous night’s libations. It wasn’t Central Park, but then, it didn’t have to be.

Lake Louise looked just like this during our visit