.. when she wakes up and asks for a book, the first thing in the morning
.. when she can’t go to sleep because the story is so very interesting.
.. when the sight of the mobile library is enough to make her happy.
..when we leave the library, we have the biggest pile of books ever with us.
.. and when a friend asks for a book from her collection, she tells her very sternly, ‘ its only for BORROWING, you have to give it back to me.’
That’s my life at the moment.
We’ve booked our tickets to return to India, and suddenly there is just too much to do.
Last weekend, for instance. It started off with Friday. There was a Fashion and Beauty Night at school for the mums, and I had planned to go. I never end up going to these events because husband is never around. This time the event would go on from 7 to 11 pm. Daughter had dance class until 7:30, and husband would be back by then. I had it all planned out. Drop daughter off after dance class, handover-takeover with husband, and off for my fashion and beauty night. It is another story that daughter wanted to know, ‘ Amma, you are not Fashion or beauty, so why do you want to go?’. If she ever finds me looking good in anything I wear, her biggest compliment is, ‘You look Fashion, Amma!’. Which by the way, does not happen much, as much as I would like it to 
As I was saying, I had it all planned, sorted to the last minute. Until I received a text from husband -’Flight delayed by an hour’! That was it, all my planning down the drain. Fashion and beauty was not going to be a possibility. That was Friday sorted. Saturday was the usual saturday rush, to get to swimming, get back home, and this time, instead of rushing out again, I got daughter to sleep. We had a dinner at a friend’s place, and I wanted to get her to sleep. We are bound to stay later than her usual bedtime, and I will have a cranky, unhappy child if she doesn’t take a nap. I lay down with her, and before I knew it, both of us were in dream land. Thankfully my contribution to the evening was already made – Tres Leche – I put on weight just thinking about it!
Dinner, of course, was loads of fun. And for me, tinged with a bit of sadness as well. I am going to miss my friends here.. Its been such a great time, full of fun, laughter, and loads of food! My friend had made some yummy, yummy food! I drool thinking about it! It was just yum! A perfect evening it was- stuffed to the gills with food, cheeks aching after laughing way too much, just the perfect weekend treat!
Sunday started early – for me. Somethings happened to me, no matter what time I sleep, I wake up at 6:00 in the morning! Six in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays! I must be mad! Since I can’t go back to sleep, I use the time to drink a leisurely cup of coffee sitting in my conservatory, listening to birds chirping, and basking in the warm sunlight. Of course the peace only lasts until daughter wakes up.
Daughter had a ballet exam on Sunday. They had been planning it since ages, and finally it was here. It’s funny how exams are such fun things for these children. She and her friends were super excited about it. The excitement dimmed a bit only when they(and we) realized that we wouldn’t get to know the results until another 4 weeks. That was a little disappointing but never mind, nothing keeps us down for too long.
We had planned to go shopping after the exam, but the weather was just gorgeous! Too gorgeous to waste on shopping! So off we went to Yorkshire Dales, and landed up in a gorgeous scenic place. We parked the car, walked to a river bank, with cows and sheep gazing at us, soaking in the gorgeous sunshine, relaxing and having fun doing nothing. Daughter found herself a new hobby, collecting stones! We now have a bunch of stones in our car boot. We could stay there forever and ever.
We then managed to go further and find a cute pub which would accept credit cards( I ran out of money and husband did not bring along his wallet. Sigh!). Before I forget enroute, we passed a car boot sale. Normally car boot sales are in the mornings, and I always have a million and one things to do in the morning. I saw signs advertising a car boot which would end at 4. It was 3:30 then, so we decided to stop and check it out. They waived off the entry fee for us, we realized why when we entered. It was almost empty. Needless to say, we did not buy anything. Infact, I felt I could donate some of the stuff I have in my place:) We left with an ice Lilly for daughter.
So going back to the cute pub. We landed in a tiny village where most restaurants accepted only cash. It was daughter’s dinner time, and we gratefully entered the only pub which was ready to accept cards. Daughter had her dinner while we snacked on onion rings and we started our journey back home.
That was it for the weekend. Monday and Tuesday seems to have whizzed past. Why does time fly so? I’ve got all the sorting and clearing left to do, while squeezing in meeting up with friends, planning playdates and hoping that I don’t miss something important. Also the realization that you have just a month to sort everything out, and you have two holidays scheduled in that month! I suspect though, that the month after I land in India will put this one to shame.
PS: I’ve been reading you guys, I’ve just not been able to get down to commenting.
Issy Randal works in admin at a cut-throat real estate agency. She loves baking, having been taught by her grandfather, a passionate baker, whom she adores. Taking cupcakes to work, sharing with her friends during her commute and living a steady, peaceful life, Issy is satisfied with the way her life is going. Her grandfather is now older and needs help. She brings him to London from Manchester, where he lived all his life, so that he is near her in a nice nursing home. The only sad thing in her life is that her beloved granddad seems to be losing his memory and knowing that she can do nothing more to help him or to change the situation.
She has been seeing Graeme, one of the top guys at her work, although they had not gone open about it as office romances were not exactly encouraged. Issy had been comfortable in her easy and safe job. Issy is jolted out of her complacency when she is fired from her job, as a result of cut-backs. She is further hurt because clearly Graeme knew and did not feel the need to let her know. Not just that, she realized that everybody in the office knew that Graeme and her were going out, and Graeme knew they knew, and yet insisted on continuing the charade. Humiliated, and disillusioned, she walks out of her job and her relationship and finds solace in the cakes she bakes.
Shutting herself away in her house, stuffing herself with cake, and trying to forget the world, Issy is depressed and totally down.
Pushed by her friend Helena, she steps out tentatively and ends up leasing a place to open her ‘Cupcake Cafe’. But of course nothing is as straightforward as one would wish for. She finds opposition where she least expects, and help as well, from unexpected quarters.
So will she be able to translate her passion into business? Or will she go down in business, the same way she went in her previous career. You’ll have to read it to find out, but I guarantee you’ll have a blast along with Issy on her journey.
Issy’s story is interwoven with her friends and colleagues’s life and as you read it, you can’t but want everything to work out for everybody. The book also has recipes, written in a wonderfully quirky style. And the food descriptions are guranteed to have you drooling. So much so that I was itching to bake and ice cupcakes as I read the book.
A nice, fun read, something light for a summer evening read. Not so light on the tummy though, because it made me crave for all the cakes described there!
- You actually get to use the sunscreen that you bought in spring, in the hope that the weather will be kind to you.
- You walk out confidently without hauling around jackets – just in case the weather changes
- Your dosa batter rises like never before.
- You go on diet just because its too hot to eat- that doesn’t last too long though 
- You get to drive with the car windows down. What bliss!! And you get to switch on the AC instead of that perpetual heating!
- Your daughter comes home with an empty water bottle.
- You can see neighbours dining in their garden.
- For a change all the windows in the house are wide open and the house is still warm!
Oh, for summers like this! All I need is a cool, cool mojito on a hot summer evening like this to make it totally perfect!
… Or to be more accurate, why breaking the cycle is so difficult..
Our friend Bikram raised some questions in his post here, and I thought I’d try to answer.
Let me explain with an example. I met a young woman here. She must be in her late twenties or at max, her early thirties. She grew up in India, but got married to an NRI who was 34 at that point in time. She was 18. She says her parents had no plans to get her married but when the proposal came up, it felt like a good one. She has three children, and lives in a typical joint family type of environment, here in the UK. One day we were talking and she started telling us about how tough it is for her. She works, but once she is home, she is expected to be the obedient, dutiful bahu, making tea for everyone, clearing up. It might not sound like a huge deal, but as she says, if you end up spending 45 mins for having a simple cup of tea- it becomes a big deal. Especially in a country where she has no maids or anybody to help out. If she fancies a cup of tea and makes it for herself without checking with the rest of the family, it is considered quite rude. A small example, but it affected her badly enough for her to share it with us. Then she went on to say, ‘What can I do, I can only wait for when it will be my turn to be the mother-in-law’.
I was stunned to hear that. Surely one would think that she would try to break the cycle rather than have it continue? But then I realized that, for her, it is just a fact, an accepted reality. As a daughter-in-law, she has to accept what is given to her, and she has to wait until her son gets home a DIL before she gets to throw her weight around. She does not think of breaking the cycle because she has accepted the system for what it is.
What horrified me, was just a statement of fact for her. Why? Because that is the system they have been brought up it, that is the system they are familiar with. They don’t see a problem with it. A boy will bring home a wife, while a daughter will be sent away. I have heard this justification from so many people.
Dowry is justified too. People think that it is perfectly legitimate. These days it is termed as ‘gifts’ which the girl’s side gives ‘willingly’. I don’t understand why gifting is only the woman’s parents prerogative? Then of course, people will explain that a daughter is going away to her ‘real home’ so her parents would like to ‘gift’ her things. That to me is the root cause of this whole thing. The imbalance in society which is brought about by the concept of a male child being ‘apna’ and a female child being ‘paraya’.
The system is also the reason a parent dreads the birth of a girl child, dreads the day they will have to shell out huge amounts of money to get her ‘married off’.
The only way the evils like sex selective abortions, dowry etc can be eradicated is the system itself changes. If both sons and daughters take up the responsibility of looking after their parents, if parents of daughters are not left destitute in their old age, if a daughter is not taught that no matter what, once she gets married, her marital home is her home, and not her parental home.
In fact in the program, in both the first and the third episode, we had women expressing how it is so horrible for a parent to have their married daughter coming back home. It broke my heart to listen to that. I can’t even begin to imagine how helpless they must have felt. Where could they have gone? How could they have walked out on their marriages when all that has been drummed into their heads is that their parental home is no longer their home?
The moment that stigma goes away, we will find a lot of women comfortable about standing up for their rights. When they know that they will not make their parents unhappy if they land up at their doorstep. When women understand that they don’t need to accept everything that is thrown at them. When they are brought up with the belief that no matter what, their parents will always be there for them. That they are no ‘paraya dhan’.
We had a late, leisurely start on the second day in Venice.
We lazed around, had a nice huge breakfast. Did I mention the coffee in Venice? I must have, but delicious as it was, it is certainly worth mentioning again. Such delicious, flavour-full coffee!
The plan was to visit the islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello. There are tours from Venice but all the reviews and traveogues I read recommended using the public transport to get the real feel of the place. So we decided to use the public transport instead. We went back to the vaporetto station and took a 12 hour ticket which allowed us to use any water bus for 12 hours. Later we realized that we should have gone in for the 36 hour ticket – would have been far cheaper in the long run, but at that point, both of us missed it.
On route to the vaporetto station, we stopped at a church. Check out the ceiling!
We decided to go to Murano first. Murano is the island famous for the glass factories. The water bus that we took, actually felt like a ‘bus’ in the real sense. Check out the crowd. Clearly loads of tourists had read the same travelogues as me 
The sights we passed enroute to Murano..
The wooden pilings apparently show the route that the waterbuses have to take. We saw these sort of pilings on the way from the airport as well. Apparently the whole of Venice stands on millions of pilings like these. The wood came from Slovenia, which now has barren regions because of all the wood that was cut and used to keep Venice afloat.
As soon as we landed on Murano, we were directed to the glass factory, which would close at noon. We hurried towards the factory, along with all the tourists from our water bus. In the factory, we were treated to a wonderful exhibition of glass blowing, and the art of making glass artifacts. He made a glass horse in minutes! It was breath-taking to watch.
And he blows it out!
Look at him fashioning a horse from molten glass!
And within minutes the horse is ready! What expertise!
After the session at the glass factory, we refused to get seduced by the charming salespeople at the glass exhibitions, and decided to walk the streets of Murano instead.
Fodder for the boats – a filling station for boat.
I loved the look of this boat, full of vegetables! I couldn’t help wonder if it were a vegetable shop or just the way the restaurants get their veggies delivered.
Murano has glass everywhere.. Glass Flowers..
Glass gardens…
As I browse through my pictures, I realize that we have loads of lovely pics, but all of them with us in them, so I’ll just skip ahead to our next destination – Burano. I found the way the Italians pronounced the word, so very charming! So off we went, back to the water bus station, and got on the water bus to Burano.
We saw some abandoned islands with ruins of houses on them.. Doesn’t it make you wonder who lived there, in the middle of the sea, all alone on an island? I’m not surprised that whoever lived there decided to abandon it..
Burano, I understood from what I had read was famous for it’s lace and its coloured houses. Here’s a picture that captured both.
Another thing that struck me about Burano was the greenery. It was the greenest among the islands we visited. May be it just was not as populated as the others..
The multi-coloured houses of Burano.
When daughter was little, she used to watch a programme on Cbeebies, and it had coloured houses(to teach the little ones colours), and the houses in Burano reminded me of that!
And soon it was food time. Hitchy, finally some food pics, that can be posted
That was one of the most delicious meal we had in Venice. The bread was oh-so-delicious! Dipped in Olive Oil – yum!
Grilled veggies – we polished off a few before we remembered to take pictures!
The pasta I fell in love with. I don’t remember the name, the menu was in Italian, all I knew while ordering was that it was a vegetarian spaghetti, but the taste! It was amazing! I think it was spaghetti in pesto. I came home and tried to replicate it with basil pesto, and the taste was quite similar. Delicious! The thought of it makes me drool!
And the pizza.
We also had a delicious dessert, a local biscuit and ice-cream, drenched with chocolate sauce! I can’t find any pictures of it. Clearly, both of us were more interested in attacking it rather than waste time taking pictures
Tummy satisfied, we walked around the little island. Colours everywhere! Such a lively, cheerful looking place it was!
The plan was to visit Murano, Burano and Torcello, but it was almost 3 in the afternoon by the time we were done with lunch, so we decided to skip Torcello and return to Venice. We had booked a day tour to the Hill Towns of Veneto for the third and final day in Venice, so we really wanted to experience more of Venice. Torcello seemed less attractive than Venice.
So off we went, back to Venice, and what we did there, shall be fodder for the next post
PS: Remember me moaning about not being able to select pics to post? Well, WP decided it for me – no more pics. Apparently I am the limits of my media capacity, so I had to delete all my headers, and ran to Hitchy in tears, thanks so much, Hitchy, for all your help So has any of you faced this problem? Any option, apart from using Flickr?
..daughter sings,’ 1 2 3 4 5, once I caught a fish online‘
When virtual has become more real…. … She was about to go to a birthday party at bowling place, and she explains to her dad,’its a real bowling place, not the bowling you do on your phone’. Husband has a bowling game on his phone.
..when in doubt, you can always google, says the 6-year-old.
..that black book that is not a book, what is it that Daddy reads? A Kindle! I should just be grateful that she is more excited at the sight of her real books.
.. Can you just pause the TV while I go and get something. Husband records loads of programmes. Watching him pausing whatever he watches, she has developed a fascination for it. One day I mentioned that when I was her age, we did not have TV, and she was stunned – she couldn’t imagine a time before TV.
In fact when I look back, I find that quite amazing as well. So many gadgets that I can’t live without today, was nowhere in the scene just a few years ago. I did not have a mobile phone until a few years after I started working. There was a time we used pagers at work. And today, if I leave my phone at home accidently, I actually feel uncomfortable. So much so that one of my to-do things is to ask my cousin to get me a sim card so that I can have a working phone as soon as I land in India.
People talk about feeling liberated without their phones ringing.. but for me, I find being connected comforting. Knowing that if any of my loved ones need me, I am just a phone call away. For that, I shall forever be grateful for the invasion of technology in our lives..
As I had promised, I did try to make Paneer pinwheels with wholemeal flour – atta. I only had multigrain atta, so I just used it, but I am sure even the regular flour should be fine.
Here’s how it turned out.
The taste – it was different, but nice different. The pastry was crisp, not flaky. More like Bhakarwadi rather than puff pastry- but that was to be expected. For me, I might use this method more as it is far healthier than the puff pastry. And it tasted just as delicious on the whole. And easier to rustle up. Just use chappathi atta!
I had planned to make a stiffer dough, but ended up with softer dough. I was too lazy to correct it, so went ahead and made it. Thankfully, it still turned out delicious! It was a little more delicate to handle, but a few minutes in the fridge was enough to sort that out.
Ingredients
For the pastry
Whole meal flour – I cup( I tried with scaled down ingredients)
Water – to knead- I did not measure, I’m afraid
salt to taste
For the mixture. I used the same amounts as I used for the earlier version. Just made stuffed paranthas with the remaining mixture.
Paneer – One store bought block- 9oz approximately
Oil – 1 tsp
Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
Red Chilli Powder – 1/2 tsp or to taste
Chat Masala – 1/2 tsp
Amchoor – 1/4 tsp
Salt – as per taste
Corainder leaves – a handful, chopped
Green chutney – Enough to spread lightly on the pastry.
For the pastry, combine the flour, water and salt and knead well until it comes together in a nice firm dough. Mine went a little softer than I wanted it, but it did not really matter much in the end.
In a little oil, lightly saute the paneer with all the ingredients mentioned. This time, I just added the green chutney to the mixture – laziness, that is me! Keep aside for to cool down.
Roll out the dough. Brush a tiny amount of oil, fold it and roll it out again. I used very little oil, but I am sure a little more oil would taste better. I did this about 3 times. Had my dough been stiffer, I could created more layers. Once the layers were done, spread the paneer mixture evenly, and roll it up, firmly but gently. Seal the ends with a little water.
I had to put mine in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes before cutting the roll into equal sized pieces, Place them on a greased baking tray and bake them for about 15 minutes at 400 deg F or until golden.
Not having read Mayes, ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’, I had no expectations from this book, apart from the fact that TGND loved it, which itself was good enough for me. I wanted to read ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ first, but am still on the waiting list, so decided to go with this one first.
Frances Mayes goes around the world, well, not exactly the whole world, Western Europe, to be more accurate. She and her husband Ed, travel to Spain, Portugal, France, South of Italy, took a cruise on the Aegean Sea, touched North Africa, visited England and Scotland, chronicling their journeys with vivid descriptions of the places, the people, and most importantly the cuisines.
Reading it was a wonderful experience. It took me a longer than usual time to finish this book, because I kept going back and re-reading passages. It made me yearn to go to all those places and live like they did. Rent a house, buy at the local supermarket – which incidently, I always wish for when I am on holiday. Somehow, I always feel like that – that grocery shopping in a place, makes you feel at home. Even in India, when on holiday, I wish I had a kitchen all to myself and could shop and cook- and this coming from someone who normally does not like to cook, is a big thing.
They got invited into kitchens of restaurants, got themselves cooking lessons, rented houses on the internet, only to be thoroughly disappointed when they got to see them- at times. And at other times, loved the accommodation to bits. I loved the way she picked up interesting things like vintage baby clothes for her grandson. I was especially chuffed to read about her visiting some of the places that I had been to and loved. Her descriptions of food, were just fabulous! I found myself wishing that I had it in me to try things out of my comfort zone.
While it was a wonderful book in many ways, I did feel that she was a trifle too judgemental about tourists, especially those on the free cruise that she went on, for instance. It was a little off-putting at times. Despite that, I would still re-read it. It is a very interesting and captivating read.
I would certainly recommend it to people who like to travel(and try local food), but it is a rather verbose book, so it might put off some.
As usual, I had big plans of going completely prepared to Venice. This time, in my defence, I did read up, I did plan well.
I even had all our stuff packed in time. Husband arrived at 10 in the night from Glasgow, and everything was in place. Eat, sleep, wake up and fly was all we needed to do. Despite all the hoping and wishing, the weather forecast did forecast showers and thunderstorms. The weather here was not great either. It ensured that we got wet in the short walk from the taxi to the airport terminal.
After a long, long queue for the security checkin( we always seem to be in queues at airports), we managed to reach the gates, just in time for boarding. Flying a low cost airline has in it’s disadvantages, the fact that no meals are served in flight. So, me being, super-planner for a change, had brought along lovely buttery croissants from Waitrose. Why worry about butter and fat, when on holiday, eh?
So we took off, even the cramped seating couldn’t dampen our enthusiasm. Daughter insisted on reading the in-flight magazine end to end, while I tried to grab a nap.
And now the time for the mandatory, in the air pics. No matter how much I travel, I can’t stop behaving like a woman on her first flight
If you look very closely, you’d see a green lake nestled between the mountains.
And finally after two hours in the air, we landed in Venice. It looked clear, and gorgeous! Daughter always complained that she never gets to see the blue sky in England, well, she certainly couldn’t complain here. Clear, gorgeous blue sky! Thunderstorms, rain showers seemed a lifetime away. Of course, none of this meant anything because the weather changes in Venice in minutes, guidebooks told us.
At the airport, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to take a printout of the map of where the hotel was. We went to an information desk, where we were told to take the water bus(vaporetto – doesn’t it sound wonderful? Everything sounds wonderful in an Italian accent, me thinks ) get off at Fondamenta Nouve and then walk 10 mins to the hotel. Sounded easy enough. Couldn’t be more difficult than our trek in Greece, could it?
We were told the direction to follow to reach the water bus. There was a long tunnel like passage way, and we walked for about five minutes before we reached the water bus station. We were accosted by a young man, waving pamphlets and telling us that the water taxi would take us to our hotel in 20 minutes for 110 euros. For a minute, we were confused, but then realised that most people were walking towards the next stop. On checking realized that the water bus was the public transport, while the water taxi was like the taxi we use – private, and more than double the cost of the waterbus -both ways. So we decided to take a chance with the water bus. Most people seemed to make the same choice, which reassured us and had us worried. After all, it’s called a bus! What if we have to stand all the way to Venice? Thankfully, we did not.
A water bus getting loaded with it’s passengers.
Finally after about 30 minutes, and some whining by daughter about how hot it was(she did not sleep on the flight, and was tired, sleepy and hungry by then), we reached our destination. Getting off, we checked at a trattoria, the directions to our hotel. The fragrance of food, made me long to just sit there and eat! We went the direction he told us to, only to get a confused and asked someone else. He directed us in another direction, and we went off again, in search of our hotel. Now, just to give you an idea, this is what that area looked like.
Now, Venice is a lot of islands(118, to be precise), connected by bridges. So each time you cross a bridge, you are crossing over to the next island. In search of our hotel, we ended up crossing about 10 bridges, until we finally found it. In reality, it was just 2 bridges away – 5 mins walk, at max, but we had to get lost! I read in some guides that the best way to see Venice is to get lost in Venice. Well, we started off doing that
I have to say, the happiness at reaching your destination is amplified when you have to go to such lengths to reach it. Husband had to haul our big suitcase over all those bridges. And all of us were very, very hungry. The hotel room was a huge relief. Although we had checked out the reviews in Expedia and Tripadvisor, we were not expecting very spacious rooms, because almost everybody mentioned how rooms are small in Venice. Ours was a welcome change – nice, spacious, and such lovely staff! We checked in, and then ran out to grab some food.
There was this nice main street that we had passed, while searching for our hotel, and we went back there. We had the most delicious ravioli, and spinach and ricotta cannelloni. We practically inhaled it – hungry as we were. All we wanted after that was a nice nap. Bliss!
A nap was just what we needed. The hotel had a complimentary tea spread from 2pm onwards, and we did full justice to it. Well, not full, but we had the best coffee I have had in recent times. The spread of cakes, pastries and biscuits made us wish we had the space for it all Never mind, we had 2 more days to try out everything on the buffet.
So off we went. To get lost again, but this time it was much more fun.
A Campo(square). Apparently, we went at a time when the mad rush of tourists hadn’t quite started.
The first sighting of the Grand Canal from under the Rialto Bridge.
Someone walking up the bridge for a better view.
And the view from up there…
And we meander through bridges, and squares and little lanes… watch gondoliers parked, waiting for their customers…
.. to finally reach San Marco, and the Campanile, from where we took these pics. We went up the Campanile, and had the most wonderful view of Venice.
Basilica San Marco, doesn’t it look gorgeous?
The Grand Canal adjacent to San Marco. Gondoloas, anybody?
The famous Bridge of Sighs! Yes, we did kiss under the Bridge of Sighs in a gondola
By then, our tummies were rumbling again. Walking is tough work, so is taking pictures of every single thing. We take way too many pictures! I’m having such a tough time selecting pictures. We got lost again, in search of food this time.
I can’t help wondering if these are houses, and who gets to live in them! Must be such a romantic existence!
Isn’t Venice gorgeous at night? I could live there forever! And eat in all those lovely trattorias every single day!
Food time again, delicious risotto and pizza this time. No pictures, because husband did not take pictures! He’s got us eating it, and no pictures of the actual food! Time to get back in bed, but not before we tasted some of the delicious chocolate mousse cake that was still waiting for us back at the hotel. Husband stuck to gelattos. He loves gelatto. Last time we were in Italy, he practically lived on gelatto, and he did not want to make an exception this time
The first day went off so well, with no sign of thunderstorms and rain showers – we couldn’t believe our luck! Needless to say with all the walking we did, we fell asleep as soon as our heads hit our pillows!
(to be continued..)
